Some Boots Don't Stop Walking

Patty and I are just back from walking 200 miles of the five hundred mile Camino de Santiago pilgrimage across northern Spain.



When she gets over her jet lag, she's going to write about our trip, with maybe a few interjections from the West Coast sister. Two hundred fifty thousand pilgrims from around the world stream across northern Spain every year and we met our fair share.

A young red-bearded Scotsman told me he had been walking Europe for three months, and after he got to Santiago he was going on to Finistrae at the "world's end", then turn south to Portugal. "I don't know if I can stop walking", he said.

At the cathedral plaza in Santiago de Campostela, I met an Italian man in his 60's, Luigi Cianti, who had given away his fortune of $7 million fifteen years earlier and started walking. He had walked everywhere, including thirty one times across the Camino, and was indeed the Guinness record holder for number of completed Caminos. I googled him and it was for real.

We could relate to this. After the first hundred miles getting broken in, you feel you could walk infinitely. Maybe walking a hundred miles should be a requirement for high school graduation, or getting married, or, better still, running for office.