Motivation

When I walked the Camino de Santiago in the spring of 2016 my stated motivation was to honor my parents who named me for Saint James. The question of motivation is tricky and can become complicated. Jack Hitt, author of “Off the Road: A Modern-day Walk down the Pilgrim’s Route into Spain,” walked the Camino Frances in the 1980s and again in the 1990s. In an interview with Mr. Hitt on a Camino podcast, there are four quotes about the motivation to walk the Camino de Santiago that reflect well my own thoughts on the motivation to walk the Camino:

• One of the cool things about the road to Santiago is that almost any motivation to go ends up being a great one.
• The road will shape your motivation into something far more pilgrimy than you anticipated.
• We start the road for one reason and then the development of that question becomes far more complicated than we thought it was.
• You think you went for one reason and you end up going for a whole multiplicity of other reasons and they’re all fascinating. And that question never goes away and never gets fully or satisfactorily answered.

Yes: the question of motivation never goes away, never gets satisfactorily answered, and continues. Several months after I returned from the Camino de Santiago in May of 2016, I felt a strong pull to return, as if I had unfinished business there. Or maybe I am to learn something more that the Camino will teach me. So some of my motive for walking the Camino this year is to discover the motivation for walking.

I have also been reflecting on a quote from Anthony Bourdain, the chef and television travel personality:

Travel isn’t always pretty. It isn’t always comfortable. Sometimes it hurts, it even breaks your heart. But that’s OK. The journey changes you; it should change you. It leaves marks on your memory, on your consciousness, on your heart, and on your mind and on your body. You take something with you, and hopefully you leave something good behind.

It is difficult to see for yourself how the journey changes you, since you cannot be objective about yourself. Did I change? Possibly, and it was likely an evolution, difficult to see objectively.

After returning from and reflecting on my Camino pilgrimage in 2016, I have come to believe there was a partly conscious and partly subconscious anxiety each day about what the day would bring: how steep is the hill really? how difficult or rocky is the downhill? how muddy or unstable is the path? will I miss a marker and get lost? So I am very deliberately returning to walk the same route starting at Saint Jean Pied de Port in France to see how I experience the same journey differently. Knowing much about what each day will bring, I believe I can immerse myself more in the beauty, the meditative, the spiritual, and the religious aspects of the pilgrimage. I expect the experience to be deeper especially the more inward meditative & spiritual characteristics . A goal is to convey what I experience, photograph the highlights, and share what I can on this blog.

Packing

Since this is not my first Camino, I have had everything ready for some time. I am struggling with packing. As always, I am tempted to take more than I will likely need. Do I really need three long-sleeve pullover shirts? Two are a little heavier, and it may be getting cooler in late October. Do I need a zip-up fleece? I had one last year and never used it even once. Best to skip the fleece. And the packing questions continues…but I’ll get there.

Next: Final preparations and more questions than answers.