A Long Walk's End-of-Day Report

“All things are difficult before they are easy.”

— Thomas Fuller

I was a jangly mess of nerves this morning, anticipating setting out on the Camino. I don’t know why; it isn’t much like me. I was scared I’d get lost, scared I’d be lonely, scared I wouldn’t like it or couldn’t do it or might regret the whole stupid endeavor. My body staged a revolt. I spent the morning sure I might vomit, knocking half the things I touched to the floor, and in a coup de grâce pulled a muscle in my back lunging for … you guessed it … one of the things I, myself, had dropped. Rain pelted the city of Porto, in northern Portugal, as even the skies conspired to give me an excuse to abort.

But no.

Instead I took a short pause. Got down on the floor for some yoga stretches and had a chat with my back about how I was counting on it to help me through the day and trusted it to step up and carry its pack. Rewashed my breakfast dishes after knocking the drying rack to the floor then rewashed them again after doing it a second time. Sat and wrote the previous blog post about my kids and about summoning courage while I waited out the thunderstorm. Then I did what needed to get done: I hoisted the pack, closed the door (locking the keys inside so I couldn’t turn back), and began to walk.

I wasn’t twenty steps into the journey – seriously, I was still standing on the market steps in the town center – when I sensed a woman close behind me and turned and introduced myself and asked if she was walking the Camino, too, which she was. Bless her for being in an even more nervous state than I, which allowed me to help her, which always has the glorious effect of actually helping me. We settled in to walk together and the way was well marked and the weather was all soft ocean breezes and sunny skies and no sooner were we out of the city than we were on a boardwalk over sandy dunes and aside from parades there is little I love more than wooden boardwalks alongside beaches. It didn’t take long before we were a gang of four – us two Americans, a Colombian, and an Englishman – who leapfrogged all day in and around other pilgrims as one or the other of us stopped for photos or fell into conversation with those ahead of or behind us: a cluster of Canadian women, a gal from the Czech Republic, a man from Spain, and three more Americans who’d started walking two weeks further south. We are all staying in different lodgings tonight, and will move at different paces tomorrow, but today we were friends-for-a-moment, a merry band of strangers.

In Labruge, my first stop, I’m overnighting in a guesthouse run by a woman who built this home and business as a 50th birthday gift for herself (she told me during an hourlong conversation as she checked me in). She wanted to change her life, to make the second half a happier version than the first half had been, that she might be a better wife and mother and friend to herself for having taken a chance on actualizing a dream.

“And,” I asked, “what has come of it?”

“It is the best life of any life that has ever been lived!” she told me. “Because of the Camino. Every person who steps into my guesthouse arrives with an open heart, for they bring the best parts of themselves to bear on this path, and share that with me. Every day, I meet giants of humanity, and I am inspired.”

Me, too. It was a very good day after all.