The selfish pilgrim
I bought the ticket. Buen Camino.
A friend turned to me at the bar of a luxury hotel. “Why would you walk across Spain sleeping in hostels with farting retirees?”
“Because I’ve always wanted to. And now I can.”
“I know a couple that did the Camino with a luggage service, staying at high-end hotels along the way.”
“Sounds fabulous,” I replied. “But I’m going pilgrim mode.”
Earlier that day, I went to REI. I bought a backpack, Smartwool shirts, and a neck gaiter I associate with both hiking and looking Parisian. Was “pilgrim mode” already a lie?
Last weekend, I ran out of excuses and bought the ticket. Soon, I’ll send my son to summer camp and move Steve to senior living. Then I’ll fly to Biarritz on a one-way ticket, make my way to Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port, and begin a 500-mile walk across northern Spain with two pairs of underwear and no laptop. It feels selfish. I’m not newly retired or divorced. I’m not hiding from scandal. I’m not even Catholic. I just need to be nobody for a while — for me.
The week after my son was born, Steve drove us from Chicago to Washington. He said he wanted my son to call him “Poppy.”
“Like Bush Sr.?” I asked.
“Yes,” he said.
“Very preppy.”
Now I’m helping Steve through his final chapter as his Parkinson’s advances. These days I can barely hear his voice. Our long conversations are now rationed. We talk about logistics, care, and when to stop driving. The routine we’ve had for the last five years — weekends at his home, golf cart rides with our dog, a grandfather figure to my son — is slipping away.
A few weeks ago I told Steve my Camino idea.
“Do it,” he said, in a whispering voice. Then after a pause: “I wish I could go with you.”
“Being a pilgrim was never your style,” I told him. “You would’ve met me at the end for a luxury tour of Galicia.”
We laughed. But we both knew what he meant. We both knew I’d go anyway.
While I’m on my Camino, he’ll be learning to live in a smaller world.
My son is on a threshold too. He’ll go to camp for the first time this summer, and I’m more nervous than he is. A year ago, he looked like a little boy with his missing front teeth. Now, he lobbies to play Roblox and jokingly calls me “bruh.” I see more preteen in him than toddler. He says he’s ready for camp, and I believe him. Still, how’s this picky-eater going to eat?
Lately, I’ve felt a rising rebellion against my own lifestyle — Amazon convenience, endless social media, and whiz-bang AI. Too much ease, not enough connection. I love my life, but I feel pulled toward friction: long days of walking, living out of a backpack, and the ambient belonging that comes from being a pilgrim among pilgrims. I haven’t resolved that tension. Neither has our culture.
I am traveling solo seeking belonging, finding my way on a path that’s 1,100 years old, chasing simplicity while using my watch to pay for things. I am not a spiritual tourist, I tell myself, clocking the lie. But I am open.
I need the open road. In my early 20s, I spent a summer with a Eurail pass and a Let’s Go guide. In my 30s, I took a year off after selling a business and traveled abroad, one country at a time. Once, when a flight was cancelled in South Dakota, I kept my rental car and drove cross-country to Sonoma instead. In the Harvard happiness study, one participant said happiness for him was being able to say on his deathbed, “I sure squeezed that lemon!” These trips are me squeezing.
While my son’s on a bunk bed at camp, I’ll be on bunk beds in Spain. I’ll walk the Francés route, the best-known Camino, over the Pyrenees, through Basque country, La Rioja, León, and Galicia, ending at the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela and the tomb of Saint James the Apostle. I barely know who Saint James is. But I’ll learn.
My son’s Camino is camp. Steve’s is senior living. Mine is in Spain.
Buen Camino.
You articulate exactly why I love solo travel—being given the chance to be nobody for a while
One word, Jeff: Yes!