Flutes and French

I was thinking about my friend Diana the other day, because of another E flute I have acquired. This one comes with a Raven.

Whenever I head out on a bit of a wander, I lug my flute around.  I never play it.  Or hardly ever.  I think about it a lot, and I carry it.  It's kind of like the French that runs around in my head.  It's a lot like the French that runs around in my head, actually.

My maternal grandmothers (the 10th great-grandmothers mostly) collided with Champlain and his men at Tadoussac, and Port Royal, and Trois Riviere, and Nippissing:  creating a complicated Metis geneology that pre-dates me by 500 years. Tragically, I am the first generation in 500 years that does not speak French. I understand French, sort of, if people go slow.  But I am mute when asked to speak.

I was thinking of Diana today because I'm lugging my flute again.  This time I'm travelling in Newfoundland.

I met Diana because of needing to figure out how I might play my first flute, the one with the eagle carving that I carried all through Spain while walking the Camino.  I tried to play a bit back then and planned to go to Diana to be taught.

Then before I went to Zimbabwe in 2011, I spoke with Diana again.  I knew I would bring my E Flute with me but I was also quite desperate to have a little A flute to bring too - one that would be better for my small hands.  I pestered Diana about it, in fact. 

Diana gave me an A flute.  I carried it with me but I didn't play that one either. 

Instead I gave it to Tonganai.  Tonganai is a very different man than most. He is, some might say, a schizophrenic.  But in the rural part of Zimbabwe there are no institutions, and no diagnosis or treatment of such things. 

So Tonganai simply is.  He used to be a math teacher, and now he is not. 

Tonganai is a  fast-talking, fast-thinking human being.  He's hard to follow. He is sometimes very close, and a tad bit frightening.  He gets agitated.  He believes in things that I can't see and hears things that I can't hear. 

Just before I left Tonganai came to my room with a gift he had made for me: a hand-made guitar made of scrap material, held together with bent iron from a railing and amplified by an empty beer can.  He played and sang to me. I have never been given such a beautiful gift.  Not ever.

It was hard to know what to say to Tonganai when he asked me to marry him and told me that no-one could love me the way that he did.  I have the love letters to prove it.  I told Tonganai that he was right - no one else has ever loved me that way.

And so I gave him the A flute. Tonganai understood the A flute completely and immediately began to play it as though he had played it all his life.  It was easy for him.

Maybe I will be able to master both my flutes and my French someday. Time will tell.  It's on the list.

Doing Nothing

The Camino Letters continues on in my absence.  I am older.  Malakai is all grown up.  What an amazing child she is.  She has been, since day one, a very wise one.

I get emails from readers in response to the book, I respond.



And the bits of magic that sometimes spark into daily life continue on.

The Camino was really just something that happened to me in the middle of the rest of it.  And in those particular days, with those particular feelings and circumstances, I happened to write some letters to some friends. A point in time.  A speck of dust.  A note struck each day, before the day passed to the next.

Some of those friends have died, or are dying, and time marches...  it does, with all of its ache and joy and endings.

It's important not to be stuck, as Proud Woman taught.  Remain slick, not sticky, so that things fall as they should. 

When a Bird Falls from the Sky

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There are some stories that just need to hang for a while – as threads and beginnings of the same fugal looping of life, and the inexplicable moments that sometimes come in small and blinding flashes.

The story of the hawk that was in my freezer when I returned from the Camino is a long story. I knew what it was, and I had been told what I was to do with it.

But I don’t climb high, that is not something that I do.

That hawk stayed in the freezer until after I happened upon an eagle one warm June day in 2010, when I was out for a walk in the woods searching for a railway tunnel with my friends Harold and Marleen,

These birds, these birds.

Harold was my witness, he said so.

And then there is the strange and almost-not-believable story of a book club and a little brown thrush, feet crossed on the threshold with a still-vibrating warmth in its belly.

What?   I said as I turned to face her.

Is she alive?  She said.

Did you know her?  I said.

Yes.  She said.  A long time ago.  

Did my first feather come from your hawk?  I said.  

Yes.

A Poem Sent by Kate

When you travel,

A new silence

Goes with you,

And if you listen,

You will hear

What your heart would

Love to say.

A journey can become a sacred thing:

Make sure, before you go,

To take the time

To bless your going forth,

To free your heart of ballast

So that the compass of your soul

Might direct you toward

The territories of spirit

Where you will discover

More of your hidden life,

And the urgencies

That deserve to claim you.

