Daily Success March 15 looks very good. Exercise yesterday was good with Core Strength plus fair distance. Lots got done in things for customers and the Camino website that is not obvious, but the production was there.

Importantly, I bought my airline tickets to Spain for this year on the 12th and am beginning the effort to prepare in earnest. I leave on July 6th and return home on August 16th. It’s a total of six weeks that includes a plan for Julian, Mercedes, and Jan to join me for a short distance as I reach the Cathedral, sometime during the first week of August.

Today is off to a decent start with my first pass through the photographs from August 18th, 2018 in preparation for that My Camino Day post. That was my last day on el Camino in 2018 and, in retrospect, may have taught me my biggest Camino lesson. I’ll get the story explained in the post itself, but it echoes through the years to today.

The lesson, which in retrospect I realize was that I became a peregrino during those August days in 2018, came from a feeling that might be called “dread.” It surfaced in my mind somewhere along the hike the morning of the 18th. It nags at my plans for this summer, albeit differently because the location has changed. On that day in 2018, the dread was of arriving in Zumaia, the end of my hike for that year, that visit to Spain. Today, the dread is of arriving in Santiago. Santiago is, after all, the end of the pilgrimage.

A simple truth that I’ve had to face: I simply do not want my days on el Camino to end. It has been a journey of unique wonder. I am a pilgrim in search of knowledge of myself and of the world that has been hidden from me in all the other places I’ve been and for all the other hours of my life that I’ve spent. El Camino de Santiago is, for me, an endless journey with the destination, Santiago, simply not a part of the plan.

Things were different in 2021 and 2022 because Santiago seemed infinitely far away. It was easy to push the dread of leaving The Way aside with a little, innocent, “early planning for next year.” Next year would simply begin where this year had left off. Nothing to threaten a continuation of that incredibly journey of the body, the mind, and especially the spirit.

That journey simply must continue. ¿Finisterre in 2024? ¿Or the Frances? I am not sure I can set foot on The Way leaving Cadavedo without some vague plan to continue beyond Santiago.