April 9, 2015

A month from today I’ll be leaving for Spain to walk the Camino from the Pyrenees to Santiago de Compostela. Terry will be joining me for the first two weeks of my adventure, which is a nice send-off. We’ll do some sightseeing in Barcelona, a city that I love, take a train to Pamplona and spend some time there, and then bus up to Roncesvalles, a charming small town in the Pyrenees and the site of Charlemagne's defeat in 778, where we’ll start our walk. Terry and I will walk together for a week through mountains, vineyards, farms, medieval villages, small and large towns, and a couple of cities, and then she’ll head back to Massachusetts via Madrid. After that I’ll be on my own for the next 6 weeks.

I’m bursting with excitement about this. It’s something I’ve wanted to do for years. I'm reminded of the anticipation I felt before my father took me to Yankee Stadium for the first time in June 1961 when I was seven years old; it was hard to think of anything else. I can't wait to be moving across the planet at 3 miles per hour and to be drinking in not only the beauty but the totality of the experience.

At the same time, frankly, I'm terrified. Can I really walk 500 miles in less than 7 weeks carrying a 25 pound pack? Will my feet hold up? My knees? My back? My psyche and determination? I'm not a stranger to substantial walks. I did a 50 mile hike with Terry in Nepal in 1982, 55 miles in Spain with my son Josh in 2010, 75 miles on my own in Spain in 2011, and a number of shorter adventures, but I've never done anything remotely like this. While it's dead center in my excitement zone, it's entirely out of my comfort zone. Which is exactly what I'm looking for.

I kept up a moderate level of walking this past winter (about 3 miles per day), either on a treadmill or outdoors, but a few weeks ago I started more serious training. At least six miles a day, and lots of flights of stairs. The last several days I've worn my fully loaded backpack while walking, which has made the prospect of the upcoming walk seem that much more real. Covered 45+ miles in the last week and it has felt like a lot, which is daunting because I'll have to average somewhere around 15 miles a day when I'm on the Camino. The training is like a small hors d'oeuvre before the main course.