As I start our blog posts, two months from today, Joan and I will be stepping out the front door of our home in Arundel, Maine and walking10 miles
along the back roads of York County to the Amtrak train station in Welles. We'll catch
the afternoon train to Boston, spend a night in the Parker House Hotel there and then fly out to Madrid on United Airline
at 6 PM on Monday night to start our two month, 800 kilometer
walking pilgrimage to Santiago, Spain. You might ask us both "why are you doing this?" I know we've asked the same thing of ourselves over the past 18 months
since we decided to follow through on what had been Sam's long-held dream - one that I never thought could be realized because of my 20 year inability by that time to walk more than 200 yards without severe pain in my ankles and knees. In the years following a final crippling injury to my left ankle while skiing at Vail in 1991 , I had let my weight balloon 70 pounds up to 253 pounds, done no regular physical activity and generally let myself go to pot (literally). At that weight I had a startling resemblance to the Sta-Puff Man last seen in the movie Ghostbusters! It was so easy to do!
But my physical condition eventually got so bad that in 2009 - in quick sequence over the next couple of years - I underwent:
My brush with the "Grim Reaper" in late summer 2010 gave both of us a new resolve to do those things that were most important for us to do in our lifetimes, and high on the list was my old dream of walking the Way of St. James - to do "the Camino". Joan said to me: "You've been talking about this "Camino" ever since I met you back in 1983. Let's DO IT!" We looked at each other for a minute and agreed to start. I started a regular program of exercise at our local gym - a great place with the unlikely name of The Fitness Nuthouse -, we've been walking since the snow melted in March, I've lost 85 pounds and Joan 50 pounds and we will have logged well over 400 miles of walking before we leave.
I had first read of this ancient pilgrimage over 30 years ago, in a wonderful book called Sarum, a historical fiction story telling the evolution of history and families in Salisbury, England over the past 10,000 years. It was only a passing reference but I dug into it and found that for over 1,000 years, Christians have been making a holy pilgrimage to a city in northeastern Spain, where the bones of St. James, the Apostle are reputedly interred. This is a land where the Celts, Visagoths, Romans, Moors, El Cid, Charlemagne, St. Francis and millions of the faithful once lived, fought and walked, some for conquest & glory, some for absolution of their sins, some for gold & riches but most just for their faith.
History is knee deep along the "Route Frances", the path we will be following from St. Jean Port a Pied,a small city located just inside the French/Spanish border. The first day we walk up 4,200 feet and into the Pyrenees mountains to Roncesvalles. Then we will go to Pamplona and through Leon, Burgos and finally to Santiago on the far western edge of Spain. We plan on walking about 10-12 miles a day and taking two months for the entire journey. Joan and I laughingly call ourselves "Equipe Tortuga" ("Team Turtle" in Spanish); our motto is: "We start slow-- and then taper off".
But we will finish those 790 kilometers to Santiago de Compostela? We have no idea and who knows what we'll find along "The Way"?
But my physical condition eventually got so bad that in 2009 - in quick sequence over the next couple of years - I underwent:
- Two ablation operations on my heart to fix a 40 year problem with SVT arrhythmia (1 ablation failed)
- Two fusion operations on my left ankle (the first fusion failed - meaning another 6 months of non-weight bearing hell for Joan, taking care of me.)
- A congestive heart failure incident (right after the first ankle fusion)
- A near-fatal massive and sudden intestinal arterial hemorrhage, requiring 28 units of blood, a siren-blaring Medivac trip from Biddeford Maine to Boston's Mass General Hospital, where over the next four days, I came back from the edge and then thanks to a miracle worked by Dr. Gloria Salazar in I/R, warded off the ever-hovering surgeons, who stood by eagerly ready to remove my lower intestine.
My brush with the "Grim Reaper" in late summer 2010 gave both of us a new resolve to do those things that were most important for us to do in our lifetimes, and high on the list was my old dream of walking the Way of St. James - to do "the Camino". Joan said to me: "You've been talking about this "Camino" ever since I met you back in 1983. Let's DO IT!" We looked at each other for a minute and agreed to start. I started a regular program of exercise at our local gym - a great place with the unlikely name of The Fitness Nuthouse -, we've been walking since the snow melted in March, I've lost 85 pounds and Joan 50 pounds and we will have logged well over 400 miles of walking before we leave.
I had first read of this ancient pilgrimage over 30 years ago, in a wonderful book called Sarum, a historical fiction story telling the evolution of history and families in Salisbury, England over the past 10,000 years. It was only a passing reference but I dug into it and found that for over 1,000 years, Christians have been making a holy pilgrimage to a city in northeastern Spain, where the bones of St. James, the Apostle are reputedly interred. This is a land where the Celts, Visagoths, Romans, Moors, El Cid, Charlemagne, St. Francis and millions of the faithful once lived, fought and walked, some for conquest & glory, some for absolution of their sins, some for gold & riches but most just for their faith.
History is knee deep along the "Route Frances", the path we will be following from St. Jean Port a Pied,a small city located just inside the French/Spanish border. The first day we walk up 4,200 feet and into the Pyrenees mountains to Roncesvalles. Then we will go to Pamplona and through Leon, Burgos and finally to Santiago on the far western edge of Spain. We plan on walking about 10-12 miles a day and taking two months for the entire journey. Joan and I laughingly call ourselves "Equipe Tortuga" ("Team Turtle" in Spanish); our motto is: "We start slow-- and then taper off".
But we will finish those 790 kilometers to Santiago de Compostela? We have no idea and who knows what we'll find along "The Way"?
This snapshot was taken after we received our 'concha" (a scallop shell - the symbol of St, James and ancient designation of a pilgrim traveling the Way) at a wonderful ceremony held at the Mission of Santa Barbara in California. We attended the annual Gathering of the American Pilgrims on the Camino in May, 2013.