May you travel in an awakened way,

Gathered wisely into your inner ground;

That you may not waste the invitations

Which wait along the way to transform you.

May you travel safely, arrive refreshed,

And live your time away to its fullest;

Return home more enriched, and free

To balance the gift of days which call you.

(credit - John O'Donohue - thank you Kate!)

The arrival of this poem made me think of this ...
a bronze from the Alto del Perdon
Camino de Santiago

Day 4, Chapter 4, Letter to Ted

Reading Out Loud

Listen to an interview with Mary Ito on CBC Fresh Air on the morning of the performance http://www.cbc.ca/freshair/2010/11/saturday-nov-27.html

And look at these gorgeous photos taken by Wayne Eardley. This what it looks like to read the letters out loud as a call and response with Ravi and Ernie, and Besharah, as if one might be a whale, as if one believed in frozen music...

At the end of the evening,  Ravi's father quoted Einstein to me:

"No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it. "

For those who have read the book, this would be the math solution I've been looking for.  Ravi's father is a math professor and knows of what he speaks.

It was an amazing night.

Getting Ready to Play with Ravi Again

THE CAMINO LETTERS in PERFORMANCE

Saturday, November 27^th, 2010, 7:30 p.m.

Trinity-St. Paul’s Centre, Toronto, Ontario

I drove to Toronto in the rain this morning to drink cappucino with Ravi and finish planning for Saturday. And so the countdown has begun...  

Today was only the third or fourth time I've seen Ravi since I got back from Spain with my letters.  Before that I hadn't seen him since we were teenagers, but I was thinking of him because of a huge butterfly I wrote about in Chapter 2.  Ravi and I also used to float toothpicks down the melting rivers in the street in the spring.  I remember that, and I remember that sometimes we whispered about magic - though not very often.

I hope Ravi's mom and dad are able to come on Saturday because both of mine are gone. Ravi's mom remembers my great big butterfly right down to the last detail - I remember that it was black and white, she remembers that it also had yellow on the inner part of its wings.  It was as huge and wondrous as I remember from when I was six - I know that because she told me so. Ravi's mom believes in magic too, I think, and she was my mom's friend.

Yesterday, I spent the afternoon with Lizzie and her band Besharah.  Lizzie and I travel around in a grown-up version of connect the dots - that's what Lizzie and I do.   And so I met Brandon and Carey and Saskia for the first time and, driving home, I realized that I will never be the same after being in their company with the music that they are wrapping around my letters.  I think Saskia and I would agree that it's about the fugual nature of things, but that is another story that you will need to hear in music rather than words.

None of this is part of my plan for my life.  I've never stood on a stage anywhere.  I didn't do theatre when I was young.  I can't sing to save my life.  If you had told me a year ago that this - all of this - would be the life I was living I would have said:  Never.  Not ever.  Not me.

I stand and talk all the time as a lawyer. But I face in one direction and I say planned and scripted words, crafted for a specific purpose and offered to the judge sitting ahead and up high.  What I'm doing with Ravi on Saturday is not that.  That's for sure. 

I can't wait to see what magic Ravi and I are going to make this time, with new friends, floating along once again on our little toothpick boats.

Showing Up ...

When I was planning this little book tour, intending to hop and skip west from Saskatoon, there were some people who thought I was a bit silly to organize myself simply by convincing a few people in each city to invite me into their space (bookstores and churches mostly).  All I really planned to do was show up with my letters and read.  And guess what?  A whole pile of other people - sometimes the most surprising people - showed up too.

Resting in the Company of Older Women

I was reading today in Calgary, where I am staying with Marty's sister Anne and her husband Ken.

At dinner tonight with Anne and her dear friends, Pat and Maureen, I basked in the company of beautiful women, older and wiser than me.  I'm learning to rest in the company of older women, that is something that I am learning to do. 

Men too.  Ken didn't come to any of my readings, but he quietly and perfectly tied up my Calgary time in a small, simple, bow by reading to me from Ulysses in his kitchen: 

To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield....

Saskatoon Winter in October

There is snow here in Saskatoon which is a bit of a surprise since it was about 18 degrees at home the other day. I brought almost all my shoes with me but didn't bring the right boots. Oh well.

There are many things that are surprising about Saskatoon - the river, for example with its lovely bridges. And the Mendel gallery. And my nephew's Steven's grown up life, with his beautiful wife and their baby Sonia born last year just before my dad died.

