Back To The Camino

    About three years ago I got saw a movie called "The Way", a fictional story about a man who sets out on the Camino de Santiago de Compostela, the path walked by pilgrims for over 1200 years, to heal his grief over the death of his son.  That movie stayed in my head long after I left the theater, and I thought and thought and thought about about walking the Camino until a year later,   

there we were in St. Jean-Pied-de-Port, France,
where our Camino started,

...and continued over the weeks and miles,

    (The scallop shell is the symbol of the Camino, representing the many lands that pilgrims set out from, their paths leading to one common destination.  This shell symbol was an ever-welcome  guide post along the way, always pointing us towards Santiago de Compostela).

 ...until we reached Santiago,where our Camino ended.

   Not that it wasn't a wonderful  journey, but I truth, I found hiking the Camino de Santiago de Compostela much (much, much) more difficult than the it appeared to be for the actors in the movie.  And, in truth, when I arrived back in the States I swore I'd never put a backpack on my back again.
    (Sigh).  And yet here I am,  two years later, getting ready to leave in a week and two days to return to St. Jean Pied-de-Port to begin walking the 490.7 miles of the Camino again.
    Why?  I don't really know,  except that about a year ago the Camino started calling to me once more. I just started feeling like I wanted to see how it would feel to walk the Camino a second time.  I guess maybe it's like childbirth:  It can be so terrible that once through it you swear you'll never do it again.  And yet a couple of years later, there you are, doing it again.
        Tom's reason for doing another Camino is the same as his first reason:  because I wanted to.  Still, Tom, unlike me, is a veteran backpacker from his many years as a Scoutmaster with the Boy Scouts, and, also unlike me, always wanted to do another Camino.
    So we're doing the Camino again.  But just one more time.
    Of course, that's what I said about going through childbirth a second time.