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Let’s be clear. If your idea of a holiday is sitting in a deck chair with a cocktail and not moving like my girlfriend’s ex, or are like my mother (even at a much younger age), who’s vacation aim is to tick off as many sights as you can as quickly as possible, then don’t expect this article to change your mind. But given you’re reading now, there’s a fair chance you’ve strongly considering a long walk as an option—or maybe you’re thinking of doing a second and saying as we did (on both first and second occasions; we’d come to terms with it by our third): why would we walk such a long way? And then—why a Camino versus just a long walk?
The Camino calls us for different reasons, often more than one, but at the recent Australian Friends of the Camino conference, a quick show of hands suggested there were a lot of common threads that lead to the first step (and many more) along The Way. Traditionally the reason was religious—to give thanks, ask forgiveness or a hope of a cure. While few people I met walking or at the conference suggested a wholly religious reason, some aspect of the above was at play for most. Grief is common—whether walking to recover or walking for inspiration for the next life stage—I lost count of stories from fellow pilgrims of illness (one preparing for a major life threatening operation on his return), divorce and death (one elderly man’s dying wife had helped him put together a list of what to do when she died and the Camino was first. Unfortunately she hadn’t thought to tell him what shoes to wear and his blistered feet soon sent him off to complete it by bus). Even rusted-on atheists need a bigger purpose and structure for their lives.
The religious history gives a certain magic to the Camino, even if you aren’t religious. The walker is immersed in the history in every town and church, and it’s hard not to have something approximating faith and hope rub off on you. My atheist skin tingled when the monks sang in a tiny chapel in Conques on the Camino Le Puy (no surprise it did for my heroine Zoe here as well). Fellow pilgrims, similarly affected, ensure this lives on and imbues the path with meaning. In the camaraderie of the Camino, people are there to help anyone who is looking find the answer, just as there is always the chance to walk alone if you need to. This I would suggest is the major difference between a Camino—especially the Camino Frances or any that end in Santiago de Compostela—and other long walks. On the Coast to Coast there were plenty of people we bumped into regularly in pubs, but no one ever asked “why are you walking”. This is the question everyone is asked sooner or later on the Frances. Part of the healing is opening up and listening.
There is magic in all long walking, in addition to that which spills forth from the Camino walkers. It comes from the separation from our lives—busy, stressful, routine—and with immersion in nature. Countless studies show the latter is psychologically healing, and the walk provides a forced mindfulness; a living in the moment rather than being distracted by the latest twitter post (this assumes, and I strongly recommend, that social media is cut off for the entire walk). Everyone does the walk in their own way, but the length is part of the process. One can keep a week or even two in mind, with the end in sight. Longer, less so (and two thousand? Nup), and this promotes the process that our modern lives so often doesn’t allow for. If you can’t do two weeks or more then I recommend thinking hard before you leave as to why you are doing it. It took me fifteen hundred kilometres to work it out—but it is possible that if you are focused the problem will present and open up in a smaller time period.
Raynor Winn in Landlines, walking long tracks in the UK suggests her walks have this mindfulness magic for her and her partner, but the same Camino spirit doesn’t appear to be evident in the walkers they meet who are examining maps and talking weather and distances. What the walk also did for them though—as it does for Camino walkers—is provide physical robustness and self-confidence. What better way to get fit? Yes you ideally prepare but if you aren’t in a rush, you can do shorter days working up to longer ones. To know you have walked 880km or more is an affirmation of your steely resolve and capacity. I have never not thought I could do it since—which proved a slight problem crossing the alps on the Chemin d’Assise (five days in a row each worse than the first day out of St Jean Pied de Port; I’d forgotten after a period of not walking I needed to work up to it again! Still, I did do it). Humans are made for walking—my bunions stopped hurting five weeks in and have never hurt since. My husband was told he needed a knee replacement ten thousand kilometres ago yet they barely twinge now. Raynor’s husband, Moth’s, degenerative neurological condition was at the least, slowed.
What better way then to spend time? Plenty of exercise, people if you want (especially the Francés, less on the others and virtually no one on the Chemin d’Assise), different town every night, great food and wine (and you can justify eating as much as you like) and cheaper than a resort holiday.
It does take time though—the reason many people only do a week or two. Many Europeans we met started from their home and did two weeks each year, picking up from where they left off previously. Some left their sticks to be reclaimed on their return. Time (or lack of it) is also why there’s a dearth of thirty to fifty year old on the trail; the twenty somethings who haven’t started a career or family are represented, as are those whose kids have grown up; our youngest had just started university and we left home rather than them! Some people do of course walk with their children (more time and money needed) and perhaps increasingly the millennials who are predicted to have multiple job changes and value work-life balance more than the older generations, may start taking it up. But I am thinking the fifty plus will dominate, because we walk because we can.
Older walkers are also more likely to have loss or be reevaluating our lives which was the premise for Two Steps Forward though Martin is on a somewhat Quixotic quest; I never met anyone who walked for financial gain. Both Zoe and Martin were in truth grieving—a bitter divorce, the death of a partner. People walk and find love, and I met a number of people re-walking the Camino with the partner they had met there. Of course Susi Swain who spoke at the conference also found love in Spain as well as her future career at Casa Susi in Trabadelo (Martin and Zoe finally find their answer in Two Steps Onward where the six characters are walking for a mix of all the above reasons).
Having walked once—why walk again? Many will not. Tick, done that. Life intervenes and if you take home the message of the Camino is to live life to the full, one day at a time, then there may be any number of other things to capture your interest. Or your life priorities change—I stopped buying clothes other than essentials (a serious pastime prior) after the first Camino and I could imagine people deciding to become vegetarian and no longer travel overseas to save carbon emissions.
But for those who do return for more than one Camino, recapturing the moments from their first, whether the forced mindfulness or the camaraderie, the commune with nature or the escape, then there is always one more Camino to be done.
For those who consider but can’t commit—is it time, money or something else? Most procrastination can be answered simply—if you haven’t done it then you didn’t want to do it enough. But fear of failure and anxiety are so often close beneath the surface of that procrastination. I put to any would be Camino walker that examining the reasons and facing the anxiety—both before and on the Camino—will offer a wealth of discovery and just possibly, a richer, fuller life that will benefit both you and those you care for.
Editor note: Anne is Professor of Psychiatry, University of Melbourne, and the co-author, with her husband, of Two Steps Forward and Two Steps Onward. [Husband Graeme Simsion is also the author of The Rosie Project.]