Notes from My Camino Part 1: The Gift of Spaciousness

Notes from My Camino: The Gift of Spaciousness

Hard to Sum Up in a Sound Bite

When people ask me, "How was your Camino?" I don't have a simple answer. It was a multilayered experience that I'm still processing.

I spent more than two weeks walking over 225 miles across northern Spain on the Camino Primitivo, one of the ancient pilgrimage routes to Santiago de Compostela. For more than 1,200 years, pilgrims have walked these routes, originally for religious reasons. Today, people come for many purposes: reflection, healing, physical challenge, spiritual seeking, or simply the chance to step away from everyday life and reconnect with themselves.

I came home with pages of journal notes, hours of voice recordings, and many stories I'm still trying to integrate. Walking for several hours each day gave me uninterrupted time for thinking, feeling, meditating, praying, and simply being.

One Word Says It All

One word captures this journey better than any other: spaciousness. Not just physical space, but emotional, mental, and spiritual spaciousness. Even more specifically, it became a journey within my Camino to learn how to receive that spaciousness.

Before leaving for Spain on June 5, life had become kind of insane. I had to submit the final draft of my third book by June 1st. I made the deadline, but it was painful. I also trained for Hyrox, and my partner and I won our age group at the New York City Hyrox during the last week of May. That was a different kind of pain—but also joyful. Finally, because I was going to be away for a month, May was packed with client commitments to make the gap as seamless as possible for everyone. And, as we all know, living in New York City automatically earns you membership in the "I'm really busy" club.

Then suddenly, I was sitting in my hotel room in a small village in Spain at three o’clock in the afternoon with nowhere to go and nothing I needed to do. And I found that surprisingly awkward and uncomfortable: even though it was the very thing I had been craving for months.

In those first several days, I found myself analyzing how well I was "accomplishing" my Camino and looking for ways to fill the hours after each day's walk. I read. I wrote. I explored my surroundings. And I'm embarrassed to admit that, on day three, lingering thoughts about whether I was being productive enough led me to watch a LinkedIn tutorial on persuasion techniques. I couldn't easily let go of my instinct to optimize the experience. It took me nearly a week to stop treating the Camino like another project. Only then did I begin to receive the spaciousness I had come looking for.

After a week, something shifted profoundly. I became fully present in my own experience. I'll never forget the morning I left Berducedo just after sunrise. My feet felt good. (Feet are a key factor on any Camino.) The air was still cool. The landscape was impossibly green and lush. I could hear birdsong that seemed to surround me like an orchestra. Nothing extraordinary was happening. And yet, everything felt extraordinary. It was as though the world opened up, my defenses lowered, and I felt fully alive.

I also became more open and curious about connecting with other pilgrims. Instead of rushing on after my coffee breaks, I found myself lingering, curious about where people had come from and what had brought them on this ancient journey.

Nothing In My Ears

A decision I made at the beginning of the Camino also made this spaciousness more possible. At home, my default speed is fast (understatement) from one thing to the next. Even during moments of quiet, I fill the space: a podcast, an audiobook, a quick phone call. I'm almost always seeking something to engage with.

On the Camino, I walked without headphones, listening instead to birds, cowbells, my footsteps, and eventually my own thoughts and emotions. The silence wasn't empty. It was full. And it was remarkably easy to fall into a deeply meditative place simply by walking and listening to everything around me.

I walked mostly in noble silence. That was a choice. Sometimes I'd walk short distances with other pilgrims. But my rhythm was to walk alone and connect with others over coffee and snacks along the way.

Ordinary Things Became Extraordinary

Another surprise of the Camino was how attached I became to a meal I never eat at home: breakfast. It bordered on ridiculous how much I looked forward to it every day. Every morning brought a small mystery. What would breakfast be today? Eggs? Toast and jam? Fruit? Yogurt? And always at least one café con leche. There was something deeply satisfying about that simple ritual. I wasn't rushing through a morning coffee while checking emails or planning the day ahead. I was simply there, eating, enjoying, and receiving.

