The Third Camino

If you had told me a week ago that I would be walking across Portugal, I would have laughed at you.. aggressively.

A week ago, I was standing in Monaco, surrounded by yachts worth more than entire suburbs, trying to convince myself that I wanted a life that looked successful. It was a life filled with luxury hotels, networking events, opportunities, and all the things we’re told should make us happy. I wanted to be happy.

Instead, I had what can only be described as a minor emotional collapse. So, naturally, I booked a flight to Lisbon and decided to walk across a country again, as one does.

This is my third Camino.

Which raises a fair question – why would anyone voluntarily spend weeks carrying their life on their back, destroying their feet, questioning every decision they’ve ever made, and paying money for the privilege of suffering?

The truth is, I think I have always been walking.

Growing up, I used to walk seven kilometres to and from school most days. At the time, it wasn’t some beautiful spiritual pilgrimage, there was nothing romantic about it. I had an eating disorder and, whether I realised it or not, I was trying to disappear. Every kilometre felt earned and every step felt like I was somehow making myself better. Back then, I hated my body, a lot.

Somehow standing somewhere on a dusty road in Portugal with blisters on both feet and a backpack digging into my shoulders, I find myself feeling something very different, I am proud of it. Not because it is perfect or I am kind to it, but because of everything it has carried me through.

It has carried me through Afghanistan, Syria, Iraq, Mali, deserts, mountains, heartbreak, grief, hospital beds, panic attacks, delayed flights, lost homes, failed relationships, and more mistakes than I could ever count.

I still don’t always love my body, I am trying, but I respect it and perhaps that is more important. The funny thing about walking is that it strips away every distraction you normally use to avoid yourself.

When your only job is to put one foot in front of the other for eight hours a day, there is nowhere left to hide. Trust me, I have tried.

Every failed relationship eventually catches up with you, every mistake, every regret, every version of yourself you thought you were supposed to become. And, perhaps most of all, every person you have lost.

Grief has a habit of finding you out here, it appears when the road is quiet, when you see a tree that reminds you of them. It appears when there is nothing to listen to except your footsteps.

It appears when the scenery is so beautiful that you instinctively want to tell someone about it, only to remember that you can’t. My grandmother walks with me often, friends who should still be here walk with me too.

I have come to think that grief is simply love with nowhere left to go, so you carry it. You carry it over mountains and through towns, you carry it in the silence and in the conversations, you carry it for hundreds of kilometres, one horribly blistered foot after another.

I think that is one of the reasons people walk, not because they are trying to find themselves. I don’t actually think people find themselves on the Camino, I think they remember themselves.

Let’s be honest we already know who you are, we try too escape it. Walking simply removes all the noise that stops you from hearing it.

This Camino has forced me to confront something else, obviously because of the sensitive time it is –

I am profoundly indecisive, I don’t commit to anything, I don’t commit to cities, jobs, relationships, plans, etc etc. I am always looking over the horizon, convinced there might be something better waiting around the next corner.

And because of that, I have missed out on things that could have been beautiful. I have spent years bouncing between places, careers, dreams, and relationships. I have chased freedom so relentlessly that sometimes I have forgotten freedom comes with a cost.

Yet somehow, when I walk, I don’t let myself down. Every morning I wake up, I put on my backpack, I start moving and I keep going. There is something deeply comforting about that simplicity.

Two days ago someone said something to me that I have never forgotten. They looked at me and said, “The monster in you exists to protect yourself.”

At the time, I laughed. Now I know they were right, I have spent years building armour, humour became armour, movement became armour, distance became armour, chaos became armour.

If you keep moving, nobody can catch you, if you leave first, nobody can leave you. But grief has taught me something important, sometimes you need to learn how to be alone, not lonely, alone.

There is a difference.

I have spent years jumping in and out of relationships, trying to fill spaces inside myself that were never going to be filled by another person.

The Camino reminds me that there is another way, you can sit with yourself, you can survive your own company, you can learn that solitude is not the same thing as abandonment. In fact, sometimes it is where healing begins.

The real magic of walking isn’t the churches, the cathedrals, or the certificate waiting at the end. It is the people. It is the retired American who has walked every Camino route in Europe 8 times. It is the Canadian widow learning how to build a life after loss. It is the twenty-year-old who has absolutely no idea what they are doing. It is the seventy-year-old who somehow seems to understand everything.

These are people I would never meet in ordinary life.

The Camino removes the labels we spend so much time building around ourselves, nobody cares what your job is, nobody cares how much money you make, nobody cares what car you drive.

I think that is why I keep coming back because walking makes sense and life often doesn’t. You realise how temporary and small you are. You become part of something much older, much larger, and much more important than yourself.

Soon, I will return to Australia permanently, a country I have spent years leaving that frustrates me endlessly. A country that can sometimes feel too familiar after a decade spent chasing the unfamiliar, but it is also home. It is flawed, imperfect, frustrating, beautiful home.

Maybe growing older means accepting that your roots can run deep while still allowing yourself to wander.

Or perhaps I am simply an ageing wolf with sore feet, commitment issues, and an inability to sit still, trying to make sense of the world one kilometre at a time. Either way, tomorrow I will wake up, put on my backpack, and start walking again.

And for now, that feels like enough.