happy anniversary

I got an email today from my friend Kristen reminding me of a pilgrimage we completed three years ago. I spent about three minutes reminiscing about the people we met along the way, and then I realized that I think about them all the time anyway.

There were the three French boys who taught us how to eat like Europeans and had a great sense of humor. And our three Spanish companions, two of which didn’t speak English, but guided us along and kept us with the in-crowd. There were three sweet older Spanish women who saved us beds at a crowded hostel after a particularly long day—they greeted us with such excitement when we finally arrived (I think they were just glad to see we hadn’t died on the camino). We had a Portuguese family that we kept pace with for most of the trip. I think it was because they were traveling with at least 8 people ranging in age from 10 to 70, not because they weren’t in pilgrimage-shape. We met a couple of German men who dressed alike the whole time and had the trendiest backpacking clothes we’d ever seen. We never spoke to them, but it was fun to watch them from a distance. Another older German on a bike helped us out of a few scrapes, thanks to Kristen being able to speak that language. I always laugh to myself when I think of the Swedish couple (“the Rastafarians?” everybody asked when they came up) who I helped get to a hospital for a bug bite—they didn’t speak any Spanish and I spoke very broken Spanglish with the hostel operator and doctor to get them some treatment.

After reading that email I checked out another blog I found about life on the Camino and was reminded of all the reasons people make pilgrimages, why we pick up and leave our regular lives behind for a while. We run away from lovers, they run away from us. We need a change of job, environment, lifestyle. We hope to find ourselves, or somebody else. We hope to find something greater. Sometimes we know what we’re looking for. Most often, I think we don’t. Sometimes we just need to go back and forth a few times.

Appropriately enough, I feel I’m in the middle of a pilgrimage myself. My vacation is in full swing and I'm still on the move. I’ve been splitting my time between unwinding and planning, sitting in my parents house and driving around the countryside. In organizing my plans for my European adventure, I’m discovering even more work I have to do. My utter cluelessness is also being reinforced: the more I think about why I want to take this trip in the Fall, the less I know just why I want to do it, or what I’m hoping to find. That’s’ not a little unnerving. In that trepidation, however, I’m finding myself getting more excited, feeling the urge to go now.

Even closer to home, I have a decision to make when I return to the Farm. That’s another thing that’s been occupying my thoughts for a good portion of time. It’s not a huge decision, but it’s looming before me greater than anything else merely because it’s so imminent. I’ve tried a lot of mental tricks to help, but my mind keeps getting muddier. We’ll see.

One of the things I like about myself, yet really gets on my nerves, is this sense of searching I have. I’m always trying to get to the bottom of something, to find all the missing pieces, to see what else is there. I feel I can often liken my life to a pilgrimage, reaching for some goal that isn’t quite close enough. I’m on a ride to somewhere, only half-aware of the destination, and I’m watching it change the whole time. Maybe someday I’ll reach the shrine and kneel in exhausted reverence to the relic to which I dedicated my life’s journey. Until then I need to remember to enjoy to road. Happy trails!