Hello. We are still out there on the road (actually on a train headed to Berlin) but wanted to share this short video highlight of our 7 day, 96 mile walk on the West Highland Way.

It was a total blast and left such a lasting impression we can’t wait to visit Scotland again!

More to come soon!

Enjoy!

Alla prossima!

SLG

The opening line from the book, Nothing to be Frightened Of, by Julian Barnes, is this: I don't believe in God, but I miss Him.

It's a sentence—and sentiment, too—that comes to my mind a couple of times a year, although never in terms of a divine creator. Mostly, I think, they have to do with matters of the heart or seasons of life, that sort of thing, or even things of a physical nature, items I once held close but now no longer do. Like a plate of beans & hamburger (what I used to call Cowboy Food). I don't really like the concoction anymore, but I miss it. 

Or writing poetry. Or owning a dog.

I loved those things when they were part of me, but now-a-days, I couldn't imagine them in my life. Ok, maybe I take back the dog. Because look...

I write this so that you’ll understand that my list of Ins and Outs I shared last week all come from a particular time and place. An effective state of being. A mood, if you will. As much as did my appetizing infatuation with mixing together a can of pork and beans, a pound of beef, slopping in a cup of ketchup and another of brown sugar and serving that masterpiece on a blue tin-metal plate—bonus, if there was a campfire. The reality is tomorrow everything could change. And probably will.

I came across this quote in the opening pages of I Regret Almost Everything, a memoir by Keith McNally, apparently a renowned restaurateur, and while I can appreciate Orwell’s passion for truth-telling, I feel it’s a bit out of context as it was written about Salvador Dali, whose body of work invites a kaleidoscope of bizarre, symbolic interpretation. 

Clearly, who we are is where we are when we are who we are at the time.

The timing of my coming across this quote was apropos as while I was doing research to include in this letter acknowledging the end of the year, I came across a post I had written in 2018 but apparently never shared. The story begins, as most of them did back then, with our bakery, Alimentaire Wholesome Breads, and mentions two articles published in the local newspaper, in which Franca talked about our reasons for moving and making a small, rural, east North Carolina town our next home. 

“The downtown had charm,” she’s quoted, “it had character, purpose”. Also, the people we’d met were friendly and seemed to like her baked goods, so it was good all around, a real win-win with bread and pastries for the community andfor us in return a picturesque, idyllic future. 

What my post then went on to share was how the articles had failed to mention, due to limitations of time, space and probably lack of any real interest, too, any backstory of where we had been. There was nothing about what had made us the people we were. What environment had shaped us? What experiences guided our decision-making. What values served as our compass.

Here’s an excerpt:

But that is the bigger challenge, isn’t it? The telling of history to strangers in a way that doesn’t leave some important component out, some critical context with the faculty to impart upon the receiver the heft of all those years, the sheer gravity of each and every situation, every consequential decision….How even to choose which parts of the story to share? Do you focus mainly on the conflicts, those moments of delirious anxiousness that seemed at the time monumental to our successful pursuit of happiness. Or periods of peace and enlightenment? And what of the smaller things, the family meetings, the dinners, the books read, devoured, loved, then shared? 

Reading it again makes me wonder what would George Orwell think. Of course, not everything you read here on The Revelate represents only the brightest account of myself. There’s a lot of defeat, I think. I mean, I have an entire category of posts that fall under the heading This is a Mistake (with more coming). 

But still. Setting aside the fact that it’s a valuable use of time—thinking of your self in such pragmatic ways, trying to wean out the extraneous bullshit and shape the definition of who you are by what really makes you tick—generally speaking, the things that makes us tick most are probably those that made us at the time feel like crap.

Being bullied. Getting fired. Broken up. Passed over. Profiled. Some thrive on not just in thinking of themselves as better but in making others also feel less so. So yes, George, disgrace rules. 

Defeat hides in plain sight. But in secret. If you know what I mean.

