{"id":13233,"date":"2026-05-18T09:39:29","date_gmt":"2026-05-18T09:39:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wildgreenquest.com\/?p=13233"},"modified":"2026-05-18T09:39:29","modified_gmt":"2026-05-18T09:39:29","slug":"walking-the-camino-de-santiago","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wildgreenquest.com\/?p=13233","title":{"rendered":"Walking the Camino de Santiago"},"content":{"rendered":"


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Published May 18, 2026 03:15AM<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Somewhere around kilometer three, Jos\u00e9 Andr\u00e9s stepped off the trail and crouched beside an old oak tree. He pressed his hand against the bark. I wasn\u2019t sure why, and then he said: \u201cNorth.\u201d<\/p>\n

You could always tell by the moss, he explained\u2014thicker on the north-facing side, where the bark stays damp, the south side dried by the sun. Patricia had noticed the same thing on one of their previous walks and pointed it out to him. She does it on every walk, he said, with the same wonder, as if seeing it for the first time.<\/p>\n

Patricia had not broken stride. She was already 30 meters ahead, following the yellow arrow painted on the next fence post. She did not look back. She has been walking with this man for a long time.<\/p>\n

We were on the Camino de Santiago on a Thursday morning in September, not far from a small town called Baamonde in the verdant, rain-soaked region of Galicia. The Camino is an ancient pilgrimage route which contains more than 1,500 miles of pathways across Europe and was walked by more than half a million people in 2025 alone. Jos\u00e9 had invited me along four days earlier. He has walked the Camino several times before. This year\u2019s walk, their fourth together, was special: it was to celebrate his and Patricia\u2019s 30th wedding anniversary.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou are along for the ride,\u201d Patricia had told me. \u201cThe Jos\u00e9 train. You hop on and you don\u2019t always know where it\u2019s going.\u201d<\/p>\n

I\u2019d briefly been on the Jos\u00e9 train before\u2014Chicago, Beard Awards weekend, 2022. Tacos became mezcal shots, which became a FaceTime with the mezcal\u2019s maker, so Jos\u00e9 could tell him I\u2019d enjoyed it. The maker looked like he\u2019d just been woken up. When Jos\u00e9 calls, you answer. The next stop was a party. No sitting. Just selfies and hugs and handshakes. We went to a restaurant next. He made sure to sit at the bar. Always the bar. For the conversation, and the ability to move. The stillness is measured in minutes.<\/p>\n

The world does not slow down for Jos\u00e9. And yet here he was, hand pressed against the bark of a Galician oak tree, trying to do exactly that.<\/p>\n

(Photo: Emiliano Granado)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I. Vilalba, the Night Before<\/h2>\n

The Parador de Vilalba is a set of stone buildings and a medieval stone tower in the middle of a small Galician town. Many of the walls here seem to be four feet thick. The floorboards creak. It feels right that Jos\u00e9 Andr\u00e9s is sleeping here.<\/p>\n

I arrived in the early evening after a long drive from Madrid and through the interior of Galicia, the green, Atlantic-kissed corner of Spain where the final stretch of the Camino de Santiago is laid out past wind turbines and ends at the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela. Galicia has a way of looking like the Irish countryside. But with Albari\u00f1o.<\/p>\n

When I see Jos\u00e9 in the lobby he moves swiftly toward the kitchen through the swinging door. As he comes back, a few guests grab photos with him and wish him buen Camino<\/i>, the customary greeting for those on the trail. He\u2019s bullish in stature, white-bearded, white-haired, dressed all in gray\u2014hooded midlayer, pants, sneakers. Sensible. Like a dad on vacation who\u2019s ready for the hike.<\/p>\n

Or in this case, a food crawl. He\u2019d asked the chef for a caldo gallego<\/i>\u2014a hearty stew of white beans, turnips, and the lac\u00f3n<\/i>, the cured pork shoulder that gives the broth its depth, a dish that has fueled pilgrims and farmers through Galician winters for centuries. He suspected it was too early in the season. He wanted it anyway. Hang out enough with Jos\u00e9 and you start to believe you can eat your way through an entire culture if you know where to look and who to ask.<\/p>\n

\u201cAre you hungry? Let\u2019s eat,\u201d he says. We settle on a restaurant across the square, sitting on stools next to an old barrel, with a plate of raxo<\/i> between us\u2014pork loin cut into slivers, tossed in garlic and paprika, tipped onto fried potatoes. Then orejas, <\/i>pig\u2019s ears skewered on toothpicks. They are soft, then crunch. They arrive\u2014of course\u2014on a bed of potatoes. Always potatoes in Galicia, he tells me. Jos\u00e9 orders white wine. I have what he\u2019s having.<\/p>\n

