For some reason, Australian filmmaker Bill Bennett’s self-published book The Way, My Way: A Camino Memoir was on the top of my books-to-read pile, which sits on a chair next to our bed. I don’t know why. If I had to guess, I’d say it was one of the books I sometimes buy to get an Amazon order up to $25 so I can claim the free shipping.
Bennett walked in 2013, the same year I did, although he went in the spring rather than the fall. Immediately he ran into problems. He’d aggravated his knee on a training walk, and the long flight made it worse. When he got to France, he was barely able to hobble out of the airport. After his first day, his knee was the size of a football, and he was only able to complete his Camino by taking massive amounts of ibuprofen. He also had shin splints and a nasty infected blister that required medical treatment. But he carried on anyway, walking slowly and learning to trust something he called his PGS–Personal Guidance System–instead of worrying about mundane things, like where he would sleep that night. Eventually, of course, he reached Santiago de Compostela, where he was reunited with the people he had met along the way. Then he headed home, a wiser man for having completed his pilgrimage: in the book’s epilogue, he lists the things he learned during his walk. They’re all useful bits of wisdom, the stuff you’d hope to learn over the course of such a pilgrimage.
The Way, My Way took me right back to my own Camino. Maybe it was reading the names of places I remember passing through or staying in. Maybe it was thinking about the friends I made and what I learned from my own pilgrimage, lessons about gratitude and the importance of creativity. I found myself wishing I could go back to Spain and walk the Camino again instead of enrolling in courses for the summer. I haven’t felt this way since I got back from Spain–I haven’t felt the urge to go back in the same way. It might be that this week I learned that one of my cousins died. It was sudden. He was working for an oil company in São Tomé and Principe, a small country off the west coast of Africa, and he had a heart attack. He was a year younger than me–married with a new baby girl. Although I hadn’t seen him in years–decades, really–I have happy memories of him. Of course, his death has reminded me of my own mortality. I don’t suppose that’s unusual. I’ve been wondering about how much time I have left, and whether I’ll be able to walk the Camino again before it runs out. I hope so. I have a feeling that I have a few lessons I need to relearn before I go.