And indeed, re-reading that piece, written years ago—with fresh eyes, before any of the most recent life-changing events had occurred—I found myself calling bullshit on myself for a number of reasons.

Why I am Where I am When I am Who I am

For starters, the title I gave the post: Intentional Uproot. 

Our move to Tarboro was anything but intentional. So much had gone sideways in the months leading up to opening the bakery that I haven’t shared that the decision to uproot mostly felt like a thing thrust upon us. It was a reaction, not an intention. A kind of stem the bleeding situation. (Here’s a little more on that, if you’re interested).

Things change, with everything going well for a while and then disaster hits and voila! you learn a few new things about the world and about your place in it. One door closes another one opens. That’s life. 

Time and experience alters not only perspective but the source as well.

Case in point, the articles I’m referring to (sadly no longer accessible online) were printed the year after we’d opened. They were, I’m sure, full of hope and resilience and enthusiasm for what the future held. When I go back now and read things I wrote about in the year after we’d moved to Sicily what do you suppose I find? The same: Hope, resilience, and enthusiasm for the future. Sure, there was plenty of trepidation and second-guessing (spawning the creation of This is a Mistake) but mostly you might label the tone of my writing as earnest forward progress.

Time passes, things change. The backstory grows and grows. 

What’s past is prologue, goes the saying. 

Have I been a year already?

So, to make George happy, perhaps it’s time for a little bit of my own naked truth.

1. Living in Sicily is hard. Correction: Living away from our family is hard, sometimes very hard. A good chunk of our day is spent thinking of them, or talking with them, or wondering when will we talk with them or see them again. Who knew there was such a past time as imagining your kids’ day as it unfold six hours behind you.

2. Not working (we’re not using the word retired yet) has a lot to do with the time available to conjure of thoughts as to what others are doing. Not exactly a healthy diversion from having your own purpose in life. Longing, purpose and place form the foundation of The Revelate. How easy it is to ignore those marks on the yardstick, even for the yardstick maker.

3. And speaking of longing… it’s easier than it looks, I know. I’ve shared this once before and am going to share it again now. Not just for you, but also, and mostly, for me.

From “Fleishman is in Trouble” by Taffy Brodesser-Akner:

“How did we all get this way? How did we all get put on this trajectory, where we all end up in the same boring life. I miss longing. I miss desire. The way that it works, the way desire works, the way longing works, is you cannot get the thing. When you get the thing you don’t get to feel those feelings anymore. Am I the only one that enjoyed feeling those feelings?”

Here’s the televised clip that follows that bit: 

4. Personal Growth. This is a biggie. We all know we need to do the work and yet, zilch. Can’t blame work. Can’t blame the kids’ busy schedules. Can’t blame a mountain of debt. Can’t blame most things we use to keep ourselves standing exactly where we are. Sometimes I feel like I write as if I’ve figured it all out. I mean, we’re living on an island in the Mediterranean. Paradise, right? Only problem is it’s not paradise and it wouldn’t matter anyway because who you are follows you wherever you go, which is to say I still have a lot to improve on being a better partner, a better parent, and a better friend. 

5 Finally (last, but not all), back to the backstory and that false title, Intentional Uproot. Yes, or course, our lives are a story and the backstory matters. Without it would be like watching Titanic without any mention of the iceberg. How and when to share it is a valid question. Consider this though from the poet Edwin Arlington Robinson:

We tell you, tapping on our brows, 
   The story as it should be,— 
As if the story of a house 
   Were told, or ever could be; 
— Eros Turannos, by Edwin Arlington Robinson

Long time readers might recognize the poem (another repeat, I’m afraid). I’ve used it before when writing of the death of my father and again when I told of how moving to Sicily felt unreasonable and unjust, a lot like a revolution.

