I Retired and Walked the Camino

500 miles of Spain “rebooted” my joy.

I sat in a church in Corvallis, Oregon with my mother-in-law, brother-in-law, and husband, Jay. Her descent into Alzheimer’s meant she needed 24/7 support. In my grimy clothes, I needed nothing but a shower, strong coffee and my own bed. Mom-in-law was sundowning, coming into my room at her place to stare at me until I woke, startled. I was exhausted.

Retiring from my full-time job as a high school English teacher gave me time to help Jay with his mom. He’d helped me when my parents died. Mom died on a cold October night in a hospital in Yakima, WA. I lay with her, playing Liza Minelli on my iPad. Mom loved Liza! Then, we rested. She stopped breathing and was gone, in a silent, magical moment.

Then, Dad fell ill, and I ran hospice for him out here at the farm, where I live now. I was again alone with a dying parent, six months after Mom. Retirement was not The Big Easy for me. I was losing my joy.

So, here we were at the Episcopal Church, and I couldn’t wait to leave. At the end of the church service, the pastor announced a special presentation in the community hall. A speaker from Peru would talk about some pilgrimage somewhere.

No! I want to go home! I could have screamed.

I needed a shower and hot, soapy water, not thirty minutes on a cold metal folding chair. Desperate to escape, I whispered so Mom-in-law, excited about the cookie table, wouldn’t hear , “Jay, I need to go home! Now!”

“It won’t be long. You know she loves the cookies,” he said. Of course I knew. I made breakfast, lunch and dinner for her. I took a deep breath and swallowed a sugar-coated Advil from my jacket pocket, rolling its sweetness on my tongue before swallowing hard.

I maneuvered us to the back row, in case we needed to escape fast. My mom-in-law was unpredictable, one day yelling as I drove her to get groceries, “Where are you taking me? Take me to my home immediately! I don’t know you, and you must let me out!”

I’d pulled into a Dairy Queen.

“Mom, want an ice cream cone?” She quieted immediately, licking the cone as I got us home fast.

Jay was here now, so I was off duty. I sat in the folding chair, despondently chewing on a peanut butter cookie. Should I go sit in the car? I stopped pouting as the speaker began talking.

“I am here to talk with you about the Camino de Santiago, a pilgrimage to the cathedral in the city of that name. Various pilgrim routes exist, but I will discuss the Camino Frances, the French Camino. Two routes from San Jean Pied de Port are possible — The Valcarlos route, and the Napoleon Route, over the Pyrenees Mountain.”

I sat up in my metal folding chair.

The speaker showed a PowerPoint of hikers. At the front end of the hike, they were soaking wet and didn’t look too happy. They carried backpacks covered with rain ponchos and wore muddy trail shoes. Around the time the speaker mentioned the Camino Frances was a 500-mile walk, I turned to my husband and brother-in-law.

“I’m doing that,” I said. “Want to go with? I’m going!”

They laughed at me, but I’d backpacked all over Southeast Asia in my 30s, sharing huts with snakes and rats. I lived in Cambodia for eight years, and often flew to Bangkok alone. Traveling to Kuala Lumpur was no big deal. A taxi to Vietnam was routine travel. Ferries in storms! Sharks in the water! I was that traveler.

Still, that was twenty years earlier, before I got older, fatter, and sadder. I needed to prepare! Could I walk 10 to 15 miles every day, for days on end?

When I got home to our place in Canby, I started walking — a lot. Then, I began hiking at Silver Falls State Park every week, sometimes twice. My weight dropped, and I got healthier. My joy began to return. I found myself eager to check in with my Camino friends on the Camino Forum website, where I was busily learning about albuergues (hostels), Spanish customs and pilgrim etiquette. I had much to learn!

• Don’t rustle plastic bags when others are sleeping.
• Don’t set an alarm to get up early in the morning.
• Don’t handle fruit in a market, as it’s considered rude.
• Buen Camino was the standard pilgrim greeting.
• A “bar” in Spain is different from a bar in the USA. At a bar, one could get chocolate croissants and pastries, hot chocolate so thick a spoon could stand in it, and buttered toast with sliced tomatoes.

All I could think of was backpacks, boots, blisters and plane tickets.

My life now revolved around shopping trips to REI to buy gear: hiking shoes, a 32-L backpack, merino wool shirt and good socks. I packed and repacked, working to get the pack weight under fifteen pounds. My life was becoming joyful fast.

It wasn’t all happy times getting ready for my Spain trip. In the Camino Forum, a guy came in to report that his sister, a woman from Arizona, disappeared while on Camino. The brother, who I ended up befriending, asked site members to help him find his sister. All of Spain was looking for her. Her parents, Chinese American people with the meticulous energy of devoted parents, had copied and kept the serial numbers of each of her 100-dollar bills. In time, a bank employee reported that a Spanish man was converting the same bills to euros.

I read newspaper stories from Spain, leaning hard on memories of Spanish classes from college years earlier.

In time, the murderer was found drinking coffee with pilgrims, running from his crime. He had lured the petite woman to his farm and attacked her. She fought back, and he killed her. I’m not sharing details. Look it up if you want. The murderer was found shortly before I left for Spain, and I was relieved.

