When your husband of 19 years dumps you on the Camino what do you do?
To the author the answer was obvious. Tomorrow sheâd buy a one way ticket back home to Granada.
But the offer of the unconditional love and support of her camino family stops her in her tracks. The ones leading her away from the camino. Just like the sudden rupture of her marriage, she had not seen that coming.
For six weeks & five hundred miles, the only fixed point in her life was a town called Santiago in the far west of Spain. Towards which, she just kept putting one foot in front of the other.
In her camino memoir the author shares how this life shattering event takes her to places she really doesnât want to go. Inside her.
Obliging her to shine a light within on all the cracks sheâd spent years papering over. Finding in the process that they really are what let the light shine through. When you stop struggling and allow it to.
And her camino turns out to be radically different to anything she could have possibly imagined. Particularly not one most unexpected turn of events.
When your husband of 19 years dumps you on the Camino what do you do?
To the author the answer was obvious. Tomorrow sheâd buy a one way ticket back home to Granada.
But the offer of the unconditional love and support of her camino family stops her in her tracks. The ones leading her away from the camino. Just like the sudden rupture of her marriage, she had not seen that coming.
For six weeks & five hundred miles, the only fixed point in her life was a town called Santiago in the far west of Spain. Towards which, she just kept putting one foot in front of the other.
In her camino memoir the author shares how this life shattering event takes her to places she really doesnât want to go. Inside her.
Obliging her to shine a light within on all the cracks sheâd spent years papering over. Finding in the process that they really are what let the light shine through. When you stop struggling and allow it to.
And her camino turns out to be radically different to anything she could have possibly imagined. Particularly not one most unexpected turn of events.
âBe curious not judgmentalâ Walt Whitman
Spain? God. Why would anyone ever want to go there?! Asked my obnoxious 22 year old self. For me it represented ugly Brits grilling themselves lobster red and forming little Britain on the Costa del Sol. But, having signed up for a degree majoring in French, and given the choice of minoring in either German or Spanish, I reluctantly chose the latter. Neither held much appeal but at least the Spanish language did not have three genders to get to grips with. Two were more than enough, thank you very much.
And so, in the late 1980âs, I found myself boarding a plane to Malaga for the first half of my obligatory year abroad. Stealing myself for the inevitable onslaught of tourist tat; sombrero wearing donkeys, flamenco dancer loo roll holders and Queen Victoria pubs, I grimly stepped off the plane. I can still absolutely remember exactly how the air smelt. My nose fairly quivered as I picked up the scent of something exotic and exciting, full of endless possibilities, and intensely vibrant and alive. As my bus rolled on towards Granada, my final destination, the endless olive groves, the hills and plains of Andalusia made their first assault on my senses. I wanted to poke my snoozing neighbours and ask them if they, also, saw what I was seeing. Or was I possibly dreaming? This enchanted landscape bore no resemblance whatsoever to the Spain of my English preconceptions. Not even the faintest whiff of cheap beer or fish nâchips.
When that bus crested the brow of a hill and the Sierra Nevada mountains loomed up towards me, I was forever hopelessly and utterly bewitched by Spain, this land of olives and wine. My neck got sore from swivelling to get a better view. I recognised myself in this landscape, it spoke to me. It absolutely rocked my soul. And that has never changed. As a linguist I have lived and worked in many other countries, but I have always considered Spain my home and the place of my highest joy.
My language skills later landed me a job as supervisor for an educational travel company that sent groups of US high school students to Europe. Not an easy job. I was constantly trouble shooting crazy situations across the continent such as missed flights for 45 people, national train strikes, buses breaking down, students falling out of hotel windows, students held in pending cells at the airport due to incorrect visas. On call 24/7 for 5 months of the year. The rest of my year? I had a second job. I was a tour guide on the Camino de Santiago.
Now if you donât know what the Camino de Santiago is let me fill you in. It is a pilgrimage trail or, more correctly, trails. The most famous is the Camino Frances. It measures 800 kms from a small town just the other side of the French border, called St Jean Pied de Port to its official end point, Santiago de Compostela, in the far west of Spain. Besides the Camino Frances, there are many other Camino trails to choose from. Centuries ago, the idea was to walk out of your front door to an established Camino trail and then follow it all the way to its end. Pilgrims throughout history have done just that. In the old days you did it to have your sins pardoned. You could even have them pardoned by proxy, paying someone else to walk it for you. Today, when you make it to Santiago, you can apply for a shiny, swirly certificate that states that you have âdevoutly visited this most holy temple for reasons of pietyâ. This part of the Camino experience, the religious aspect, has never appealed to me. Iâve never felt that religion need come into the picture. For me, living now in this century, walking a Camino must surely be about having a deeply personal, transformative experience.