\u201cTichi!\u201d he shouts. \u201cTichi!\u201d<\/p>\n

Tichi is what he calls Patricia, and has for 30 years as of this Camino. She crosses the square to join us. They\u2019ve been on the Camino for ten days already, she tells me, starting up the coast in Asturias and working their way west. She has planned most of the route.<\/p>\n

\u201cEverybody walks for a different reason,\u201d he says. \u201cTo be away from problems. To find something. One thing is being a pilgrim. Another is being a walker.\u201d He is doing both, he thinks, though he admits the line is not always clear.<\/p>\n

What separates the Camino from any other long walk, he says, is that the road has history. \u201cEvery town, every place, something happened. Maybe somebody met there, maybe it was a war or a fight. And you feel that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Patricia is very strict about which kilometers count, Jos\u00e9 tells me. He spotted a beach off the trail one of the early days. Three kilometers round-trip to see it. Patricia does not count it.<\/p>\n

\u201cEl Camino is El Camino,\u201d he says, echoing her. \u201cIt is very straight. And she doesn\u2019t count that shit!\u201d<\/p>\n

Patricia shrugs. She has heard this complaint before. She will hear it again.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe walk and eat more than anybody,\u201d he says. \u201cMy wife is always afraid. She says we should cancel the walk and just do a gastronomic history of Spain.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is my point,\u201d Patricia says to me. \u201cWe need to walk because of how much we eat!\u201d<\/p>\n

We try a few more places in town in search of the soup. He sees one man eating a hamburger and says, in Spanish: \u201cWhy are you eating a hamburger in Galicia?\u201d No soup. Eventually he gives up and we head back. Patricia, sensibly, goes to bed. But Jos\u00e9 asks if I am hungry, which I have come to understand means he wants to hang.<\/p>\n

We grab a table at the hotel restaurant. We\u2019re some of the last people there. I ask him why the Camino. Why every year, this?<\/p>\n

\u201cWe get away from people,\u201d he says. \u201cNobody bothers you. Once you pass through the towns, you\u2019re on your own. Especially here.\u201d He gestures at the stone walls around us, at Galicia. \u201cTo be out here. Nothing is more honest, you know?\u201d<\/p>\n

He gets soup. A simple chicken noodle, all they had. Not the soup he wanted, but it is still a soup, homemade, and the broth was real. I would spend the next two days watching him do this\u2014adapting, redirecting, finding the best of what was here, and when it wasn\u2019t quite there, nudging it with a dash of salt or vinegar or oil toward what he wished it were. The caldo gallego would wait.<\/p>\n

A waiter says goodbye on her way out and asks for a selfie and tells him he was one of the personalities on her Spanish citizenship test. Jos\u00e9, a dual citizen of Spain and the United States, doesn\u2019t quite know what to do with this, so he smiles. We order local whiskey as nightcaps.<\/p>\n

Outside, the tower of the parador is lit amber against the dark.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the morning, we walk,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

\"Jos\u00e9
Jos\u00e9 at the beginning of the morning\u2019s walk.<\/span> (Photo: Emiliano Granado)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

II. To Be a Walker<\/h2>\n

If you don\u2019t know the man ahead of me with a walking stick, let\u2019s catch you up. He has won multiple James Beard Awards, including Humanitarian of the Year. He is the founder of Jos\u00e9 <\/a>Andr\u00e9s Group,<\/a> which operates more than 40 restaurants and bars across the country, from Minibar in Washington, D.C., to Jaleo in Las Vegas. His newest book, Spain My Way<\/i><\/a> (Ecco, May 19), is a love letter to the food of his home country. He came from Spain to the U.S. in his twenties, but not before serving in the Spanish Navy\u2014where he traveled the world and cooked for admirals\u2014and a life-changing stint at El Bulli, the birthplace of molecular gastronomy.<\/p>\n

But the restaurant empire is almost an asterisk now, albeit a sparkling one. In 2010, after the earthquake in Haiti, Jos\u00e9 Andr\u00e9s did what he does: he showed up, he cooked, he fed. What began as one chef\u2019s refusal to stand idly by became World Central Kitchen<\/a> (WCK), the humanitarian organization that has since deployed to most major disasters of the past 16 years\u2014hurricanes, wildfires, floods, wars\u2014applying restaurant-scale logistics to the problem of feeding people.<\/p>\n