And therein perhaps lies the answer to the sharing our history. Maybe you just don’t. Maybe you try, and that’s okay too, but history, with all its vast ocean and waves, is a lot like a clown at a carnival: Sometimes they’re funny, but most often they’re not—quite the horrifying opposite really—and they’re not very reliable at predicting what will happen next. So maybe we shouldn’t aim to fill the cracks in the past but instead invest our timely in a wholly different manner, in building a better understanding of ourselves and how we present it to one another. Perhaps that’s what Orwell was after. Being more honest in our self-perception and only by acknowledging our flaws can we better share our true selves. 

In other words, embrace the disgrace. Embrace the things that broke us. 

I’ll end with another quote that I believe fits in nicely to Orwell’s statement. It comes from a contemporary of his, the Frenchman Jean-Paul Sartre and goes like this:

“Freedom is what we do with what is done to us.”

One Final Note:

Another quote attributed to Sartre is, "Hell is other people." So when considering your own backstory and what makes you you take from this what you may.

Have a good Thanksgiving, everybody. Hope you make the best of it.

Until next time/alla prossima.

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In December 2022 I wrote a piece about my decision to publish my novel, The Dead Lion, online. The reasons I gave back then for doing so concerned maintaining creative control, making an income, and a catch-everything-else category I labeled Letting Go. The first two are pretty self-explanatory and the last one spoke mostly to my angst of having taken so long to finish the damn book. The idea of entering it then into the excruciating, slow-motion train wreck I imagined would come from traditional publishing gave me little assurance that anything would come of it. Read simply: I had no heart for it.

That said, I'm not sure where exactly my heart was at the time because a few short months after that post I began sharing chapters of the book on this site and then I stalled. Like for months. At first I was writing them, just not sharing them. Then I wasn't writing them at all. I don't know what I was doing. Changing words here and there, not finishing things. Taking a sledgehammer to the plot at times and in others a tiny nail file. Typical writer bullshit.

At one point I re-started sharing and then stalled again. My writing was like a computer you had to keep re-booting to get it to work. Only I was the computer.

I could say the delays were to allow my editing to catch-up (I could've also just stopped editing) or that other, more essential and important things got in the way (they did), but those would be only half-truths.

I could say some crazy, circular dopamine loop was driving me. That is, my mind wasn't processing things in the real world but in a world that existed only in terms of some future expectation. I mean, come on. Finishing the book would undoubtedly be a letdown. Wouldn't it be so much better to flee the present and take refuge in the comfortable world of my own imagination? Put another way: To travel is better than to arrive.

Either way, I had both time and inclination, trust me. So why, after sharing some third of the novel to you lovely people, did I find myself questioning, well, everything. The book. The plot. Points of view. Hell, I concerned myself with even the process of writing itself (Am I sitting too much? Would my work—and my body—benefit from a standing desk? Are there too many distractions in my writing room? Answer to that last one: clearly, yes).

Why wasn't I able to just follow through for fuck's sake?

In spite of all that talk of dopamine driving our decision-making, writing is not like other professions I've had. Just today I heard someone on a podcast answer the question "Why do you write?" with "Because the silence is too much to bear". I can't imagine having said that about being in the Army. There it was just the opposite as I would've loved a little peace and quiet (and a lot less narcissism).

So I plodded along. Making a habit as I have for over thirty years of sitting down to face the silence with the purpose of writing something down. Which I then came back to after returning home from the Camino and once again I got serious about finishing the book. And this time, I did (yay!).

Around the same time, I found my news feeds bombarded with articles detailing the sad, sad state of book writing. Or more specifically, novel writing. Actually, to bring it closer to home, the issue didn't concern writers at all, but readers. As in: Why Are Debut Novels Failing to Launch? Where Have All the Novel-Reading Men Gone? And one sounding truly apocalyptic alarms: When Novels Mattered. One more of particularly personal interest: The Death and Life of the Straight White Man’s Novel. (An eye roll here is warranted—“You’ve run the world for thousands of years, and now you’re feeling disenfranchised?” writes Francine Prose. But also consider the many young, white MAGA men who don't read. S'pose any of them would benefit from cracking a book every now and then?).