Here I am being hosted and fed by the little boy I used to babysit. He's driving me around Saskatoon in his big white Land Rover. Steven needs a Land Rover because he is doing amazingly interesting things up north. He's a senior archeologist for a company based in Calgary, and also a Ph.D. student. He travels about, flies into places, drives over bodies of water, meets with elders, dives into bear caves, and so on.

I was a happy auntie driving back from a book signing at McNally Robinson with my nephew in the white Land Rover, with white snow on the ground.

And then there was the 1997 white Westfalia with a for sale sign gleaming at us in the sun.

George and I have been talking about this lifestyle plan - the camper van plan - for months. And there it was. I said to Steven yesterday, with a wink:  "Just watch and see how this turns out!"

Today I spent a beautiful afternoon with Ray and Marie. I drove all around Saskatoon with Ray, out to the university, over the river, onto the highway and out to the farmers fields. We turned around near the polka dance hall where Ray has enjoyed many good times. Ray approved of the way I drive, and asked me who taught me. My dad, of course - and he taught me how to polka too!

Apparently no-one but Ray has ever driven this van until I happened along. They can't drive the van anymore and its a hard thing to let go of since so much joy of their later life was lived in it.

It's kinda like when we brought home the perfect toast-colored dog named Oliver.  Bringing this dog home was definitely not the most practical and well-thought out decision in the world, but yet it was one that came upon us with some force.

This van was like that.

Ray and Marie kissed my cheek with great force as we made our arrangements and plans for pick-up in March.

You just never know what's waiting for you in Saskatoon!

With Her Boots On

I have so much to do.  I have lost my way temporarily because the computer program that structures my working life is not working today.  And I'm leaving tomorrow on a book tour.

I picked up my dry cleaning on the way to court this morning because I needed my gowns for Superior Court.  And then there were the book tour clothes that I picked up at the same time - they are all still in the back of the car, with my court file in a box on top.  I didn't want to bring them in from the car until I had luggage to put them in.  I have no luggage because it has vanished with my children - the last luggage, except for one broken-zippered bag, went off delivering young lives to new places after the compulsory (and wonderful) Thanksgiving homecoming.

As a result, I have nothing to put books and / or clothes in for the book tour that has miraculously happened on its own.

Here is a secret:  I didn't book my flights, actually, until Wednesday.

And my computer is in serious trouble.  At the moment I have no calendar, except in my own mind.  I have no file lists, A-Z.  I am forced to leave the computer issue to Lisa, my fabulous and drop-dead gorgeous one-day-a-week assistant.  She was the taskmaster for Day "O" in The Camino Letters and there are stories about Lisa in there too.

For example, one day a lovely elderly woman came to the office and somehow we ended up discussing Lisa's book "With Her Boots On".  The elderly woman said:  "With Her Boots On - just like a good solider."


In The Camino Letters, Lisa's task to me was to think about the hidden seed that would grow in the right conditions.

That's the thing about Lisa - and the thing about Lisa and me in particular - is that we understand each other a bit, we both failed sandbox, and we both have our boots on, just like a good soldier.

There is no doubt that my computer will be perfect when I get back from the book tour. Thank you Lisa.

Paso por Paso - Normandy - July 1944

When I came home from Spain at the end of July, 2009, I was extremely fit.  My husband especially commented on the strength of my wrists and I responded that this was from my fifth day.

It was.  I pounded my walking poles on that day, up despised hills on a dusty path.  You'll have to read my letter to Elvira in Chapter 5 to see what that was all about.  It was a day of anger, or something beyond anger.  It was a day of very strong emotion - such that I had not experienced before or since.

At the end of my letter to Elvira, after trying to explain a lot of things, I said this:

"At one point, as I was trying to collect myself on the path, a Spanish man quietly passed me on the left and looked at me directly.  He meant to look at me, and he said, "Paso por Paso."  I didn't know what he was saying.  I now know that he was saying, kindly, "Step by Step."  This is the Camino."

I got a letter in the mail today from a man who is in his nineties.  This is part of what he said to me in five pages of beautiful script that are a gift to me to be cherished until my dying day:

"Thank you for the gift of The Camino Letters.  I enjoyed it immensely, but also felt drained by it as I shared your highs and lows.  Oddly enough it took me back to July 1944 when, with a draft of NCOs and soldiers I landed in Normandy and marched inland to somewhere in the bridgehead.  We were burdened with all our kit and had no idea how far we had to go; it was Paso por Paso indeed!  This is a book I shall keep and dip into again and again."

