Pilgrims Way

Two friends embark on a Camino together. When one abruptly ends his Camino and heads home, the other feels hurt and confused but forges ahead on a solo journey. When the solo pilgrim returns home and reconnects with his friend, he learns the surprisingly generous reason behind his friend’s rash decision.

On Camino, a busy executive, community leader, friend, wife, and mom, who devoutly worshiped at the altar of busy-ness, receives the gift of clarity about time. Back home, she now gives reverence to the blank spaces on her calendar and is more intentional about how she spends that most precious resource—time.

Shortly after the death of his father, with whom he had a complicated relationship, a man embarks on Camino with his own son. Along the way, they engage in heartfelt conversations and experience a deepening connection founded on mutual respect and affection, helping him find a new appreciation for the nature of father-son relationships.

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.