The point is a career in writing books is looking pretty gloomy, mired in a forecast that speaks less of hope than of crawling inside a hole.

So I thought maybe the universe was speaking to me, offering a warning. I was already aware that writing the book was half the struggle, publishing it would be the other half. But the most important battle, the one no one really talks about and perhaps, the only one that really matters, is the one that asks the question: Who fucking cares?

So, all that is to say, yes, I've finished the book. And what a bittersweet moment it is, to end something that has been a part of my life for so long, for so, so many years. Over twenty if I'm being honest. The first time I finished it– the real, proper first draft—came with tears a decade ago. This time, the emotion of typing The End feels more akin to saying good-bye to a relative, than, say, burying them. Because a novel is a thing to which writers give birth, we must then see it through the toddler years, and teenage years, and one day turn it out into the world as a young adult. It is, indeed, very hard to let go.

It's hard to be content with the fact that with any birth comes the knowledge that one day that person/thing will exist solely on its own. Living and breathing, perhaps, in some sense, but only in the minds and imaginations of those who are currently or have yet to read it. The fate for those characters is the same no matter. The future is over for them. They who have lived so vibrantly on the page, doing this and that, making plans, making mistakes, being frustrated and frustrating others with their coming and goings, their struggles, their yearning for longing, purpose and place. For them there is no tomorrow. Only now. And whatever conclusion you've written for them.

But I am filled with a heavy desire to get it out there, to push it out the door and see it thrive (or not) amongst the many other stories out there in the world. At this moment, however, I'm not going to do that. I will eventually, but for now the reasons to keep it close outweigh the reasons for letting it go (oh, how easy it is to return again and again that job of fulfilling one's heart).

For one, enough has changed from those early chapters that the book just flows differently now, which may be a disappointment to any of you who invested time reading the posted chapters only now to be told Not so fast. Start over. Here's Page 1 (which is why I've removed all previously published chapters). It could also be that one of those articles I shared above speaks directly to me, as perhaps it did to you. Maybe reading literature has become, as one of them suggests, less central to my life, shoved aside by an attention span that's held captive by the internet, or with work (which is... writing fiction?? wtf) or family affairs. Or a hundred different things.

I myself have found reading a book—especially for leisure—is easily pushed down. Way, way down. I am trying to change that now.

But the real main reason I am holding off on publishing the novel here is because something came about this past summer. Or more correctly, someone. A fellow writer, a poet, who has bought a house here in Sicily and has graciously offered to share it with her agent and publisher

(pause here for eye roll)

and while the question of why this would even appeal to me now, considering my own experience of working with the traditional method of publishing, is not one I take lightly, it is something I feel I must do. I feel this way partly because of those articles I shared above. Partly because of my own pride (who wouldn't want to hear that their work is good enough and meets or exceeds the professional standards set by, well, another breed of narcissist?). And partly because of the challenges self-publishing presents (imagine writing a letter to a lover and then stuffing those beautifully penned perfumed pages into a bottle and plopping that bottle into a choppy sea. That's what it can feel like to self-publish).

Everything I've read and shared here, plus my own experience, suggests that it doesn't really matter. The reader is gone. There is no one out there to reach, no one standing on the sea's other shore. So why bother trying?

Because I can't bear the silence? That only applies to the writing, not the sharing.

What about the peace of not publishing? Is sharing, as J. D. Salinger found, a terrible invasion of privacy? That publishing is a thing done through politics, friends, and natural stupidity, as the poet Charles Bukowski contends.

Or is it as the comedian Steve Martin insists: [For] me, there's no practicing; there's only editing and publishing or not publishing.

I don't know which is way is up, I only know that it feels as I've been practicing one without the other for a very, very long time and so maybe it's time to take a chance (once again) that the universe, when you want something badly enough, will conspires to bring it within reach.

Maybe the universe is the comedian. Or maybe it's just dopamine talking, which loves more than anything else in the world to discover that something is better than we had ever anticipated it would be. But those are, as they say, stories for another day.