He ended his long letter by saying:  "I think God is indeed using you as "an instrument of his peace."

Me of little faith.

Gosh.  Life is this.  This is life.

Buoyant

Today we got the national order from Chapters / Indigo.  How much fun is that?

A Sparkler and a Bear Claw

This is Grace

At the launch party for The Camino Letters on August 7th, Grace read her task to me, and I read my letter to her.  I did this in front of friends, colleagues, my family, my neighbours.  The things I wrote about in this letter to Grace, now Chapter 7, were things that I barely spoke of except to my husband.  


And to Herb in small whispers in the courtroom. 


And eventually to Grace in my letter. 


And to my dad before he died.  

On the afternoon of the launch I was in Peterborough at a book signing at Chapters - a busy, rushed, overwhelmingly fun day.  My friends Stephanie and Morgan came just in time - they helped me pack up and pick wine.  I was grateful for them. 

I loaded the wine into their car and started the drive back to Millbrook, worried that I was leaving myself no time to put on lipstick before the party.

I started to think about reading Chapter 7 and shifted my worry to the fact that I had been calling Proud Woman without an answer.  She was not calling me back, which was not unusual - except that I had mailed her a copy of the book and was sure that she would have called once she received it.  

I pulled over to the side of Highway 115 and sat on the hood of my car with phone in hand.  I called.  She answered. 

She had just arrived home, she said.

A massive heart attack had left her unconscious and breathing through a ventilator the week before.  She wasn't ready to die yet, she said, and so she woke and gathered her strength to get home to her son, his wife, and her grandchildren. She would died at home.

This is Proud Woman

She told me that she read The Camino Letters in the hospital because her son brought it and it was waiting for her when she came to.  Because of the ventilator she couldn't talk and could only read, so that is what she did.  She said that she laughed so much that the nurses asked her what she was reading.  


Proud Woman has always laughed at me. 


I told her I was reading that Chapter tonight.  She told me to wear the bear claw.


She said that she would be lighting a sparkler at 8:00 p.m. for everyone gathering in my living room to hear me read, and then she laughed a large Proud Woman laugh. It made me feel like a very little girl and I was happy.

And so at 8:00 that night, I read the letter knowing that there was a sparkler being lit while I was reading to Grace, to Herb, and to all of the others gathered in my home.  My friend Bill came up the walkway, specifically and deliberately, to hear me read.  Bill is dying and yet he came.  He was carried up the steps into the house.  I think Bill gave me the courage to say almost anything out loud.


                                                                                                               

Snails

Excerpts from The Camino Letters...

Chapter 5 / Lorca / Step

I am not joking about the bad mood - I was in a hideously intense mood, full of rage and regret and emotions I can barely name.  

I'm not sure what caught my eye exactly, but I saw something in the dirt and so went closer to look.  I dug it out and it was the most beautiful snail shell, larger than I would have expected to find on land.  

... Today, as I dug my snails, I sat on the path in the dirt and cried a small river from the physical pain of the past five days and the sheer relief of being alone. .... I have never considered the importance of solitude in protecting myself from all of the stickiness. I am so glad that I was alone today with my little snail shells and my dirty fingernails on that stupid, horrible path.

Chapter 15 / Triacastela / Sleep

The snails cling to the thick blades of grass by the hundreds and when they die they fall to the ground and are buried.  I have a beautiful picture, which I will show you.  It is exactly what you are talking about.  There is a magical geometry to these shells - I have spent a lot of time pondering them on the path since I am now carrying all of them with me.  Snails are also very sensual beings, according to people who have seen them up close.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q7YIu_fzImg

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-BseGLUTkD8

My Father's Violin

This is my dad's violin.  Its story weaves all of the way through The Camino Letters, a fact that still astounds me when I read the letters together as a piece.  I didn't set out to write the full story of my dad's violin, and the story of his teacher Ford Rupert. It just happened that way.

I received a letter with a book in the mail today.

The book that was sent to me today is called Run of the Town:  Stories of an Unfettered Youth by Terry West. Terry is the man I contacted when I first decided to submit a story in May 2009 for a book about the Hearst Public School called Clayton's Kids.  Terry wrote to me today to congratulate me about The Camino Letters, which he had heard about from Ernie, another man involved in the Clayton Kids project. Because of Ernie, a woman came to the Winnipeg reading at McNally Robinson last weekend to tell me that I look just like my mother.

