For those who have experienced the magic of the Camino, there is a natural desire to find ways to remain connected and with it, maybe a sense of loss once you return home. What was your magic? Was it the people you met? The beauty of the path you walked? The solitude? The chance to slow down your busy life and just be responsible for getting to your destination, finding food, be good, do good? Was it only something you could find on your pilgrimage? Or is there a way to bring that into your daily life.
For those of us who are retired, I think it’s relatively easy to begin planning next year’s Camino – we have the time, we know we can go back, at least for a number of years. For others, it may not be possible every year, for a variety of reasons and responsibilities. But for those of us for whom the Camino was (and continues to be) meaningful, we do want to keep it present in our day-to-day lives, and the other posters have given some very useful suggestions.
For me, I like to think of the Camino as a “practice” for my day-to-day life – much the same way that I think of yoga, and yoga as a metaphor for life. I have been practicing yoga now for over 15 years, it is a practice – something you keep working at, but not just to perfect an asana, it is not just what you do on your mat, it’s about how you live your life. It’s relatively easy to feel “spiritual” experiencing the glow after completing a yoga practice, but if you can’t bring that into your daily life, it’s really just a kind of physical gymnastics. Are your poses on the mat beautiful and are you kind to the other students in your class? But then when you leave the studio, do you berate the clerk at the grocery store? The guru can go live in a mountain cave and live a pure life, but most of us have to return to our day-to-day life filled with obligations and responsibilities, and how do we bring the lessons we learn in yoga into our daily lives, and live our yoga off the mat?
I feel that my Camino was a lot like that – lessons learned, mostly about myself, that I must bring back to my day-to-day life. It is its own kind of "practice". We have the time to think about it, to be honest with ourselves as we spend time on the path, and when we are back home, try to integrate these lessons into our daily life. So that’s one way I try to keep that magic alive, to remind myself how I want to live my day-to-day life, and to come back to “be good, do good, open your heart to beauty”.
My first Camino was on the Norte and Primitivo, finishing in Finisterre/Muxia. It was in spring, and I was totally unprepared for the pure beauty of each day, each minute of my walk. I came to appreciate the beauty of starting early to experience the morning light and dawn breaking, marveling at nature’s beauty. Seeing the picture Sssnek posted of that desiccated sunflower field, there is beauty and majesty there too (and I'm thinking, just a little gratitude not to have had to experience that heat!). I made a small number of friends on my Camino, we stay in touch periodically as time permits, and that helps too; as does spending time on this Forum. But mine was not a particularly “social” Camino – I was not part of a “Camino Family” – I know for some, that’s a huge part of their Camino experience, so I leave it to them as to how to maintain that connection – but I imagine that is part of what people are getting at when they suggest joining local Camino organizations.
I try to walk every day – and in each walk, I try to remind myself that there is beauty everywhere if you just open your heart to it – I don’t need to wait until I’m on the Camino to find it. I look back at my pictures from my Camino, and so many capture that fleeting moment of beauty, whether a poppy backlit by the sun, a glittering sea, a rooster crowing on a rose covered perch, the rising sun shining its rays finger-like into the thinning mist, dew dripping from a wire fence, or just two pilgrims up the road ahead. At home, I walk the roads and wooded paths, reminding myself to enjoy this fleeting beauty and to open my heart to all that joy, and on my really long walks, to let go of the fatigue and focus on just moving forward – to find a bit of the Camino here, to savor every moment, and to know that it’s why I will return to walk the Camino again and again, until I can’t.
