This is my serialized story of walking the Camino de Santiago across Northern Spain with my sister-in-law. If you’d like to start at the beginning of our journey, click here.
The backpack is loaded (at least on a trial basis, given I am approximately a week away from my flight to Spain) and, so far, the weight I am carrying is manageable, coming in at twenty pounds. For the Camino I won’t need a tent or sleeping bag, as my sister-in-law, Marlene, and I plan to stay in hostels throughout our pilgrimage. Still, I will carry a light-weight blanket and a tight cocoon-like top-sheet in case the hostels we have booked have bed bugs or provide us with limited blankets. I am considering what else I can cut to reduce my backpack below twenty pounds as Marlene, who lives about 370 miles away and can’t show me how she has done it, is carrying a backpack of less than fifteen pounds. This fact, alone, is driving me crazy.
I have lost thirty-five pounds for this hike. My theory has always been that if I dropped three pounds a month, starting back in January, 2022, I would be below 200 pounds by mid-September - the departure date of Marlene and my scheduled flight. January being key, as finally, I felt my right foot had healed sufficiently from the plantar fasciitis that had flared up in earlier in May to begin training for the Camino.
Yet in tracking my daily progress in September, I realize, as I look back at my daily log, that I only lost five pounds that winter and spring. In truth, now with the pressure on that summer, my weight loss kicked into gear and I started dropping ten pounds a month, which got me to 196 pounds by the time of my flight. This comes with a cost, of course, in that I haven’t built up my strength physically for what I am about to do, walk 500 miles across Spain.
Still, my last weeks also included a long list of “to-do” things around the house as I will be gone for over a month. In the past two week period alone, I took the dog and cat to their veterinary appointments, had both cars serviced (oil change, etc.,) at our local service station, received a new crown from the dentist, moved our bills (finally) to automatic payments, got my hair cut, bought groceries from Costco, stocked up on dog and cat food for the duration, mowed our front and back yards mowed, weeded our gardens, painted an upstairs bedroom, donated excess clothes in my closet, and recycled a stack of old magazines I thought I might read one day. Preparing for my departure, to be honest, seems harder than the trip itself. Now with only a few days remaining until our Sunday overnight flight from the Dulles International Airport outside of DC, I am focused on the pilgrimage. But first, the trip will begin with a weekend visit and a Saturday wedding in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.
Early Saturday morning, ten-mile walk on the Gettysburg Battlefield is a nice way to stretch my legs after a six-hour drive from North Carolina the day before. So far, after the long walk, I feel no twinges of plantar fasciitis. My luck is holding. Marlene, my sister-in-law with whom I am accompanying on this Camino pilgrimage, lives an hour away in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania. I didn’t invite her to join me for my sunrise walk as I am sure, given this is our last day in the States, she will be busy with last minute preparations and doesn’t need to be with me on the Battlefield. Besides, she has been physically preparing for the Camino for nearly a year now, taking long walks on an almost daily basis to build up her stamina, even day-hiking the Appalachian Trail to get used to different road surfaces, and even, carrying her backpack for more than six months. With her pack reduced to less than fifteen pounds, she is ready. The question is, am I? Having done none of the above, I focused, instead, on reducing my weight and keeping the impact on my right heel to a minimum. That said, I also prepared for the worst by reading a book on healing feet from injuries, and I’ve packed plenty of band-aides, gaze, wrapping tape to carry on my journey. In fact, it looks like I have a podiatrist’s medical supply kit in my pack.
Saturday night, our last night in the States before flying to Spain, I attend the wedding of our niece, Caroline. My wife Karen and daughter Helen join me in celebrating the big event. As Caroline, our niece, is on Karen’s side of our family, I enjoy having a moment to talk alone Marlene’s husband, Mike. Marlene had chosen to stay home to babysit their grandchildren, the parents of whom are at the wedding, and, in truth, to avoid any possibility of contracting Covid. Mike, has struggled with plantar fasciitis for years and could never have walked with his wife across Spain and Karen has chosen to stay home to watch over our house and pets, but, even so, walking the Camino with Marlene never felt more strange than with Karen’s extended family that night.
Perhaps it would have been a bigger deal if I was not sixty-nine and on my way to seventy, if Mike, himself, didn’t suffer from plantar fasciitis, which has included steroids shots and surgery on his foot, if Karen hadn’t already walked the Portuguese Camino five years earlier (while I stayed back, keeping the home fires burning), and if Marlene and I weren’t literally the only two hikers in the family. Being with Mike is a nice confidence booster. He reiterates that he and his sons are glad to have someone accompany Marlene on her pilgrimage, and I am glad he is willing to be an active member of our “team,” tracking our progress for the family and waiting for Marlene’s calls every day.
That Sunday morning I say goodbye to Karen and Helen as they leave to drive back to North Carolina. I am at the home of my two older sisters, Holly and Allison, where Mike and Marlene will pick me up. Soon enough, then, we are at Dulles and on our flight heading for Spain. Monday morning, after our overnight arrival in Madrid, we are back on a domestic flight to Pamplona where we grab a taxi and, for eighty dollars, are driven to the French border town of St. Jean Pied de Port on the other side of the Pyrenees for the start of our journey. And so it begins!