He says the organization has served more than 150 million meals in Gaza alone. Seven of his workers were killed there in an Israeli airstrike in 2024\u2014a loss he still carries. He has testified before Congress about aid in Ukraine. He has appeared in his own Marvel comic. He has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.<\/p>\n

He can go from a conversation about canning technology to a quiet fury about the cuts to Ukraine aid to a childhood memory of keeping a fire alive. The Spanish have a word for what he embodies: sobremesa<\/i>. Literally, over the table\u2014the time after a meal when the conversation deepens and the real things get said. Jos\u00e9 Andr\u00e9s lives in permanent sobremesa.<\/p>\n

The Camino, I would come to understand, is his version of it on foot: one long, moving feast of conversation, food, and presence, stretched across days. It is a steadiness\u2014path, arrows, one foot and then the next\u2014that his life will otherwise not permit.<\/p>\n

And here in Galicia, away from the kitchens in Gaza, Ukraine, and his own, his wife is making him walk.<\/p>\n

Before we walked, we ate. In the mornings, this time of year, there\u2019s a heavy scent of petrichor\u2014that distinct after-the-rain smell\u2014even when it hasn\u2019t rained. Or has it?<\/p>\n

The Caf\u00e9 Bar a Rotonda sits at the edge of Baamonde, where the yellow arrows finally come into focus\u2014the hand-painted markers pilgrims have followed across northern Spain for more than a thousand years.<\/p>\n

Patricia went inside to get her pilgrim\u2019s passport stamped\u2014two stamps a day, collected from churches and bars and hostels along the way. Jos\u00e9 watched her go and said something about Patricia being very serious about the stamps\u2014and himself being very serious about the tortilla.<\/p>\n

Patricia is the true walker of the duo. Most mornings back in Bethesda, Maryland, she\u2019s on the Potomac, walking the trail toward Great Falls. It was there, years ago, that one of their three daughters first spotted a pawpaw\u2014North America\u2019s largest native fruit, custardy and tropical, a thing most Americans never taste. She saw it because her mother had taught her, on all those mornings, to look down.<\/p>\n

The tortilla espa\u00f1ola at the Rotonda was properly made: thick, barely set, the eggs still soft at the center. The potatoes were glossed with the olive oil they were cooked in. In Galicia\u2014which produces extraordinarily good eggs and extraordinarily good potatoes, two facts Jos\u00e9 is happy to point out\u2014a well-made tortilla is something worth seeking out and planning a morning around.<\/p>\n

We ate with strong coffee while pilgrims and locals\u2014the two communities that have shared this trail for centuries\u2014 trickled in. The pilgrims walked in loose, the unhurried gait of people who had been on the road for weeks. Jos\u00e9 watched one of them, a man in boots and walking poles, order a coffee at the bar.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou don\u2019t need to ask,\u201d he said. \u201cYou know who they are.\u201d<\/p>\n

Then, quieter: \u201cThey are somewhere else already.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Jos\u00e9
(Photo: Emiliano Granado)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

III. What the Trail Knows<\/h2>\n

The Camino del Norte<\/a>\u2014the Northern Way\u2014is the coastal route of the Camino de Santiago, the path most traveled in the ninth and tenth centuries. Pilgrims arrived by sea from northern Europe and walked westward along the Bay of Biscay to Galicia. It has sneaky elevation changes and long, sometimes unshaded stretches. The hiking equivalent of death by a thousand paper cuts. But you quickly realize the beauty of the walk, religious or not. Leaving a world, through a world, toward a world. Follow the arrows.<\/p>\n

Out of Baamonde toward Guitiriz, the trail moves through a countryside where you will come across stone bridges, stone fences, stone churches. We stop at Capela de San Alberte, an ancient structure furred in moss. Nearby stand the cruceiros<\/i>\u2014weathered stone crosses with Jesus on one side, the Virgin Mary on the other. You only see them in Galicia. Patricia explains they were placed as waymarks, like the Camino\u2019s arrows, but also to protect travelers. Spiritual and navigational guidance in one.<\/p>\n

Not unlike Patricia herself.<\/p>\n

Nearby are blackberry brambles. Jos\u00e9 picks a handful of ripe blackberries, eats them, and passes some to Patricia. As we walk on, he puts his walking stick across his shoulders and talks about what is in season along the trail: chestnuts\u2014the first ones are just coming ready, he says; madro\u00f1os,<\/i> the red, meaty berries whose tree appears on the coat of arms of Madrid, a bear reaching into its branches; grapes; and in a few weeks, after the autumn rains, mushrooms.<\/p>\n

