Back in January of 2019 (a whole lifetime ago), as Dylan and I were planning our trip to New Zealand, it suddenly hit me how many potentially physically challenging things we were adding to our itinerary and how potentially out-of-shape I had become. I had grown rather complacent in the short time I had lived in my new apartment in Cambridge—with my shorter commute (sans giant hill) and lack of need to haul the bins through the snow to the street once a week—and while I walked for work every day in the summers, I was fairly sedentary in the winters and definitely struggled with the forty-pound box of kitty litter that gets delivered once a month. My lack of fitness was driven even further home to me when, again in preparation for our trip, I took a SCUBA class and struggled through the relatively short swim required to pass. I trudged home from the MIT pool that evening through the ice and immediately set to work researching gyms in my area. I landed at a tiny fitness studio located a two-minute walk from my apartment, where I have been very happy now for almost two years. That little place has become a lifeline of accountability and community for me (more on that in another post), but despite daily Zoom workouts in March and April of 2020, I found myself missing the treadmill—which led me to remember that, once upon a time when I lived in Somerville, I didn’t need a treadmill because three miles of my daily commute were on foot.

 All of this is to explain how I arrived at the idea to start walking again, in earnest, as part of my daily life in quarantine. At the beginning of May, I set myself the goal of strapping on my shoes every day and walking four miles through the neighborhoods of Cambridge. Approximately one hour of my unemployment each day masking up, getting out of the apartment, and moving my body (in a way that was NOT more squats and pushups). Starting from the day I made that commitment on May 5th, 2020 saw me walk 825 miles. I’ve gotten physically stronger and faster, I’ve lost a little weight, and I have relearned the joy of simply walking. My grandparents were both walkers, and I have very fond memories of all the conversations I had with my grandfather on walks in my growing-up and college years. Dylan and I have also had many a quality conversation while walking in the three-and-a-half years we’ve known one another. Walking also served as a sacred personal time for me in the hard years I lived in Somerville. The mile-and-a-half that separated my apartment from the subway was a barrier between me and the chocolate shop on one end and my roommates on the other. It was a safe space where I could clear my head, focus on the trees and birds and houses around me, and not be where I was going. A liminal space. Like this year. A space ideal for sorting things out. It’s almost as if the mere action of putting one foot in front of the other shakes things loose in my brain. I’ve done a lot of processing on my walks this year, and a lot of dreaming and imagining on the days I’m feeling a little more sorted. Having spent so many years walking to and from and for work, I had forgotten the true pleasure of walking just for me. Walking to explore. Walking without a destination or a timeline. It has been a freeing experience and a habit I shall strive to maintain. 

The pleasure of my walks was challenged, fairly soon after I began, by the onset of summer. I hate summer. I hate being hot. I cringe from the broiling sun and the suffocating humidity of late-June, July, and August. I want to hibernate until it is vanquished again by fall. But I had made a commitment to myself, and so I strapped on my shoes (much earlier in the morning than had been my wont) and headed out anyway. It was at this moment of rising anger against the weather that I picked up a piece-of-fluff book from my stack of to-be-reads. Something lighthearted to distract my brain from the misery of trying to get to sleep in the heat. That little bit of fluff was Two Steps Forward by Graeme Simsion and Anne Buist. It is a story of two people walking the Camino de Santiago. 

I first learned of the Camino in college. My sophomore year, a group of professors who annually team-taught a course in medieval pilgrimage decided to spend their spring break traveling one of the pilgrimage routes they had long discussed in their course. By a stroke of luck, they also decided to take some of the honors students along and offer course credit for the trip. I took that news to my weekly dinner with my grandparents, and Grampa said we would make sure that I could go. He was a great advocator for the transformative educational power of travel and experience. And so it was that, at the age of twenty, I met the Camino and fell in love.

That first meeting lasted ten days; we traveled via bus and train, and it was a transformative experience for me. I have dreamed ever since of returning to St. Jean Pied de Port and setting off on a “real” Camino—by which I mean a roughly five-hundred mile walk (or bike or horseback ride) through northern Spain. 
Why am I so drawn to this particular five-hundred mile walk? I will readily admit that the promise of fresh goat cheese and sangria are no small part of the allure, but naturally, there has to be more than cheese and wine to induce a person to travel to another country and walk five-hundred miles (da da dum di dum di dum di da da da!). While the prospect of spending a couple of months in Spain is also, certainly, part of the draw, the pull to Santiago is more than mere tourism. The Camino is a pilgrimage, after all. For centuries pilgrims have put on their shoes, picked up their sticks, and walked out their front doors in the direction of Santiago for…what? Miracles? Redemption? To grieve? To forget? To  grow? To say, “It could be done and I have done it”? From what I’ve gleaned from the stories I’ve heard and read over the years, there are as many reasons as there are pilgrims. I don’t know what I hope to get out of it beyond the experience, but an experience, I’ve found, is most definitely a worthwhile endeavor.

Reading Two Steps Forward reawakened that deep desire in me to take my Camino. But 2020 was obviously not the year to go trekking in Spain. As I was dreaming on the internet, though, I did find a fitness company that sells motivation in the form of various virtual global treks. Pick a route, sign up solo or with a team, and start walking. You log your mileage each day and are moved along a virtual map of your chosen route. You can pinpoint “your” GPS location as you go, and as you hit milestones, you’ll receive e-mail post cards. I signed up, and in about eighty-seven days I completed my virtual Camino. They sent me a medal 🙂 

It certainly wasn’t the full pilgrimage experience I’ve always envisioned and hope to still have someday, but in this strange year especially, it seemed a worthwhile and reasonable endeavor to make a pilgrimage right here at home. My goal was the both small and monumental hope of maintaining my health and sanity during this strange, frightening, liminal time. I think my walks have helped me achieve that in many ways. By getting out of the house and out of my head. By removing my access to screens for an hour or two a day and thus encouraging me to let my mind wander or listen to books without the disruptions of social media and the need to be doing something else. My walks have immersed me in the seasons—I am in the weather every day—learning how they feel and how I feel in them (yes, I still hate summer—walking in the cold is so invigorating!). I have gotten to watch the flowers bloom and the trees change—gotten to know the neighborhood cats, and watch Cambridge’s resident rafter of turkeys hatch and raise its newest brood (those guys have loved this year—they own the streets now). And all of that has helped me process, reflect, and reframe—to clarify and prioritize—and that is certainly a step in the right direction.