The experience that influenced my husband Rich and I the most in deciding to walk the Camino de Santiago was watching the movie The Way, starring Martin Sheen and written, directed and produced by his son Emilio Estevez. We’d heard about the Camino from a number of people, one of whom has always wanted to walk it and never will, but I don’t remember how we found out about the movie. Regardless, this movie was a life-changer. After we finished viewing it we turned to each other and rather to my shock both agreed that this was something we wanted to do. As luck would have it, Rich had learned that he would receive a year’s sabbatical starting in the Fall of 2017, which also corresponded with our youngest child leaving to go to college. And so our plans were born!
Two weeks ago my sister Sally texted me. She wrote “Reading I’ll Push You about friends on the Camino. Really good!”.
I had been aware that there was a documentary about these two friends, one of whom is in a wheel chair. It’s kind of a legend along the route, but the film came out after we walked in 2017. So last week I got the book for free from the library and read it and it has been reverberating around my mind ever since. What an incredible story. And even more incredible to me because I can picture the exact hills that they are climbing and know how difficult their path was.
But I have to say the book gets the truth of the Camino. I encourage anyone to read the book or watch the documentary. To me the Camino is about the people – the shared experience, the helping hands, the self-discovery, and listening to what God has been trying to get you to hear.
And finally, one more film that seems to capture the “why” of the Camino is the documentary The Camino Voyage. An inspiring story of four Irishmen doing their version of the Celtic Camino by rowing their boat from Ireland to Northern Spain over 3 years.
I looked up the official statistics for 2019 that are produced by the pilgrim’s office in Santiago. Last year 327,281 pilgrims arrived by foot; 19,563 by bicycle; 406 by horse; 243 by boat; and 85 by wheelchair. Amazing!