I walked a lot, I engaged in thinking about travel, and I thought about other things — no longer wallowing in my own issues. My parents were gone, and my mother-in-law now had nursing care in her home, as she had further declined. Losing them — to death and Alzheimer’s — freed me, I realized. I wasn’t happy about it, but those who have seen parents suffer understand this bittersweet sentiment.

Finally, I could stop turning everything over in my mind, tilling mental soil for answers when there were none.

I was gaining the perspective that comes with great loss.

On September 30th, 2015, I flew from Portland, Oregon to Madrid, Spain. By October 2nd, I was walking.

The first stage of Camino Frances is over the Pyrenees Mountains. I wasn’t going to take the easier route, although after the church talk the tiny Peruvian speaker looked my rotund body up and down and said, I recommend Valcarlos.

No, I would go the Napoleon route. I wanted to do it the hard way, over the mountains that separate France from Spain. Obscure stories online had detailed pilgrims plummeting off outcrops and being picked apart by peregrine falcons. People died on the trail, and crosses dotted the landscape of the Camino Frances. As travelers often do, I’d researched every nook and cranny of the Pyrenees Mountains.

The view was stunning. Sheep in flocks wandered the slopes, bells tinkling. I walked for more than eight hours, the weather deteriorating after I reached the summit. I saw two British women I’d met the previous night, and we walked enveloped in fog, rain soaking us.

We took refuge in a small shelter and had sips of hot chocolate from a flask, and shared a bocadillo, a sandwich on hard bread. Some hours later, I stumbled into Roncesvalles, Spain with its church and albuergue. The check-in for pilgrims was full of wet and muddy people, and as a 55-year-old, I was one of the senior pilgrims.

I was old, I was proud, and I was euphoric. Not only that, my status as an older pilgrim meant I got a bottom bunk! Later, I’d climb wiggly ladders to flop on a single mattress.

I walked the entire 500 miles. I found friends; Kay, a 70-something-year-old doctor from Australia and Ann, a nurse my age from the USA. We walked together some days, and when Kay’s backpack was stolen in Leon, we went to the Spanish police station to report it. It was an adventure — -a drunk guy who grabbed me, angry nuns unhappy Kay’s backpack was stolen from their church, and my distraught friend.

Kay and Ann were dismayed with the theft and tired of the daily grind, so they planned to take a bus to Santiago, another sixteen or so walking days away. They stayed back in the hotel to pack as I got my boots and pack on, tightening the chest and belly straps. I left the hotel, and my hiking sticks clacked on the sidewalks as I headed west, following the flechas amarillas (yellow arrows) that guide pilgrims on Camino.

I kept walking. And walking. I knew I was approaching the outskirts when markets became sparse and streets quiet. Then, a tremendous honk. A bus flew by me, tail end bouncing. I waved and smiled, unaware that my friends were waving furiously as the bus drove by, reflective windows obscuring them. Later, Kay texted me they saw me waving and smiling.

How could you see us through those windows?

I smiled. I sensed you.

Sunrise on Camino. Photo of author, taken by a fellow pilgrim.

At nights, I ate dinner with others and drank Spanish Rioja wine. I enjoyed conversations with people from all over the world.

Days were mine, as I walked alone. My preference.

Walking alone is the FM radio of distance hiking.

I could listen to others yammer about their dysfunctional families, but I preferred the transcendental experience that comes with demanding much from the body.

Spain is a big-sky country, and I walked under clouds, rain, and sun. My mood calmed, as my mind floated like clouds. I stopped thinking and existed as a physical being. I got out of my head and stopped mulling things over.

Rain came and went. The sun came out. I drifted from Meseta to mountains, then finally to Galicia, the region of Santiago de Compostela, the end destination where the cathedral holds the relics of St. James. It’s the draw, and has been for hundreds of years.

Believe what you may in spiritual terms, but this pilgrimage is awe-inspiring. Millions of pilgrims have walked the path. I was a pebble in a very large stream.

People were kind to me. I was kind back. And I became myself again.

I arrived at Santiago de Compostela on November 11th, 2015, 41 days after I’d begun walking. I flew back to the USA a few days later. When my husband met me at the Portland airport, we hugged long and hard.

This was seven years ago.

Since then, we’ve had some interesting times. Jay, retired since 2011, got thyroid cancer. A year later, he broke his neck.

I’ve written about it, and you can read that story here.

I just finished a year dealing with cancer. A “problem doctor” added stress. My story “Opening the Curtains” details my unpleasant experience.

These “bumps in the road” aside, walking the Camino de Santiago (three times now) has restored my core belief that every little thing’s gonna be alright (Bob Marley). Maybe not right away. In time.

Covid won’t be here forever, so I’m already considering my next walk. Maybe Scotland? I persuaded Jay to walk the West Highland Way with me a few years ago. He wanted to go somewhere with English speakers, which is funny considering the Scottish accent is hard to understand.

More than once, a Scottish person talked with us, and Jay listened intently.

“Did you understand that?” I asked later.

“Nope!” he answered, and we both laughed.

Most likely, I’ll return to Spain. Life’s always here to put a pebble in your shoe, but researching plane tickets and examining maps makes me happy, and that’s a good place to be. In one of Charles Schultz’s cartoons, Charlie Brown says, “One day we’re going to die, Snoopy!”

Snoopy replies, “But on the other days, we’re not.”

And that’s good enough for me.

Photo by author. Tunnel art outside of Burgos, Spain.