Roman roads and bridges were everywhere on our journey.
Roman roads and bridges were everywhere on our journey.

I have been asked many times why my wife and I walked the Camino de Santiago. Why would anyone subject themselves to walking miles and miles every day over hills, mountains, deserts, cities, along highways, on 2000-year-old cart paths in a foreign country with daytime highs over 100 degrees?

I had no idea that people (over 250,000 last year) made a pilgrimage along the northern part of Spain every year. I had to ask myself, why Spain? Why carry everything in a backpack? Why face the unknown of where you will spend the night at the end of each day’s walk?

The basic answer for us was for thanksgiving – gratitude for what we have in life. For my wife, it was thanksgiving for overcoming breast cancer two years ago. For me, it was thanksgiving for everything that I have enjoyed in my life. And, for the both of us, the opportunity to improve our health, to jump-start the old-age phase of our lives. We both turned 70 years of age during our Camino journey.

There are many other reasons, but those are the big “Why’s”. Is it incidental that I’ll write some books and declare some of those expenses incurred as business expenses? It is to be determined after I produce a product and talk to my accountant. I started out only wanting to write one book – a photo journal of our journey – something for family mostly. Then, as the days wore on, I started thinking how to incorporate that experience into other topics. At last count, I had developed topics for at least seven books.

We all do things for a reason. Many times we never know why. Our subconscious mind determines the course of our lives based on our experiences in life. In this case, there was no previous experience to compare it to. Therefore, our conscious minds were probably a little more influential in our final determination.

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