Hiking a forest between the Spanish villages of Valga and Padrón.
Me: What day is it? Is it Wednesday?
Liz (my wife): Yes, it’s Wednesday. Why? What’s Wednesday?
Me: Nothing. Just curious.
We walk. A bird sings.
Liz: At least I think it’s Wednesday.
It was that escape from time that had sent us on the Camino de Santiago, a three-week walk up the spine of Portugal to the northwest corner of Spain. There, according to Roman Catholic tradition, the body of the apostle James the Greater lies.
Pilgrims have made the trip by foot, horseback, or bicycle for more than 1,000 years.
There are several routes. The Frances is the most popular, clipping 300 miles across the northern forehead of Spain. Our route, starting just north of Porto, was only 140, but certainly a challenge for our retired, fogey bones.
Popular books (Shirley MacLaine’s “The Camino;” and “I’m Off Then” by German comedian Hape Kerkeling) and movies (“The Way,” starring Martin Sheen, and “Journey to You” – a Hallmark romance) have turned the Camino from a religious journey to something broader. According to the Oficina de Acogida al Peregrino, just under 500,000 journeyed it last year, more than double those who visited a decade earlier.
Some welcome the physical challenge, lugging a 15-pound backpack 15 miles a day through heat, rain, sore knees, and blisters. Others seek spiritual fulfillment — disconnecting from life in the hopes of appreciating it more.
I wanted to step away from the current moment of ineffable cruelty (who wouldn’t?). I also sought the logistical challenge. The planning brought back memories of months of studying to prepare for a CAS exam. The journey itself reminded me of the trek to fellowship.
It feels like a million details, like…
Packing:
- How many pairs of socks? (I took 4)
- Hiking boots or running shoes? (trail runners, sized up because your feet will swell)
- Rain jacket or poncho? (poncho)
Planning:
- How far can we walk in a day?
- How far should we walk in a day?
- How far ahead should we book accommodations?
I scrounged a packing list online and developed (actuarially enough) an expected vs. actual table to see if we were on schedule.
The plan: train from Porto to the shore town of Povoa de Varzim, average 14.3 kilometers a day as the ocean trail spirals up the Portuguese coast, climb a couple of hills and arrive June 7, in time for the Catholic feast of Pentecost.
Planning is deceptive, though. The Camino is simple. You walk as far as you can. You eat someplace you’ve never heard of, sleep in simple quarters, get up early, and start off again.
Our first lesson came on Day One, on a sidewalk separating the ocean from seaside apartments: If you wear a wristwatch, you will look at it. All. The. Time.
Morning Two, I tucked the watch into my backpack, next to my house keys.
I focused on scenery:
- Seaside, the ocean massaging the sand.
- Inland, the tongue of a pine grove reaching down to the sea.
- Morning, the sun peeking over the mountains, rising into a cloudless sky.
Unfortunately, there are more miles than there is spectacle. Audiobooks (“A Confederacy of Dunces,” “The Canterbury Tales”) help.
Books, though, rob you of the humble beauty of everyday life:
- A carabiner tick-tick-ticking against backpack.
- Wildflowers winking along a highway.
- A Saab diesel gurgling past.
And birds. Near the shore, in the mountains, in cities and villages — even on a timeless was-it-Wednesday in the woods, there’s always one: twittering, trilling, whistling, cooing.
You meet other pilgrims, not so many at our glacial pace, but still:
- A German woman, pushing her son in a stroller, eager to finish on his second birthday.
- A reserved Dutch woman, so lost and flustered early that she wept openly on the beach, the wind carrying her tears to the sea.
- A woman on her second Camino, her eyes welling up as she said her first Camino taught her she needed to cry often to be truly happy.
And you learn that plans and goals are only suggestions. We abandoned the actual vs. expected analysis after about four days. It remains a curiosity in my cloud drive.
Instead, every day we walked awhile and stopped, never looking far ahead.
We still finished by Pentecost.
Lessons? I still don’t understand willful cruelty, but I did learn — don’t ask how — that patience and empathy are cousins. Each reinforces the other.
And I learned that when the road takes you past a pigsty or along a rainy highway with semis howling past, you need to just listen. Amid the pain and frustration, a bird is drawing a breath, ready to sing.
Jim Lynch, FCAS, MAAA, is retired from his position as chief actuary at Triple-I and has his own consulting firm.
