Walking Into the Future Down a Very Old Road

Our daughter heads off to college in a few weeks.

She’ll be a University of Texas freshman living in a 5,000-person dorm (more people than live in her hometown).

What’s a dad to do when their oldest kid is about to move out?

I wanted to do something important with her before summer was over – something that had some staying power.

So we walked to church.

Or more accurately we hiked 72 miles on one of the world’s most famous walks to church – The Camino de Santiago in Spain. In English it means “The Way of St. James.”

For more than 1,000 years people have been walking The Camino as a sort of pilgrimage with the end point being the remains of St. James the Apostle, which are buried under a grand and ancient cathedral in Santiago, a town in the northwest corner of Spain.

In the Middle Ages, criminals were sometimes sentenced to walk The Camino as punishment.

We volunteered for the journey. I honestly don’t know how

I honestly don’t know how I first heard about The Camino a couple of years ago, but I couldn’t stop thinking about it since.

It is a well-established series of trails through Spain. There was enough infrastructure in the little villages we’d be walking through that we could eat at little cafes and stay at little guest houses after walking every day. You can reserve beds in advance (which we did) but many spots are reserved for walk-ups.

The Camino actually stretches 621 miles across the entire country (We met a guy from Germany who had started his walk from his house to Santiago – and then was walking back, over 1,000 miles each way)

When I first suggested hiking the Camino as a graduation present, Ella seemed excited – even after I told her we’d be carrying everything we’d brought in backpacks every day. So we made the prepara

So we made the preparations, and in late June we flew into Madrid, spent a great day strolling around that ancient capital city, before riding a train to Sarria, a beautiful little village in the region of Galacia, 72 miles from Santiago.

The next morning, when we hit the trail it was 48 degrees and fog covered the rolling countryside. It didn’t take long to warm up – about the length of time it took to climb the first hill.

For the next seven days we averaged about 10 miles a day, walking past little farms and 800-year-old churches and alongside apple orchards and old stone walls covered in moss and ferns.

We missed the record heat the area (and most of Europe) received, by about a week. Every day we were sore, and

Every day we were sore, and sometimes slowed, but never stopped.

Most everyone on the trail exchanges the greeting ‘Buen Camino’ when passing. It means “Good Journey.”

We stayed in quiet guest houses and crowded albuergues (bunk houses) – and even inside an old monastery once – alongside other pilgrims from the Netherlands, Australia, South Korea, and Canada. On the trail we hiked and chatted alongside people from Ireland and France, Germany and New Zealand.

Sometimes we’d walk for miles without seeing anybody else, and at times we’d be in the midst of a big crowd.

There were very old folks and very young folks on the trail. Ella met two girls from Mexico who were starting at UT this fall just like her.

All had their own unique and interesting tales on how they ended up on a trail in the middle of Spain – and everyone was walking in the same direction.

We ate octopus, and almond cakes, churros and hot chocolate, new kinds of hams and cheeses and breads, and drank wine out of terra cotta pitchers.

We washed our clothes in sinks and hung them up on old clothes lines.

We stumbled through trying to communicate with people who only spoke Spanish – and even picked up a little of the language ourselves.

We called back home every night (seven-hour time difference!) to regale my wife and our three boys about our adventures.

With each passing day we got more comfortable with being on the road, and doing more with less.

And Ella and I talked – really talked, which as any parent of a teenager knows, is a gift in itself.

After a week we made it to Santiago, weaving our way through a maze of medieval alleyways, past a person playing a bagpipe and into the grand Plaza del Obradoiro, where the steeples of the Santiago de Compostela Cathedral towered over us. For completing the final 100 kilometers of The Camino we were each able to get an ornate certificate of completion, our Compostela.

At Mass inside the cathedral that night, where it was so crowded that we sat on the stone floor of the ancient cathedral – we got to see the botafumeiro in action – one of the largest censers (a container in which incense is burned) in the world. At over 150 pounds, it was swung by half a dozen priests high above the crowd near the end of Mass, sending incense smoke throughout the church.

It was an amazing ending to an amazing week.

We spent a few days in Barcelona before flying back, admiring the Mediterranean coast, the Gothic neighborhoods and the architecture of Gaudi.

But to me it all paled in comparison to The Camino.

It was a walk that had so many great aspects of things I wanted Ella to remember before she went off to college:

• The importance of faith

• It’s a big wonderful world out there to explore

• There are times when it’s going to be really hard to communicate with those around you, but keep trying.

• You can do something really difficult, but really amazing, if you set your mind to it.

All great lessons to remember for a kid going off to college – or for a 44-year-old father with at least as much yet to learn.