I loved guiding the Camino tours. Our clients were mainly North American retirees. They were well heeled, from illustrious careers; lawyers, doctors, professors. Most had been inspired to don their walking boots by the movie âThe Wayâ with Martin Sheen. That movie had catapulted the Camino to fame in 2010. They had caught the Camino bug, but not badly enough to want to walk it alone as pilgrims, or stay in albergues, the cheap pilgrimsâ hostel accommodation you find all along the trail. They wanted the Camino experience without having the ârealâ experience. They wanted a pleasant walk through northern Spain with 5-star luxury always available to them. Or, as one of our clients dubbed it, the Gucci Camino experience. If the name fits .... and it did. It was my job, along with 2 other guides, to provide that 5-star Gucci Camino experience.
I was not only tour guide and interpreter but host, raconteur, confidante, appeaser and cheer leader. I always had a long to-do list. Clientsâ needs, dietary and otherwise, were becoming more and more complex. I had to double and then triple check that our dinner menus were in accordance with their convoluted dietary requirements. Some clients were even allergic to wifi! Apparently, itâs a thing. I honestly nearly burst out laughing when I was first told. Thankfully, for once, I held it in. As the appeaser, I assured the lady that the hotels we stayed in would be only too happy to give her a room that the wifi signal didnât reach. She was very appreciative. She slept soundly and that meant she was able to enjoy herself.
I always felt that my job, first and foremost most, was to make sure that everyone was happy. That was easy for me. I genuinely enjoyed making them happy. I laid out their gourmet picnics in perfect scenic surroundings. I thought up little ways to surprise and delight every client. Their favourite chocolate they happened to mention to me in passing. A woolly hat when I could see they were getting chilly. A set of compeed blister plasters for when I saw they were foot sore. I happily ran back kilometres to find things they had left behind, sunglasses, gloves, walking poles, their favourite water bottle... the list goes on.
At the end of each tour, we took the obligatory group photo in front of the cathedral in Santiago. They were dressed in their neatly pressed high end walking togs. Their faces slightly chubbier than when they had started out with us. There were no backpacks in the photo of course. They never had to carry one. As soon as the snap was taken, they photoshopped, facebooked and instagrammed that photo out to the world. It was evidence of one more item having been ticked off their bucket list. Their happiness was evident but, to my way of thinking, it was easily contained within the parameters of that photo. Their minds were already moving on to the next item on their list. When I look closely at those photos, I can see that all are smiling, looking into the camera. All except for me. My gaze is averted to one side, observing with forensic attention the real pilgrims. The stinky, sweaty, backpacked pilgrims who are taking their last steps as they arrive into the cathedral square. Their eruption of joy. That joy couldnât be contained within the parameters of any photo. I longed to know exactly how that felt. I yearned to experience the Camino as a real pilgrim and not as a tour guide.
Walking ON the Camino and being around pilgrims just wasnât doing it for me. I wanted that deeply transformative experience that I felt the Camino had to offer me. I realised that this transformative experience wasnât passed on through osmosis. I was only getting a superficial skimming of the surface. Nothing deeper. So why hadnât I gone off and walked the Camino myself? Simple. There was never enough time or enough money. My two jobs were back to back. When one finished the other started up again. Donât get me wrong, I staunchly defended the right of all to walk the Camino as they saw fit. I used to laugh along with my Gucci clients at the very idea of âslumming itâ. Why on earth would anyone choose to go back to their student days of eeking out a paltry budget and putting up with basic conditions? Why would anyone willingly regress when they could see the same places, witness the same beauty, enjoy exactly the same experience in comfort rather than in self-imposed penury? What sense did that make?
But I had a nagging little voice inside my head reminding me that the experience we were providing, wonderful as it was, was not the real Camino experience. I suspected that the whole point of being on the Camino was to step outside comfort zones. It wasnât just about the physical component parts of the journey. It was about doing things differently to how you had always done them. What would the Camino reveal to you if you put on a backpack, took a risk and walked without a guide like me having your back? But who was I kidding? Our clients were perfectly happy with the Gucci version. They had gorgeous accommodation. Dinner was always a gourmet four-course meal with matching wines, and then, I would lead them to the bar for after dinner drinks.
