Ready or not

24 days, but who’s counting?  Hah. I am. How do I feel? In a word? Terrified. In a phrase, suddenly completely vulnerable and totally unprepared.

Yet, the day is coming, and on that day, we will be going.

If you have not seen the movie The Way, I recommend it. From what I am told it fluctuates starting with wildly inaccurate –  things like who walks on impulse, using someone else’s pack, and wearing jeans? And why don’t people have blisters? Then it becomes apparently quite believable – the walking and walking, the Camino families that form, the daily grind of walking, and the incredible grace and gift of doing just that.

Either way, at this point I am awash in self-doubt, terror, fear, and imagining all sorts of ways that I will be unprepared. This seems to be a most necessary step and invitation of being a peregrina on The Way.

(Note: before I wrote this, I had a terrible week for walking. A multitude of reasons had me less than active. Interestingly enough I got in 4 miles this morning, all before 6:30am. And I feel *slightly* less terrified!)

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Poems, pilgrimage, perspective

Last Saturday, after walking past a sign with a vaguely dystopian message, my Camino Santiago partner and friend, Sue and I entered the forest. The first part of our journey was a bit more arduous than either of us had imagined.  It grew clear to me that the sign was more descriptive than vague! Where were we and what had we gotten ourselves into in the name of camino preparation, or as we cool kids of the internet like to say, #caminoprep.

The hike offered great perspective on many things, but a few stand out in stark detail. One being that it seemed like the world’s end due to the steep, sharp, gravity defying trails that we traversed, clad as we were in our camino gear, complete with heavy packs on our back. My imagination, which runs like a super high definition camera when pondering possible fates, usually terrifying ones, was on overdrive as I imagined my short, stout body tipping backwards and rolling down the rocky trail to an early end. Obviously I am alive, but on Saturday I was not sure I would remain so!

Despite choosing a #caminoprep run that was way beyond our technical hiking skill, Sue and I ended up loving so much of what we saw at Worlds End State Park.