... to be continued

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Hi there and happy Labor Day! In a time where the ideas of strength, prosperity and well-being are being re-written to apply only to some, not everyone, I hope you find on this occasion the chance to recognize and give tribute to your own contributions and achievements toward a better world. Tomorrow we can all return to sticking it to the man.

With summer drawing to a close (in case you were wondering if it does ever really do that here in Sicily, the answer is yes...but it retreats slowly, kindly, with compassion and understanding), I have just one short suggestion to add to your beach reading list.

I say beach reading, because though the category is very much open to interpretation and subject purely on taste, John Green books are not typically the type of story I would turn to unless I had a very strong reason– like the one I give below in my reading of A Fault in Our Stars. They're light and breezy, involving uncomplicated plots, somewhat stick-ish characterizations, all of which do a fine job of drawing the reader deeper into the story.

I read [A Fault in Our Stars] after my eldest daughter gushed over and over about it and I'm glad I did, but not for any real reason found in the book. Don't get me wrong it was all right. I enjoyed parts of the story and the characters seemed mostly very real to me, but like others who've commented I felt the dialogue was too much/ too heavy in parts (and in other parts dead on); I didn't care for the drunk Dutchman and his role; or fully understand the connection to Anne Frank (other than it was local). Pretty much, I think the back 1/3 of the book just wasn't as well written and developed as the first 2/3. 

Why I am glad I read it though is I believe Green did a very good job of injecting into the story (and thus into me, the reader) the yearning, heartbreaking, character-searching and angst-ridden soul of a teenager, offering a glimpse into the thoughts, aspirations and musings of my own precious teen. That's worth way more than any stars.

So we have some history, Green and I, for which I am profoundly grateful as it offered me a better understanding of and experience with someone very, very close and important to me, about a subject I personally thought just wasn't for me.

And really, you can't ask more of that from a book.

Everything is Tuberculous is different, as you can see from any of the comments written about it last spring when it was published:

• the Y.A. novelist describes the disease as a window into “the folly and brilliance and cruelty and compassion of humans.” – New York Times
• This highly readable call to action could not be more timely.– Kirkus Reviews
• The history of tuberculosis is the history of mankind – Science-based Medicine
• John Green Tackles An Injustice Called Tuberculosis — Forbes
• Finally, Bill Gates said of the book, "I don’t know anyone else who could turn a book about tuberculosis into a number one New York Times bestseller." You can read more of their in-depth and inspiring interview here.

I won't say more about it other than to echo my hopes that you'll follow my advice and read the book yourself. The story is one of urgency, written of this very moment, and woven in the same compelling manner that had such an impact on me years ago with A Fault in Our Stars, helping me to see into a problem of which I had no idea, and indeed, like many of you probably, thought had already been solved.

Discover more about Everything is Tuberculosus by John Green.

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Thanks for being here!

Alla prossima!

I've been reading a lot about nature lately. One speaks to the universal kind found out there under the big blue sky. Think trees and bodies of water. Overall our engagement with these environments is on the decline, but there is little in the way of argument that exposure to them is essential to our wellbeing.

The other is a nature of a purely human makeup, conditions for which there are numerous examples, both good and bad, for and against: 

It is human nature to think wisely and act in an absurd fashion.—Anatole France

Really I don't like human nature unless all candied over with art.—Virginia Wolfe

Human nature is above all things lazy.— Harriet Beecher Stowe

Subdue your appetites, my dears, and you've conquered human nature.— Charles Dickens 

Only now that I look over that list I see that they each stand firmly against, which says more about my state of mind than anything else, a fact influenced no doubt by one of the two books I’ve read recently, which begins with this disheartening quote: 

They were careless people, Tom and Daisy—they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.
— The Great Gatsby, F. Sctott Fitzgerald

The book is Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism, written by Sarah Wynn-Williams, a former director of public policy at Facebook. To know which side of the aisle she stands, Meta sued the author to prevent the book’s publication, which tells you all you need to know about the quality, and intent, of the nature encountered here.

