Newsletter Number Twenty
A look back on the Camino, and the subsequent creative Camino I embarked on in documenting it. Each a journey in itself, with comparable inputs and rewards. And now they're done, it's time to move on
My Camino and subsequent regaling of it has concluded just in time for Christmas and the end of the year.
Thank you to anyone who has joined me, in stages or in reading the whole thing.
There’s still an awful lot to put into words and share, though this creative process has helped me digest and reflect on the whole thing in an unsually complimentary manner.
I’m going to take a break from writing over Christmas (and maybe get back to walking), though I’ve great plans for the new year which I can’t wait to share with you.
I hope you’ll join me, so subscribe now if you haven’t already, or please do share with anyone you think might enjoy my writing.
I’d also love to hear from any of you who’ve read and have any observations, thoughts or experiences of the Camino or any travel they’ve done - I read and reply to everything and love getting messages.
It’s funny how quickly you forget about something once you no longer once you no longer have any need for it to dominate your attention.
For weeks following my return home from the Camino de Santiago all I could think about was the Camino, mainly because as soon as I got home I undertook a second Camino of sorts: a creative project to document and share the whole experience through writing, photos and videos. It was a project which involved writing 40-something daily essays and short stories – one for each day of the Camino – as well as 50+ Instagram posts, and going through, editing and uploading hours of videos of me talking to myself.
The work involved came to be a physical and mental challenge comparable to walking 20 to 30km per day, one which required just as much purpose and drive to complete, though also with similarly rewarding outcomes.
It became apparent within days of writing and sharing the stories of the Camino that the experience of this second project would mirror that of walking almost 900 kilometres across the north of Spain, from the anticipation of the night before my departure from St Jean, to settling into a steady routine of daily repetition of simple tasks, to grinding out the days of work along the middle section with no end in sight, driven only by a sense of purpose that at this stage had been mechanically internalised into my every waking moment. I woke up and I wrote, and I shared, without having to think about it much, and all other priorities (including, ironically or perhaps appropriately, even walking – I barely left the house other than to work and would drive to the shops because of the time constraints of writing and publishing every day).
I say this not to pat myself on the back, simply to draw attention to the rather incredible phenomenon of how the experience of writing and sharing my Camino diaries felt not just like a trip down memory lane, or an epilogue to the adventure, but an entire journey in itself – and one with comparable levels of effort input and rewards in following through with and completing it.
The creative process has helped me to integrate and internalise much of what I experienced on the trip, as did the process of writing and documenting the trip as I went. The purpose of an artist’s work, whether writer or practitioner of some other medium, is not just to describe the world as they see it, but to make sense of it for themselves in the first place. Writing is a useful tool for this, even if it is never to be shared with the world.
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In doing the Camino I set out to explore in practice many of the ideas I’ve been writing about over the past number of years – the effects that travel, adventure and exploration have on our internal states – and to document the process.
The project was incredibly fun and rewarding in itself, but now with a few days of hindsight I can see that it was a means rather than an end.
And when I say it, I mean both the physical Camino and creative projects as a whole, and individually, as each one embodied an entire journey in itself, but each one also seeming to lean a bit more one way or the other in terms of how they embodied the twin archetypes of transcendent growth: death and rebirth, chaos and order, self-destruction and self-creation. They were also inseparable, one obviously based on another – but then, all the journeys and stories of our lives are.
It was actually quite trippy to experience the journey happening on this deep level again, over a similar time period – and also to see the distance in retrospect between myself on Day 1 and on Day 40 of each respective trip.
These were two stories in themselves, and they embodied everything it is about travel and adventure that I sought to explore. It may seem like the stories and compilation of diary entries, Instagram posts and videos are the creative fruits and products of the trip – and they are ends, in themselves – but they are also only means.
A good story raises more questions than it answers.
The Camino is done now, and it’s fading into memory.
As one story ends, many more begin, and it’s now time to put the pieces of these stories into place in the wider context of things I’m working on – though there’s time for all of that in the new year. For now, a much-needed (deserved, also, if you don’t mind me saying) break.
I’d like to warmly thank everyone who’s followed along reading, whether drawn by the Camino or from before. I appreciate anyone reading it, and hope you find something entertaining or thought-provoking in each story or essay I share, and also greatly appreciate anyone who’s left comments or feedback – it’s always great to hear different perspectives on things I’m thinking about.
I’ve loads more coming in 2022, where I hope to get back to the more regular format I began this newsletter with, as well as much more besides.
Until then,
May ye all have a Happy Christmas,
Gav
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