What is your perspective on this rather metaphysical question?

[Former member 91017]

So Faye, plse bear with me on this - as I've only read this thread this evening and it's still running around inside my head.
Spain and living on/near the camino can provide the simpler routine and the proximity to the depth of the cultures/history that you value. Yes.
But given what you say above, maybe the next question is about what the Due Diligence looks like regarding the attitudes (in your chosen locality) of institutions and people towards difference and outsiders?
All the positives won't count for enough if it turns out people and services are hostile and difficult.
We know Spain can be typed as parochial and hidebound, tied to past conflicts and traditions. So how do you as an incomer tackle that and unlock the good side of folk - and fit in? (making delicious pastries will certainly help...).
But maybe that's a question for another thread...
I'm on your side, really!

This is why my first long-term effort will be solo reconnaissance.
Where I benefit is that I have a one-way ticket to give me an open-ended return. If Beloved Boy cannot manage without me, I can turn around and come back and do my work with students in Granada remotely. If he can get by without me I can stay in Spain until the sabbatical duties end… and we can talk about the benefits of living somewhere that would not be just “getting by”.
I’d like to find a place where we can do better than “managing” as the *best* option and swirling the drain as the more common mode.

 

[David Tallan]

Just wondering... have you tried to walk a 'pilgrimage' through Ontario? If not, I hear there is this thing called the Bruce Trail. It could provide a new perspective on where you are now. Or maybe a kind of farewell to the situation you will leave behind, that prefigures the new life you mean to follow.
Best wishes, tom

Speaking as an Ontarian, the Bruce Trail, wonderful as it is, isn't really a substitute for the Camino experience. It does have the length. At 900 km, it isn't that far off a walk from SJPP to Finisterre. But it lacks the infrastructure. It doesn't even seem to have the infrastructure to support a through hike that the major American trails like the AT and PCT have, with available camping areas few and far between. With no albergues, every night would be looking at a hotel or bed and breakfast and subject to their availability It is really set up for section hiking. There are quite a few people who have hiked the whole thing, but they seem mostly to do it section after section, rather than as a through hike. And with Covid, they are calling for people not to attempt to thru-hike and are advising that even the Club Section End-to-End hikes are likely not to happen this year.

 

[peregrino_tom]

Speaking as an Ontarian, the Bruce Trail, wonderful as it is, isn't really a substitute for the Camino experience.

Fair enough. I was winging it and it was late when I wrote. I was thinking about the Spanish pilgrims I've met along the Way (at least those that walked some distance, not just starting in Sarria). So many have seemed to be surprised - in a good way - about what they found out about their own people and country. But for sure, Ontario doesn't currently look like it has the right ingredients (for that kind of fresh meditation on the state of things around one) to work.
Reckon I could pitch it to Hollywood though: think Cheryl Strayed's Wild blended with Robert Redford in A Walk in the Woods - yeah?