In the authors own words: “When you have so many other people doing things for you professionally and personally, you stop taking responsibility for any of it.”

That says a lot, but I won’t go into detail here—there are much better things to spend our time on and trust me, I could write a solid week discussing my disappointment with capitalism—but only say that everyone on 1.) social media today or 2.) investing in an index fund (Meta) or 3.) is concerned with just how sorry of an experiment human civilization is shaping up to be, should read it. If you live your online life by mostly posting pictures of puppies for adoption or videos of people doing stupid shit, but otherwise bury your head in the sand you can skip it. 

But wait. The truth is we’d all likely be better off if we spent a little less time online, fretting over investments, and contemplating global states of affair—going so far as to even sticking our heads in the sand, perhaps. Or instead of sand, how about the forest (or sea), which is an argument supported by the other book I’ve been reading,The Nature Fix: Why Natures Makes Us Happier, Healthier and More Creative. As the author Florence Williams points out: “The human brain evolved outside, in a world filled with interesting things, but not an overwhelming number of interesting things”. 

Evolution favored early humans who could both stay on task and switch tasks when needed…. Our nimbleness in allocating our attention may be one of humanity’s greatest skills. — The Nature Fix

Indeed, we all suffer in some way from the same disease. That is an overwhelming number of interesting things all competing for our attention. 

Here’s more from Willaims: “Humans have brains that are sensitive to social and emotional stress and we always have. Perhaps what matters is not the source of the stress (looking at you, internet) but the ability to recover from it. This is a key point, because it’s perhaps what we’ve lost by giving up our connection to the night skies, the bracing air and the companionate chorus of birds.”

Which brings me to Muncibbeḍḍu. We had the chance this past weekend to take a two hour hike along the midline of Mount Etna and in so doing crossed three old lava flows. One from 2002, another from 1920s and the last from an eruption dating from around 1150.

Around every turn the walk reminded me of another book I’ve read since moving to Sicily and one that comes to mind her often. Awe: The New Science of Everyday Wonder and How It Can Transform Your Life, by Dacher Keltner. Specifically this quote: “Awe can make us feel that our life’s work is both less important than our default self makes it out to be and yet promising in purpose and possibility.”

Which might offer, if you were to ask me, the absolute necessary remedy for any and all careless people. 

The truth is we can pretty much do whatever we want with our time on this planet but nature will always outlive us, it will always (I imagine and hope) find a way to defend all the evils we could possibly throw at it. It’d be better for us and for it, too (though not essential), to nurture and foster as much pleasure, peace and comfort in and for one another while we’re here.

Here's a short clip of our walk on Etna. If you experience even the slightest sense of the awe we felt walking it while watching, I feel I will have done what I can to counter a few minutes of time spent feeding the greed machine of social media.

Thanks for being here.

Alla prossima!

Steve

So here we are, back in Sicily now these past couple of months, trying our best to return to some semblance of normalcy (walking the Camino has a way of making whatever felt normal before feel less so. Maybe even non-essential). It's a task neither too difficult nor too easy, just something to be done. Like running an errand on a busy day.

One of our children has been here with us so that's made it easier for us to tamp this feeling down, but now she has left and we are faced with the question: What's next? How does life change after walking the camino, if at all?

Summer though. Not really the best season for making changes. Am I right? Georgia O'Keefe once said that she spent summer doing nothing but waiting for herself to be herself again. And we get it. What might she say about summers in Sicily? Lampedusa compared it to the long glum winters of Russia.

If that dismal image weren't enough to put on hold any idea of meaningful work, he goes on to write: "if a Sicilian worked hard in any of those months he would expend energy enough for three; then water is either lacking altogether or has to be carried from so far that every drop is paid for by a drop of sweat; and then the rains, which are always tempestuous and set dry river beds to frenzy, drown beasts and men on the very spot where two weeks before both had been dying of thirst." 