I heard about Terry and Ernie's project in 2009 through a client, in a roundabout way.  I didn't know Terry, but it turns out that he knew my father quite well.  And he had a picture of Ford Rupert with the class holding their violins - something that had previously only existed in my dad's memory.  A long-lost, long-ago picture of my father's favourite story.

When the picture arrived, I raced to Centennial Place to catch my dad at the end of dinner.  My dad was always the last one sitting, preferring to sit and chat into the evening. When finished, he would then deliver his licked-clean dishes to the counter. He always refused to let the staff ("the girls" he called them) do this.  He said that they did enough for him already, they didn't need to collect his dishes too.

When I got to the dining room that day, my dad was sitting at the table finishing his coffee - true to form.  I sat down beside him and without saying anything I put the big picture in front of him on the table.

I watched his face.  It didn't take long for him to realize what he was looking at and then he started at the top row left with his index finger:

back:  Lempi Hietala , Marvin Smith, Katy Terefenko, Grace Fulton, Vivian Clarin, Olavi (Oliver) Halme, Brian Grieve, Arnie Woods

middle:  Jane MacEachern, Lois Sprickerhoff, Ruth Lapenskie, Ruth Jones, Jackie West, Leila Joutsi, Stanley Butryn, Nick Olasevich 

front:  Glenna Jones, Anita Reid, Rose Palmquist, Sheila Wilson, Martin Stolz (on drums),  Mervyn Larstone, Willis Rouse, Neda Chalykoff (on piano), Mr. Ford Rupert  

He named them all, left to right, row by row.  I know, because I had the names with me on another sheet of paper.  I wanted to see if this is what he would do, and it was.

The photo went up on the wall of his room and stayed there.  He was never able to name them all again, in order, in that way. Their names recessed into the places of things forgotten in his unpredictable mind.  But in that first moment, time stood still and he was the rugrat in the bottom row right, beside the piano and playing music with his friends.  That was his last autumn in school, before he had to quit to go and run logging trucks in the bush for his father.

In his letter to me today,Terry said this:

In one story (Peasoup and Blokes) there's a quick line describing a pulp truck coming down the street, chains flapping.  In my mind's eye as I wrote the scene I pictured Willis' truck.  I remember especially a strike he was involved in around 1948-1950.  It was winter.  The truckers paraded through the streets, chains wrapped around the wheels.  I associate your dad with this because of all the haulers he was the only one I knew personally.

Sometimes the quick lines are the ones that stick.

Thank you Terry.  Thank you Ernie.

25 Years Later

I was in Winnipeg this past weekend, hanging out with some very good friends from a long time ago.  This is a picture of my teenage tribe, except for Garth and Shaun who didn't come until the next day.  I'll bet if I dig through my bins of stuff I will find a picture with exactly the same people, in virtually the same position, taken about twenty-five years ago. We all look great in this picture - look at us smile!

I was in Winnipeg for two reasons:  this reunion of the youth-group gang, and a reading from The Camino Letters at the McNally Robinson bookstore.  The man who organized the youth retreats when we were all young was Ted Dodd, and Ted happens to be my taskmaster for Chapter 4 of the letters.  At McNally Robinson Ted read his task to me and I read my letter to him.

I found this difficult to do without crying - especially there, especially having not seen Ted for years before that day, and especially with this gang of old friends watching me.   It's strange (but not really) how deeply I still love all of them.  I haven't really kept in touch.  I left a long time ago, and left some love behind.

At church on Sunday morning, at the reunion worship service, Ted talked about The Diviners and the river that flows both ways.  Life is like that.  He also talked about the need to propel the things that we knew back then into this broken world, and he is right.  I was glad to be reminded.

And then I went to McNally Robinson to read, too nervous to eat lunch, not sure of what shade of lipstick to put on ....

This is Linda

The first stranger who arrived for the reading was a woman named Linda, who came to introduce herself and to tell me that I looked exactly like my mother.  She heard about the reading through Ernie Bies, the man who helped to edit a book about Hearst, Ontario where my family is from.

Linda lives in Winnipeg, and was a schoolmate of my sisters in Hearst, long before I was born. She didn't know that I was about to read Chapter 4 when she told me that I look like my mother.

Linda didn't really know anything about the book at all.  But with those few words she gave me all that I needed for that day in Winnipeg, a place that one of our kids calls "the heart of the heart of the continent."  So true.

My hair etc.

This is Vanessa

This is Vanessa.  She is my hairdresser and has cut my hair for many many years now.  Seeing Vanessa every eight weeks or so is one of the happy indulgences of my life.


