Many of you know the history, but in case not, a very brief sketch: The Camino de Santiago de Compostela is an ancient Catholic pilgrimage route, the goal being the Cathedral in Santiago where the bones of St. James (Sant Iago) are supposedly interred. At the time it started to become popular in the 9th Century, there were three principal pilgrimage destinations for the faithful--Jerusalem, Rome, and Santiago. After the Crusades, Rome and Santiago became the two most popular destinations. Feeder routes from France, Switzerland, Germany, and other parts of Europe developed, many leading across the Pyrenees to the route I'm on now, the Camino Frances, the last 500 miles across northern Spain on the way to Santiago. Towns and villages grew up along the way in the ensuing centuries to support the hundreds of thousands of pilgrims that undertook the journey each year, and eventually several large cathedral cities emerged and evolved, Pamplona, Burgos, Leon, Astorga and Santiago.

People undertook the pilgrimage for a variety of reasons. Devotion, penance, and redemption, in lieu of prison (hence the tradition of stamping a pilgrim passport to prove one actually made the journey), for economic opportunity, and surely for a host of other reasons. According to James Michener, pilgrims in the medieval era reputedly had only four possessions, a heavy cape to protect against the weather (I assume some sort of undergarment was worn, but that's just a guess), leather sandals, sometimes with wooden soles, an eight foot wooden walking stick, and a large gourd attached to the stick for carrying water. It was a very risky undertaking and many people perished along the route, and there are remains of early pilgrim hospitals and cemeteries all along the way. Mock funerals were sometimes held before the pilgrims left their home towns because it seemed likely they wouldn't return.

People today do it for a variety of reasons as well, though most are carrying high tech clothes and backpacks and smart phones and iPads with which they access the Internet via wifi virtually everywhere along the route, and then they fly back home instead of turning around and retracing their steps. Folks today do it as a spiritual quest, to test their bodies and endurance, because they're history or architecture or art lovers, because they want to see what it's like to walk across an entire country, or as tourists because it's now a popular thing to do. Many people undertake it during a transitional period of their lives, after the death of a spouse, after or even during an illness, upon graduating college, in the midst of a change in career, at retirement. I suppose there are some devout Catholics who do it in the original spirit, but they seem to be a small minority of those on the path.

But there's nothing like walking 13 miles with a little blister and foot pain to get one wondering "Why the hell am I doing this?"

We watched the movie "Wild" on the flight over. (It might not have been the best movie for me to have watched because I was already nervous about mangling my feet.) It seems she undertook her trek as a way of running away from and purging her past. That's not the operative motive for me. I feel more like I'm moving towards something, but what it is I'm not exactly sure. I've always wanted to walk across an entire country, to feel the subtle and not-so-subtle changes in terrain, weather, people, culture, food and architecture as I go. But is there more? It's something I found myself thinking about a lot today and it's a subject I suspect I'll explore more in days and weeks to come.

Highlights of today's walk: Crossing the famous and beautifully proportioned thousand year old bridge on the way out of Puente la Reina, a town where two pilgrimage routes converge, the Camino Frances and the Camino Aragonese. Approaching the town of Cirauqui, which could be seen from different perspectives over quite a distance; the sky was generally overcast but intermittently the town's buildings were eerily lit by the sun breaking through the clouds. And arriving in Estella, a town with lofty churches and fortifications, walking over the river in the center of town on an ancient steep-stepped stone pedestrian bridge, and finding our beautiful hotel with an expansive and luxurious shower and the most comfortable bed so far. And the front door of the hotel is just across the street from one of those massive stone fortifications, lit at night.

Starting tomorrow, I'll be taking a break from the Camino, as planned. Terry's five days of walking are done and we'll be traveling by bus to Burgos tomorrow, spend the next day there, and then she'll go on to Madrid and fly home and I'll return to Estella where I'll restart my Camino, on my own. A new experience lies ahead.