Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port, Pyrénées-Atlantiques, France, from the Citadel


Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port, Pyrénées-Atlantiques, France, from the Citadel

Friday, 1 December 2017: The day before I would begin theCamino de Santiago and then, 11 December, abandon the Camino in Estella-Lazarre, Navarra, and return home to Atlanta…

(an unanticipated three-day lay-over in a cold and rainy Pamplona (I had to replace my broken shoes), the loneliness, the weather, and the approaching Christmas holidays got to me, and I couldn’t continue)

...only to come back to Logroño, two days from Estella, and, on 6 February 2018, begin walking all the way to Santiago de Compostela in the dead of winter... alone...

...and it was a miraculous, life-changing, and wonderful experience, despite the cold, the brutal winds, the snow, and the aches and pains.

I learned to experience the loneliness as solitude, and man, that experience of 29 days of walking in solitude cleared my head and my heart and my soul.

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