It is an interesting relationship that can develop across the mirror, in the hair salon.  Particularly if one always goes to the same place, to the same person, in front of the same mirror.  I have watched my wrinkles grow in Vanessa's mirror.  We now debate whether or not to mask the grey with something.  We watch time pass.
Vanessa is young, and gorgeous, with a young person's growing life in a big city.  It's fun for me to hear about. We talk about all sorts of things in front of her mirror. For me, I always have my glasses off and so I can't see her very well.  I can only listen.  I talk freely to Vanessa, and she to me, because this has become what we do. 


There is nothing to hide here because, after all, the mirror is right there - large as life - and it's a self-contained world in the place where we talk.  The conversation ends, the robe comes off, the hair is tossed, and off I go.

Vanessa was the third person (apart from the 26 taskmasters) who knew about these letters of mine.  I desperately needed a haircut after walking the Camino and I therefore saw Vanessa almost immediately after landing back in Canada.  I was still completely raw and, as one sometimes does, I spilled my guts to my hairdresser about what had just happened to me. 

Over another haircut later on we talked about her grandmother's illness, and my father's death.  Over time I have come to know what an enormous heart Vanessa has.  And she has come to know a bit of me.  

As I rode the train into Toronto this morning, I was so nervous about my interview with the CBC, and so excited about delivering the book to Vanessa.  I'm not sure which emotion was stronger.  It has been a very fun day.

So, on the hair front, here is the scoop:  I have been growing my hair out for a year now,  slowly getting rid of the short, sharp lines.  Today we decided that it was enough for a while - it's long enough, soft enough, and ready for the book launch on Saturday.  

I love my new haircut and Vanessa always makes me feel beautiful -  because just look at her!  Who wouldn't feel beautiful sitting in her chair?

My friend Paul

I sent a copy of the book to my friend Paul and then immediately regretted the act.

A while later he hollered "I love it" out an open car window.

And then he sent me a link to this:

 http://2ndfloorcorneroffice.blogspot.com/2010/07/camino-letters.html

Speechless, jaw hanging, I sent the link to my husband and waited for him to emerge from his office, which he did eventually - with a smile.  

I especially love this part of what Paul wrote:  "The pilgrimage is the backdrop.  The real story is a smart, energetic, successful, modern woman challenging every convention, every nook and cranny of her life."

I like the sound of that woman.

Call and response.  It's what the whales do.  

A Review from South Africa

Camino Letters - A Review

The ‘Camino’ is the common name for a network of medieval pilgrimage routes through Europe leading to the tomb of the apostle St James the Greater which is housed in a cathedral in the city named after him - Santiago de Compostela – in north western Spain.

After deciding to spring clean her busy life and close down her legal practice so that she can spend a month in her garden, forty year-old Canadian Julie Kirkpatrick decides instead, practically on a whim, to walk six hundred kilometres of the Camino de Santiago pilgrims’ path in Spain with her seventeen year old daughter.  

She knows little about the thousand year-old pilgrimage trail and does no physical training for the gruelling hike that starts in the Pyrenees Mountains, crosses three mountain ranges and ends at Finsisterre on the Atlantic coast.  

Before leaving home, she asks twenty-six friends to set her a task for each day that she will be walking.  Many of the tasks are imaginative and surprisingly thought provoking.  Besides being asked to recite mantras and prayers, to think about the millions who have gone before her, to listen to the wind or to other people, she is asked to determine what events transpired in her life to lead her to Spain and what she hopes to gain from the experience. One friend prophetically asks her to write the first chapter of a book in her head as she walks.  As she steadfastly completes each new task they become a rite of passage, sometimes painful and angst ridden, sometimes joyful, filled with music and light, and sometimes esoteric (her day and night at the Templar shelter in Manjarin - page 147).

This beautifully written, heartfelt book is not a travelogue about walking the Camino in Spain.  The pilgrimage trail is the landscape through which the writer passes, a transient backdrop to her daily tasks which evolve into a fascinating patchwork of self discoveries, miscellaneous emotions, thoughts, memories and life changing decisions, woven into twenty-six exquisitely honest letters written to her friends when she returns from Spain 
[correction:  the letters were written as I walked].  

“I have decided to throw off the cynical and pessimistic world that I have created around myself and love my life, as the true spark of light that it is.  Paso por paso. Step by step. I have my proof.”

This book will appeal to all, but especially to women, mothers, daughters, and mothers of daughters.