Thoughts from walking the Camino de Santiago in Spain and from my essay
in the collection
Inspired Journeys (Wisconsin University Press, 2016) on traveling: "We were walking,
after all, through yellow gorse and purple heather. We were following a
scallop shell through eucalyptus, oak, fern, vineyards of delicate
curling green. We stood in buildings nearly animate with age and use.
The breath-taking beauty of the world. Beauty beating at us from all
sides. Beauty and culture and history and privilege and conquest and
suffering and loss. Beating at us. And the monkey mind running back and
forth. The monkey mind jerking at its chain: the sacred music and the
monkey-grinder music. Arguing with your husband, irritable with your
friends, doubtful of your worth. Tired of yourself. And worried about
those hips, too. The frailty of flesh, the loosening of fleshy parts.
Wasn’t this like every day of my life? “Isn’t every day a spiritual
quest?” I asked the friend I was walking with. And every day open to
transcendence? How that golden light illumines a field of grass? How the
furred hills lie down gentle as sleeping animals, and the rain brushes
your face in a moment of requited love? The ritual greeting:
buen
camino. Could these weeks of walking be anything less?"
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