Autumn 2024: Adding to Your Pack

A pilgrim’s intuition tells him to go down one path, but he ignores the urging and follows what turns out to be the wrong path. A bit further down the trail, a close encounter of a slithering kind reminds him to trust the intuition he carries inside himself.

The tangible items a pilgrim carries on his Caminos are a scallop shell with lanyard, 10 clothes pins, a Tau cross, and a compass. These items each weigh 1.5 ounces, but he finds the memories of how they came to him weigh nothing and are always uplifting.

Fresh off the airplane returning home from Spain, a man catches himself instantly slipping back into an old patterned response. He pauses and reconsiders, recalling lessons he carried home from his Camino.

Anxious and weary from a deluge of phone notifications from friends, news outlets, marketers, and work, a woman decides to silence the noise and go on Camino. In the quietude, she discovers an appreciation for an entirely new soundscape—an appreciation that she’s carried back into her daily life and that enhances her wellbeing.

On the Camino Portugués, a pilgrim experiences a sense of sonder, the realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as her own. Everyone on the Camino is on their own journey, experiencing elation, contemplation, fatigue, suffering, and hope. And while our journeys are each our own, the Camino experience allows us to more wholly relate to the humanness of our fellow pilgrims. A lesson we’d all do well to carry with us in daily life.

As he packs for a move, a pilgrim discovers a yellowed sheet of paper listing names from his Camino. These were people he met and prayed for—a daily Camino practice that indebly recorded them in his memories. A quarter century on, he still carries them in his heart.

As a woman prepares for her Camino, a nagging fear persists that she won’t be able to finish the walk. Inspired by Tina Fey and empowered by a cheering squad of friends and family and a backpack adorned with the fun, encouraging, and weird patches they sent her, she carries on. And in so doing, she discovers in herself the belief that she can finish.

A pilgrim packs a lot on her Camino: hopes without expectation, an open mind and heart, burdens to lay down. Along the way, she is filled with an appreciation for beauty found in challenges, inspiration from others, and a profound knowledge of the gifts the Camino shares.

On the Camino and in daily life, an agate, a bloodstone, and a small pressed glass Camino shell carried in his pocket help remind a man to stay grounded, to be present, to be grateful, and to go forward as a pilgrim.

Through a boundless interchange of help that a husband and wife experience on their pilgrimage, they come to know Camino magic.

Wearing a blue and yellow ribbon bracelet imprinted with an intercession to St. James and a daily practice of reciting the Pilgrims Prayer at the first church she passed each day, a peregrina discovers a sense of pilgrim belonging and divine guidance.

When an abscess infection in his heel threatens to end his journey prematurely, a pilgrim uses the pocket knife and first aid supplies he carries to perform a field-expedient lancing, alleviating the pain and ultimately saving his Camino.

While some are daunted by the requirement to obtain two sellos per day in the final stages of the Camino to qualify for a Compostela, at least one pilgrim relishes capturing a sello at every stop. For him, there is no better souvenir of the pilgrimage.

When it came to his backpack, one pilgrim set a rule: “Add nothing.” But during a chance connection with a grandfather and granddaughter on her first Camino, the girl presented him with a small blue plastic hand to adorn his backpack. In making an exception to his rule for this gesture of friendship, both his backpack and his spirit felt lighter.

A pilgrim meticulously choses the items she would carry and the pack in which she would transport them, balancing need against weight. Along the way, she discovers that the real measure of these carefully selected items went beyond the practical—they were talismans for her journey, tokens of comfort and resilience.

At the start of their journey, a Camino angel bestows upon a woman and others in her group each a necklace of religious medals. A year and a half on, she still wears this necklace often as a reminder of her Camino days, when she learned to be present and savor this moment.