The first time...

...I heard about the Camino de Santiago Compostela was over a
decade ago through a book called The Pilgrimage by Paulo Coelho. I was fresh out of university and quite fanciful...well a tiny bit anyway. But reading the book, I actually thought I was reading about a fictional place set up for a fictional journey. Thank God the Internet was starting to make itself felt by then. But it was still a vague idea at that time. An actual pilgrimage like the one described in the book seemed like an impossible trip for me.

Through the decade and a half since then, I've all but forgotten about the story. However, constant reminders would come up here and there, of other people's accounts of walking the Camino on their own personal journey of discovery. And then I'd get excited and think what if...

The book that planted the seed

And now, that 'what if' is finally taking shape. We're still quite a ways a away from getting there, but it feels like we are being guided and led towards this journey. What we initially put in the back burner as a trip for 2016 or even later has been pushed forward and it's actually happening this year.

As I write this post, I'm actually re-reading the book that planted the seed in my mind and pairing it with a Camino app guide so I can track the character's progress through the book. Granted, sections of it are still too incredible for me to fathom, but for the most part, it's becoming more clear to me. I'm already seeing myself taking the same journey, facing similar challenges, for my own version of the 'sword.'

-- cleo