I'm just trying to walk myself home.
Hi friends, A couple of weeks ago we sang Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing in church, a song which I have long loved. It has always been my sister’s favorite hymn, and lately it is Mary Polly’s as well. The phrase “prone to wander” always grabs me, but this time around I held to …
Recently, a fellow writer suggested that I try to dig at the root of what has made me a traveler. Where did I get my love of the outdoors? How did I become a wanderer? As I have explored these questions through scribbles in notebooks and looked for answers to why I mark the calendar months by …
Just popping in today with a little poster of a verse I painted to send to Cole at camp this week. I mentioned last Friday that Ephesians 3:20 is the verse I’m praying for our family and for our world right now, and I always find it helpful to have a little visual reminder. You can download …
Chasing Daylight in August: Cruden Bay in the Rain Friday night, 11 pm The chance for rain had gone up to 90%. Taido had been checking the weather hourly all evening, watching the increase from a 10% chance to “almost certainly it’s going to rain.” Now he was feeling uncertain about our plans for a …
This time of year always feels more like New Year’s to me than January 1st. I think it has to do with how many new beginnings happen around the end of August and beginning of September. We’ve had a lot of those in the last month. I dropped Cole off at a camp in the Highlands …
Happy September, y’all! I wrote “Birthday Walk” on my challenge this month because in addition to the fact that it is my birthday month, September is a month I celebrate the births of many people that I love a lot, including my mama, my hubs, my sis-in-law and some sweet friends. The weather turned cold here last …
I received an email from a reader referencing an old post I wrote about hearing Brene Brown talk about fear. I wrote it when I was getting ready to move overseas and I was feeling very afraid. It was so good for me to re-read it that I decided to paint these words again to …
THE WAY: Summary Of Writing From Sarria to Santiago Friends, thank you so much for walking this pilgrimage with me! It has been a joy to share the adventure with you. I’ve enjoyed writing about our time on the Camino. For me, it’s like re-living the beautiful days on the trail to write about them. …
On the Camino de Santiago, lots of folks head off to a place called Finisterre after reaching Santiago. There is a tradition of going to the sea to unburden yourself of your belongings. It’s a second and more final ending to your journey. But we really just wanted a day by the sea. So when …
I’m reaching the end of my stories and snippets from the Camino de Santiago, and I feel similar to how I felt about finishing the journey in June. A little sad. The treasure in blogging is that I get to relive the memories as I tell the stories. And the princesses have relived them with me. …
LynEtte, Alison, Stephanie and Diane. We declared ourselves to be pilgrims on the road to Santiago. But before we ever started out on the trail, we had a hunch that we were taking The Way a little easier than most. (Camino Lightweights, if you will.) For starters, we were only doing the last stage, by …
Live The Way: Make Friends Jerry, come and have a look at these girls. They already have their seashells on their packs and they haven’t walked one step of the Camino yet. They’ve already been to the Pilgrims’ Mass! Two brothers, ages 67 and 70, had completed all but the last stage of the Camino …
An ode to the food along the Camino de Santiago! The last stage of The Way is in Galicia, a region of Spain known for fresh seafood and red table wine. We tried loads of new foods on our adventure and we definitely found a few new favorites. The octopus is a local specialty. As is the …
In every bakery window in Santiago you can spot a Tarta de Santiago, a light almond cake that has the cross of St James dusted on top with icing sugar. You can buy boxes of these cakes to take home to your family and friends (I did!) but they tasted better right on the street …
We took our Camino Theme of Live The Way to heart when it came to stopping for photographs. We felt the freedom to stop for anything along the trail that we felt was beautiful. After years of walking trails with the men in my life, being able to stop whenever I feel like it is a …
While walking along The Way, every night we needed somewhere to sleep. A place to lay our heads and rest our weary bones. Sometimes it was a cabin on a farm, set back from the farmer’s vineyard and vegetable garden. And then he would feed us from his farm. Sometimes it was a room with a sunset view …
I’ve already mentioned that part of how we embraced our theme of Live The Way was that we stopped constantly. On our third day, we had fewer miles to cover so we just meandered from one stop to the next, and were treated with wonderful surprises all day long. This is the story of Day …
Ringing bells call pilgrims to the Cathedral in Santiago de Compostela. From east, west, north, south the doors are open and the people pour in. The church fills more bodies than seats. Folks wander and wonder looking up and spinning around taking photos taking it all in. People start settling against columns and along walls. …
If there is a better-marked trail in the world than the Camino de Santiago, I would love to know about it. The seashells, crosses and yellow arrows appear constantly along the path. You can see them on the ground. They are crafted with mosaics or set into paving stones. They are painted on signs for …
Your credencial or the Pilgrim’s Passport is an essential part of walking The Way. We were told that we would need our first stamp from one of the three churches in Sarria, where we were beginning our journey. Up on a hill we found a monastery, a place for pilgrims to worship and pray, as well …