And this sense of the ordinary becoming extraordinary extended to my walking snacks. Nuts and fruit on the trail tasted extraordinary. I can still remember the simple joy of eating a bag of cherries while wandering along the Camino through the hills of Galicia.

The Camino reminded me that I don't always need more exceptional experiences. I just need to develop the habit of paying closer attention to the ordinary ones already available to me. Perhaps paying attention doesn't begin with extraordinary moments. Perhaps it begins with breakfast.

Losing My iPhone

One of the more unexpected gifts of the Camino came on the day I left my iPhone in a taxi. After a nanosecond of total panic, I became remarkably calm and focused on solving the problem. (I am positive that's my ADHD in action.) A local veterinarian stopped and drove me back to the café where the taxi had picked me up.

While I waited for my iphone to find its way back to me via another taxi driver (don't ask), I ordered a café con leche. I had several hours to wait and nothing to read, nothing to scroll, nothing to check. I simply watched life unfold around me. People bought groceries. Ran errands. A few pilgrims wandered past. I sat there with my coffee, doing absolutely nothing.

It made me wonder: when was the last time I had been genuinely deviceless for a few hours? Not because my phone was charging in another room, but because I simply couldn't reach for it. Sitting at that café for three hours became an unexpected master class in doing nothing.

What surprised me wasn't how much I missed my phone. What surprised me was how often I reached for a phone that wasn't there.

This isn't a lecture about phones. Mine allowed me to navigate the logistics of my Camino, call my 88-year-old mother every day, and share photos with my 97-year-old mother-in-law so she could experience a little of the Camino along with me. But those three hours reminded me that every open moment doesn't need to be filled. Losing my phone became one more unexpected lesson in receiving spaciousness rather than filling it.

Arriving in Santiago

By the time I reached Santiago de Compostela, I expected to feel relief. Instead, I felt a surprising reluctance for the journey to end. I could have kept walking. I felt like I had more to explore in every sense of the word. I had planned to spend a couple of days in Santiago before flying to England, imagining them as recovery days. Instead, they became part of the pilgrimage.

Every morning I ran through the quiet streets before the city woke up. I attended the pageant-filled Pilgrims' Mass several times. Then I wandered. I ambled through the Cathedral Museum, the Portico de la Gloria, San Martiño Pinario—the second-largest monastery in Spain—and other historic spaces with no agenda beyond paying attention. What surprised me most was how deeply I was moved by the art and architecture. I don't think I've ever looked at art that way before.

I've thought about that often since coming home. Could two weeks of walking really change the way I experienced the beauty of art? I lingered longer. I noticed more. I appreciated more. I felt more—from the carved stone faces on the Portico de la Gloria to the immense scale and ornateness of the church inside San Martiño Pinario. The Camino had taught me to receive rather than simply consume an experience.

Coming Home

As I write this, I'm still integrating my Camino experience. I'm rereading my journal entries and listening to voice memos recorded while walking through Asturias and Galicia. I suspect I'll be making sense of my time in Spain for a long while to come. It's all still unfolding.

What I already know is this: the greatest gift I brought home wasn't spaciousness. It was the ability to receive spaciousness. Spaciousness to hear birdsong, to savor breakfast, to sit quietly with a café con leche, to linger in front of a work of art, and to let silence do some of the teaching.

Since returning home, I've noticed myself allowing conversations to unfold more naturally, listening with less urgency, and feeling less pressure to decide what comes next. I've also found myself bringing greater patience and grace to the elders in my life, meeting them where they are instead of rushing them along. These aren't dramatic changes. Or perhaps they are.

I hope the spaciousness I found on the Camino stays with me. I plan to keep practicing what I learned. For now, I'm simply grateful to have experienced it, and even more grateful to know it's something I can continue to cultivate at home.

Over the next couple of newsletters, I'd like to share more stories from my Camino. Not because I think everyone should walk across northern Spain, but because I suspect many of us are searching for the same things in different ways.