When I was planning this adventure I knew I wanted to respond to it photographically, but I also felt the desire to write. Though I had written detailed catalogue entries for my rare book business for many years--which is a marriage of scholarship and advertising copy--I hadn't done any creative writing since I was a college kid, and I was itching to try. I latched onto the idea of talking to fellow walkers about the reasons they undertook the pilgrimage and taking photographic portraits of them. I thought if I got enough good material maybe it would turn into a book. It didn't turn out that way.

For one, when I started to ask folks why, most of the responses weren't very interesting, mostly predictable and trite. So when the fifth or sixth person said, almost verbatim, I wanted to find out what God had planned for me in my next phase of life, I saw it as a sign from God to give up the idea (haha). And for two, unlike many folks who see this as an essentially social experience, it quickly became clear to me that I wanted my Camino to be more of a solitary one. Oh I've had some great and moving interactions, I don't shy away from talking to people, and I often share a meal, but ultimately I prefer to walk at my own pace, stop to take pictures as often as it strikes me, to let my mind wander where it will, to keep my own rhythm, and to try to stay in private rooms when I can so my chance of sleeping is greater. In the immortal words of Greta Garbo, I vant to be alone.

So I was struck a couple of evenings ago when I sat down to dinner with a couple of women who were staying in the same pension as I, and the first thing one of them asked was, why are you doing the Camino? I explained that it had been a dream of mine for decades to walk across a European country, that I loved art and architectural history, that I wanted to photograph and write, and that a constellation of people close to me, including my own daughter, had done it. Of course I asked her the same thing. When she said, I just turned 65, I've been working at the same job for 30 years, and I want to find out what God has planned for me for the next phase of my life, I stifled my internal groan.

But it got more interesting. Her job for those 30 years was running a food shelter for homeless people in Richmond, VA, so I immediately became more sympathetic. She said early on in her walk she had had a tough day climbing down the steep loose-stone trail into Zubiri (as did Terry and I), and by the time she got to her pension she could hardly move. She said she was too exhausted to eat dinner and had decided to stay in bed. But then God spoke to her and told her she should go down to dinner. Now I'm an agnostic--I find it just as much a leap of faith to be an atheist as it is to believe in God--but God telling you to eat dinner is way beyond my comprehension. Doesn't He have more important stuff to do, like telling ISIS folks to stop cutting people's heads off? Anyway she went down to dinner and sat at a table with two Cuban-Americans from Miami who do portions of the Camino each year. Turns out they were boat people who landed in Florida and have become very wealthy in the intervening years, the American Dream. By the end of the dinner they had written her a check for $150,000, half of what she needs to run the food shelter for the year. So next time God tells you to have dinner, eat!

Today's walk, 11 miles into Astorga, was not unlike yesterday's, relatively flat except for the approach to the city which is perched on a hill, near a highway most of the time, through farmland and country with wildflowers abounding. The weather has been exquisite, with hard-angled sun and cool lapis skies in the morning turning into lighter blue upper 70s low humidity skies by midday. I've now finished the stretch across the central plains and will soon be heading into the mountains. The next couple of stages are among the most difficult of the Camino, with steep climbs, and more precariously for me, steep declines. As soon as I entered Astorga though, I decided to stay here tomorrow. Looks beautiful, I'm in a great hotel, there's a Gaudi palace and a cathedral to visit, and a whole historic district to explore. And the great weather is supposed to continue.