I remember the night it hit me that the only one I was short changing on these tours was myself. We were in the bar of a parador. Paradors are 5-star luxury hotels that you find in Spain. They are often renovated monasteries, castles and even palaces. I was surprised to see ârealâ pilgrims in the bar. The sort that actually walked the Camino all the way. I always thought an invisible force-field separated us from them. But there they were at the table next to us. They had muddy boots and dirty socks and gaunt faces to prove it. They were tired and grubby and sat comparing their war wounds as they went over the highs and the lows of their day. Every now and then one of them would fling their arms up in the air in spontaneous outbreaks of rapturous joy. They were impervious to the disgusted looks from the barman. A little drunk, they were enveloped in a warm glow that I could only put down to being in the middle of that real Camino experience. God, I wanted to be one of them. I wanted to have muddy boots too. I wanted to get a little stinky. I wanted to rinse out my smalls in freezing water. In a nano second, I would have traded my fluffy bath robe and slippers waiting for me upstairs, with a handkerchief sized travel towel and a pair of flip flops. Maybe I could even have a bunk next to a fat, farting German. Damn it. I wanted in on the real Camino deal. That night I knew in my heart that something was about to give. I was unhappy just being on the Camino without knowing what that ârealâ Camino experience was like.
*********
That Gucci Camino season came to an end. No more making polite, small talk with clients, no more laying out picnics in picturesque spots, or schlepping monogrammed suitcases to 5-star rooms No more juggling of other peopleâs needs and wants. No checking off âto doâ lists while the gorgeous Spanish countryside passed me by unnoticed.
We returned to our home in Granada, drained and depleted. âWeâ being Pedro, my Argentinian husband and I. He sometimes worked alongside me as a Gucci Camino tour guide. He was understated, intelligent, highly practical and informed. People gravitated to his air of calm, quiet authority. He was a lawyer in Argentina but his qualifications, sadly, were unrecognised in Spain. He was unwilling to begin another seven years of study. It had been a tortuous process doing it the first time around and, as he would always say, he wasnât up for a second bout in the ring.
Our little home in Granada was a cave house. Two bedrooms were actually dug out of the chalky hills. In my student days it was a bar. I remember spending far too much time there. Time that should have been spent in the library studying. When they were renovating, they found a skeleton of a donkey standing upright. Poor old Eyeore. This was a very quirky and charming home. And it was bloody cheap.
Pedro pointed out that, with the money we were saving on rent, we could now get by without the Gucci Camino gig. The thought had not occurred to me. Holy crap. He was right. Then he said something earth shattering. âAnd now you and I can walk our own Camino, Kiki.â I was stunned. I had no words. I heard angels singing. Oh my God, why not indeed? Nothing was now stopping me from having that Camino experience for myself. I could sign on the dotted line for a pilgrim passport. Pedro and I could actually go and be one of THEM. We could take our place in the sweaty, grubby ranks of the real pilgrims. Oh my God. I bounced Tigger-like off our cave walls. I loved him, he was a genius. I could see the Camino yellow arrows, the ones that the pilgrims follow on their way to Santiago de Compostela, pulsating around the room. Which arrows would we follow?
Author Deborah Wilson and her husband Pedro are experienced guides on the Camino de Santiago. For those unfamiliar, âThe Camino de Santiago (the Way of St. James) is a large network of ancient pilgrim routes stretching across Europe and coming together at the tomb of St. James (Santiago in Spanish) in Santiago de Compostela in north-west Spain.â (https://santiago-compostela.net/) They always dreamed of making their own trip down the Camino del Norte, and decide to finally embark on it. Deborah hoped to reignite the spark in her marriage and become closer to her husband during their multi-week walk. They met up with a few others on the pilgrimage, and quickly became a âCamino family.â Though she never saw the betrayal twist coming, Deborah carried on traveling with her Camino family, who bolstered and supported her, allowing her to go at her own pace and make her own self-discoveries. Love surprises, and comes from many different places, manifesting in many different ways. Though she originally planned to write about the love stories she saw as a guide, the book turned into a poignant, funny, heartbreaking, uplifting memoir.Â
I walked the Camino with Deborah and her newfound family throughout the memoir, and felt so many similarities to her that I did my own soul-searching as a result. I progressed through every emotion as I walked along in the gorgeous backdrop of Spain, closing my eyes to picture and feel everywhere Deborah was, as her descriptive prose allowed me to join her. I contemplated the sullen, angry husband, the reason why I never let anyone take care of me, why I always had to follow the rules, had to always be obedient and a people-pleaser. I was so afraid of hurting another human that I allowed my empathic self to be treated as a door mat, mainly because many interpreted my kindness as weakness. I have done a lot of soul searching with the help of Deborahâs story, and I am a better person for having read this memoir. I highly recommend âFinding Love on the Caminoâ to all those who love non-fiction, memoirs and travelogues.Â
Iâd like to thank ReedsyDiscovery and Deborah Wilson for the ability to read and review this ARC.