Walking the Camino de Santiago
This morning, I received my pilgrim blessing from my pastor at Saint Patrick, the Very Rev. David Mulholland. The last time he gave me this blessing, I was accompanied by my beautiful bride. Although she no longer walks the earth, I very much feel like she is walking with me on this pilgrimage. I will carry with me the pilgrim […]
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Just one week from today, I will be in France. Yowza! It’s odd but familiar, this countdown matching the one to Easter, just as it did in 2013 and 2016. It seems to give both things an even greater urgency, as if that were even possible. Since I volunteer in our parish, this week – Holy Week – is already […]
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We are 25 days out, so it’s about time for an update. It’s also apparently time for my backpack to explode all over my dining room. I’ll cover both training updates and planning updates here, as best as I can remember everything that’s gone on in the past few weeks. Training I continue to stick to my plan, which includes […]
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The pilgrim routine at the end of the walking day is largely unchanging. Check into your albergue. Take a shower. Wash your clothes – almost always by hand, but every now and again by machine. Journal if you’ve got ’em. Explore the village/town/city neighbourhood. Dinner. Somewhere in there, usually all in there, is socialization with other pilgrims. Honestly, if there’s […]
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It’s been almost four months since I last posted my initial planning for the Via Lemovicensis. An update is probably in order. Let’s talk about transportation, route, and bookings. Along the way, we’ll touch on a new writing project coming out of this planning. Transportation The first thing about any Camino is, of course, getting to the starting point and […]
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This morning I went for a walk, and I somehow ended up walking a Camino day as a pilgrim in my own town. I don’t know when exactly I made the decision, but I found that sometimes it’s worthwhile to be a pilgrim in your own hometown. My original plan, such as it was, was to go up and down […]
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Next year, I plan to walk a long Camino for Francine. Some background is probably in order. At the annual Gathering of Pilgrims back in 2022, Francine attended a talk on one of the four main Camino routes in France: the Voie de Vézelay, also known as the Via Lemovicensis. She was immediately smitten with this route. For one thing, […]
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Today is the Feast of Saint James the Greater, known throughout the Spanish-speaking world as Santiago and in French as Saint Jacques. He was one of Christ’s Twelve Apostles. Saint James is the patron saint of the archdiocese of Seattle. May you have the joy of the feast! James and his brother John were natives of Galilee, sons of the […]
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