Fourteen Days on the Camino

I walked the last 280 kilometers of the Camino de Santiago in Spain this year, alone, at fifty-eight. My kids thought I'd lost my mind.

Every day I walked through tiny villages and wheat fields and eucalyptus forests. Every night I slept in a hostel with dozens of other walkers from everywhere: an Irish retired priest, a Brazilian couple on their honeymoon, a Korean college student who shared her snacks with everyone, a Dutch man who sang while he walked.

We said "Buen Camino" to everyone we passed. Old women in doorways said it back. One farmer handed me a fresh fig from his tree.

When I finally reached the cathedral in Santiago, my blisters had blisters, and I sat on the stone plaza and cried and laughed at the same time. The Korean student found me and hugged me. "We did it," she said. We did.