So to put it simply, we're not, we're just not. The question of what might/could/should change is complicated enough with adding a plethora of sweat. So for the next few weeks we're planning to lay low, stay inside mostly, binge watching television, rearranging cabinets and drawers and such, and practicing guitar.

To inspire your own leisure time, we recommend the Leopard himself in this limited series.

That said, I won't be going away completely. I hope to have some more chapters soon of my novel, The Dead Lion, and more thoughts on turning 60.

Thanks for reading and for sticking with me. You may not believe it based on my publication schedule but writing and sharing my thoughts here brings me more pleasure than you can imagine. I am so very grateful that you each are a part of it.

Have a great rest of your summer!

Coda:

I feel the need now to balance Lampedusa's sour sense of summer with something a little more filled with love...

Alla prossima,

Steve

I’ll admit it, finishing the Camino has left me in a mental state of uncertainty. Both of us really. And maybe uncertainty is the wrong word. Because on the one hand we’d like nothing more than hurry into planning our next long, multiday walk so we can continue to enjoy the planning, anticipation and eventual routine of simply walking, day after day, living more like a pilgrim. And on the other we feel the call to continue in some form or fashion the long pause from the quotidian lives society demands, a disconnect from which walking the Camino and then provides. 

Perhaps pulled in two directions is a better way of thinking about our state of minds. To be sure, after completing such an endeavor, that last thing either of us want to do is to return to our lives exactly as they were before. Not that anything was wrong with life before the Camino (BC and AC, if you prefer) but even living in Sicily has come with its own drawbacks, downsides and challenges, many of which I've shared with you through this newsletter (with many more to come!).

What that looks like is anybody's guess. The only thing certain is that the two weeks we spent trekking across Spain was transformative in ways neither of us have really begun to digest. All we can say at the moment is we each feel different. Physically. Spiritually. Emotionally. And so taking time to better understand our experience from a practical perspective— How could we’ve taken better care of our feet? How could we reduce the weight we carried even further? —and also of reflective nature is appropriate—What did we learn about ourselves? How did this journey change us? How can we maintain the spirit of the Camino now that it’s over? 

And maybe that best explains the shapelessness to what we are presently feeling. A hesitation to not rush toward one thing or another, jumping from one task to another. But to let the day unravel slowly, let the questions arise, answers appear (or not). To not let our need to be always busy get in the way of allowing the world to reveal itself as it does on a slow, deliberate walk. Without haste. Without pressure or worry. Without fanfare or even much notice. To look up one moment as it turns into another and see the haze lift and something new be discovered.

More to come on this as our post-Camino lives unfold. I'm happy you're here. If anyone has specific questions about our Camino adventure please drop me a note or leave a comment. I'll do my best to answer it with as much clarity as possible.

One last note: You might recall, this walk was in celebration of our 3oth wedding anniversary—if you missed my tribute to Franca on our social media, here's a link to check it out. But because I'm not a huge or regular fan of posting there, I'd like to end today with a quote in her honor from one of her favorite books, The Little Prince, by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry:

"Love does not consist in gazing at each other, but in looking outward together in the same direction."

Thanks for sharing this journey with me. There is no one I would rather look outward with than you.
xoxoxo

Alla prossima

Hola, just a short hello from the Camino de Santiago. We are, as of this morning, on day nine of thirteen and while our time as pilgrims has been nothing short of amazing—hard and sometimes easy, dry and sometimes wet, uphill and downhill, thought provoking and mind-numbing, already whenever we think of the end that is fast approaching, our eyes fill with tears. It’s hard to explain so I won’t try. Just know that if someone were to ask us what one thing should they do in their lifetime we would say take a very long walk on the way to Santiago.

Here are some photos and links to Franca’s Instagram she’s been sharing each day.

Cheers! Back soon.

Day 1 Franca’s Instagram story

Day 2

Day 3

Day 4

Day 5

Day 6

Day 7

Day 8