My packing list for the Camino:
Hiking boots. The route we will be taking to Santiago this year is called the Camino Primitivo. It is the oldest route to Santiago. The first pilgrim to hike this particular route hiked it 1,200 years ago, shortly after the birth of Willie Nelson.
We will be hiking over some serious mountains. So I wear boots.
Last year we were told by “experts” not to wear boots for the French route. I wore them anyway. And I was glad I did because we hiked over so many rocky slopes and mudholes I cannot imagine hiking in, say, Keds.
Sometimes I think we have too many “experts” and not enough novices. This is just my expert opinion.
One ultra-light backpack, made of parachute material that manufacturers proudly call “water resistant.” And by “water resistant” I mean, of course, “it doesn’t resist anything.”
This is the same backpack I carried on my first Camino. It has a hydration bladder inside, with a drinking hose protruding so that, while hiking, you can effectively and efficiently look like a Class-A idiot.
When it rains, I wrap my backpack in a poncho and the pack magically becomes “water resistant.”
One fiddle. Check. It’s an old fiddle from the 1930s. It was the kind of fiddle your grandfather would have purchased out of a Sears, Roebuck & Co. catalog. The kind poor hillbillies played. It sounds like cheap trash. But I was born cheap trash. So I like it.
Last year, I carried this fiddle across Spain, and I learned a very important lesson: If you play a fiddle for Spanish people, they will give you free beer. This is why much of our first Camino is a blur.
Two main T-shirts. One of them has Mark Twain’s signature on the front. Samuel Clemens is my hero. The other shirt bears the Superman insignia. Not because I think I’m Superman, but because Superman is my oldest, and longest-running obsession. I also have a spare Lawrence Welk T-shirt. The Spanish people are going to love me.
One pair of sandals. These sandals are expensive because they are lightweight and slender enough to fit in your back pocket.
But you NEED sandals out there, and for a very important reason: Albergue showers. You wear these sandals so that when shower drains clog, and water belches up from the earth, sloshing around your ankles, and you’re wading through an entire swamp of tiny pubic hairs, you’re wearing expensive sandals.
Travel soap. This is soap that looks just like real soap, but comes in a package calling it “travel soap.” The important difference between regular soap and travel soap is that manufacturers charge three times what soap is worth.
Books. The last thing I want to do on the Camino is use my phone. I am a reader, so I bring books. Yes, they are extra weight. Yes, they are inconvenient. But I will read several books on the trail, discarding them in public places when I am finished, and picking up discarded books left by other pilgrims.
And if I can’t find any discarded English books to read, I’ll read Spanish novels. But Spanish novels aren’t NEARLY as satisfying because Spanish authors use vivid fantasy elements in their descriptions while also using long run-on paragraphs that seem to go on forever although these internal monologues are virtually inconsequential to the book’s plot but the paragraphs just keep going on and on devoid of all punctuation so that there is no room for the reader’s eye to rest and the reader starts having “vivid fantasies” about throwing the book into a flooded albergue shower.
In my pocket I will carry two things.
I will carry a rosary that was given to me by a little nun on the Camino last year. I am not Catholic. I do not pray the rosary. But I do finger the beads and utter prayers of another nature. Sometimes I will say the Lord’s Prayer. Sometimes I will recite the 23rd Psalm. Sometimes I will just breathe.
I will also carry a rock in my pocket. It’s a rock I carry every day. It comes from Helen Keller’s childhood home in Tuscumbia, Alabama. The rock would have been embedded in the mud when little Helen’s bare feet were running around on the grass, playing as a child. Helen Keller is my patron saint. I take her with me. For it was Helen who said:
“I cannot see the sun, but I can feel its heat. In the same way, I cannot see God, but I feel His love in every part of my being.”
And it was Helen who said:
“I believe that God is in all things, but I also believe that He is most clearly revealed in the human heart.”
May my own feeble heart someday reveal such intrepid beauty.
Tomorrow we begin our Camino.
Questions: SeanDietrich@gmail.com
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Originally published on Sean’s website. Republished here with permission.
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