Getting up and doing it

This is a popped blister under a toenail.
Yep, it was gross. 

A primary lesson for me from the Camino was the reward of routine. Every day I got up and went through the pilgrim ritual- find the available potty, check the feet,



put the bandaids and protective tubing on my injured toes. Our feet as our foundation is a whole other blog!  After the feet, you put on the same pants from yesterday, the sox you washed out the night before (hoping they are dry) and the various layers for the torso. You pack up the backpack, remember your treking poles and head out. Every day.

This night was in a bedroom, not on a bunkbed. It was a luxury
to empty and reorganize my pack in space and light.
I hated packing up in the dark of a hostel. 

I don't do the same thing every day. In my wholw life, I rarely have. I married young and followed a Marine around the world. I raised four children in seven homes and homeschooled for twenty years.  Days were similar but not routine. I tried. I read the books ( most of my young adult life was before the internet or I'd still be looking for answers!) and watched the others who followed charts and timetables. I After my husband's death and during the flight from the nest of the children, I worked part-time. Then I upened my life and moved from DC suburbs to a cabin ten miles from a town of 900 in the Black Hills of South Dakota.  I like change!

But I want to write. I want to tell stories and I have a half finished book in childhood wounding. I love words and connecting to people with images fleshed out by words. I want to figure out how to have a flexible life and the discipline of a writer.

Turns out life goas are like the Camino- you just get up and do it. Day after day. And slowly, you move toward your goal. Over hills,

through in bare forests,

and past cropland waiting for planting.

The path was to the right, I was fascinated with all the ways they directed irrigation water, like this cement trough.

Some of the Camino has distance markers- the most areonce you reach the western region of Galicia. There they've erected stone markers with the kilometers left to Santiago and you can see your remaining kms to walk.

This is a glimpse of the rugged condition of the path.

Only 100 km left! 

It was reassuring to see another marker and know the goal was closer.



It reminds me to make some small goals.  On the pathwe were always aware of the yellow arrows and the shell symbol.  It wasn't usually this distinct but they were always there as we looked.

 I don't often take the time to assess my goals for writing, to see if I'm on the path I set for myself. The Camino taught me the value of keeping on the path.  

Join me in getting up and doing it!

Dirty boots and a lovely brass shell pointing the Way.

Walking the Camino

 In April and May, I walked across most of Spain.

In the moments and weeks of the walk, walking was normal. Everyone around me was walking the Camino de Santiago in northern Spain. We all got up early each morning and tended out feet, put on our boots, pulled on our packs and went looking for coffee and yellow arrows.  We all pulled off our boots and examined our blistered feet in public and offered sympathy and bandaids to perfect strangers. That's what life was.


The Camino was harder than I expected and more rewarding than I thought it would be. My life has not been fundamentaly changed by this experience. Instead, my soul was deeply enriched and my spirit stirred and soothed all at the same time.

And now I'm home. Back to another nornal.  It took hours on a plane, several days in a car and two more beds other than my own to return to my cabin in the hills.  I'm exhausted and my last souvenir was a nasty cold.  My 91 year old mother had several falls while I was gone and has diminished so much it was a jolt to my heart when she greeted me. One of the falls dislodged her hip and, in the two months since they determined she needed a total hip replacement, the stump of damaged ball wore a hole through the socket.  Her pain has been intense and debilitating.  Welcome home to me.

But Mom had surgery Monday and she felt good enough to have soup and yogurt the same night. She's brave and strong and completely ready to risk death as to not live in pain.  I appreciate her independence now as much as I resented it as a young adult. She is a force to be reckoned with and ignored Death to live her life. She said she'd either live without pain or she go home to Jesus, win-win.

So how do I, how do we continue to live in our "normal" while longing for the particular event that was so soul enriching, something that connected us to a community we didn't even know existed?



Perhaps my big Camino lesson was- "Get up and do it again."  For me it was walking- everyday. Rain or shine. Cold or hot. I walkded with sore muscles, sleep deprivation, and a bad attitude.  I didn't walk because I'm strong or commited or love to form new blisters. I walked because I wanted to finish this goal I had set and...  I had a plane to catch on the other side of the country.  And in that discipline, I was so blessed.  Blessed with friends, renewed confidence in my body and a resevoir of stories and images.

This blog will concentrate on the Camino until we're all tired of it. I want my story to resonate with you, even if you've never walked 500 miles to catch an airline flight! I want to share lessons and muses, some pictures of Spain and stories of people. And I do this as much for myself as anyone. I don't want to forget.  I want to integrate my two normals and walk my journey forward, regularly reminded of my amazing walk into the heart of a country and into my own.

Buen Camino


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camino_de_Santiago