My wife and I are getting ready to walk the Camino de Santiago. It's a pilgrimage that started in Northern Spain/South West France and has expanded to offer many different routes from all over Spain as well as other points in Portugal, France and all over Europe. All points end at the cathedral of Santiago de Compostela. Tradition holds that St. James' (Christ's cousin by tradition) remains are interred at the cathedral in Santiago.
Although this adventure is primarily my wife's vision, I've adopted it as my own as well. That doesn't mean I have a goal or objective unless you count the idea of becoming a more focused pilgrim and follower of Christ through the act of following a path pilgrims have taken for about a thousand years.
We've been prepping and puchasing for awhile now. Most everything has been bought and practiced with to greater and lesser degrees. This includes some hikes with more or less full packs. The picture below was taken on one such hike:
In fact, I'm typing this on a tiny, foldable keyboard attached to my phone, just for the practice.
The first part of this journey will take us through a region of Spain that was made famous in modern times by the author Ernest Hemingway, in his novel, "The Sun Also Rises." This is in the Northeast corner of Spain, in and around Pamplona. I won't have time or equipment to fish the Irati river as Hemingway did, but I do hope to stay at the albergue (hostel) where Hemingway stayed while fishing there.
Hemingway has been interesting to me since I first read him in high school. Mostly because he deals largely with the themes of heroism and loss. These are good, clear prisms through which to view culture because they treat both aspiration and reality as the primary facets reflecting what we are and what we value.
Certainly, Hemingway eventually lost his way, committing suicide at his house in Ketchum Idaho in 1961 at the age of 61. His wife covered the fact of his suicide for several months, claiming he died accidentally while cleaning one of his guns. He didn't leave a note and I've never read a satisfactory explanation for his self destruction. I think the clearest explanation for this tragedy is that his father also killed himself. Suicide is too often a family's great besetting sin. (Hemingway's granddaughter also killed herself in 1996.)
Still, for all this personal tragedy he wrote of heroism, duty, perseverance and even love with a depth that is unmatched in American prose.
His writing is a good place to start and a good thing to take along.