\u201cI pick them, but I need to be very sure,\u201d he said. \u201cSome of them are poisonous. But usually I know. I\u2019m good at it. But nothing like the locals.\u201d<\/p>\n

His grandfather was a hunter and a fisherman\u2014a man who tied his own fishing flies and cast his own cartridges, who gathered bird feathers to make lures. When his mother moved, Jos\u00e9 kept his grandfather\u2019s old lures.<\/p>\n

His grandfather had taught him to catch trout bare-handed in fast-moving streams. Getting in behind the rock where the fish sheltered from the current, waiting. Then\u2014pow<\/i>\u2014grabbing them by the gills.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you\u2019re very quick,\u201d he said, \u201cyou grab it and get them out.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe outdoors is the ultimate classroom,\u201d he said. \u201cAny child can come and become an expert on things. That\u2019s why all these fishermen and shepherds have so much wisdom.\u201d<\/p>\n

Beneath the white hair and waterfall of ideas, you get the sense that on these walks, Jos\u00e9 is still the boy at the stream. Not yet the shepherd. Still hoping to become one.<\/p>\n

\"A
Jos\u00e9 and Patricia crossing the Rio Parga.<\/span> (Photo: Emiliano Granado)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

IV. The 20-Minute Meal<\/h2>\n

A few days before I joined them, Jos\u00e9 and Patricia had walked a day with two pilgrims from New Zealand. The men were shepherds back home. They walked all day. They ate lunch together. At the end of the day, Jos\u00e9 drove them to their shelter\u2014a donativo albergue,<\/i> one of the donation-based shelters scattered along the route, off the main road.<\/p>\n

When they arrived, a woman was in the kitchen. She was Mexican. She cooked for the pilgrims every day, she explained\u2014room and board in exchange for meals. No salary. Just food and a place to sleep.<\/p>\n

He looked at the kitchen. He looked at the progress of the meal. There wasn\u2019t much. He looked at what he had in the car: a bag of fresh beans he\u2019d bought that morning at a market, a few tins of conservas<\/i>. There were pilgrims to feed. There was a kitchen. There were 20 minutes.<\/p>\n

The woman didn\u2019t know who he was. Some of the other pilgrims did. He offered his services and his food.<\/p>\n

She looked at him. She looked at the clock. \u201cI don\u2019t think you\u2019re gonna make it in 20 minutes,\u201d she told him. He told her, \u201cSo I think I\u2019m your best chance.\u201d<\/p>\n

He went to work. He opened the tins\u2014conservas, the Spanish preserved fish that is its own culinary category, the good kind, in small flat cans with fish laid out the way a jeweler arranges stones. A first course. The pilgrims looked at each other. They told him they had never had a first course on the Camino. It was always just one plate.<\/p>\n

The fresh beans went into a pressure cooker. On the stovetop they\u2019d take half an hour. He didn\u2019t have half an hour. Five minutes under pressure, then the long hissing wait for all the steam to release, the cooker doing its work while the clock kept running and the pilgrims watched, the woman who had doubted him watched. He opened it.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe beans were amazing,\u201d he said. \u201cPlus, there was no other option.\u201d<\/p>\n

It was fabes<\/i> season. For a few weeks each September, before the rest of the harvest went into sacks to dry for fabada<\/i>\u2014Asturias\u2019s national dish, a slow-cooked bean stew with pork and chorizo\u2014you could buy them fresh at the markets, still in their pods. Fresh fabes are a different animal. They cook in minutes instead of hours. They don\u2019t taste like a bean. They taste green, almost sweet, the skins like a whisper.<\/p>\n

Jos\u00e9 had grown up on these beans. He had been born in Asturias. He had bought this bag at a market that morning without a plan for what to do with them, and then an albergue had appeared, and a Mexican woman cooking with not enough time, and 20 minutes, and a pressure cooker.<\/p>\n

The woman who had doubted him was delighted. Jos\u00e9 called her brave\u2014someone doing quiet, essential work in a place no one would think to look for it. The shepherds had walked hundreds of kilometers. They had slept in bunk beds in rooms full of strangers, carried what they needed on their backs. And on a random night in Asturias, an unannounced man turned 20 minutes and a bag of beans into a meal they will tell people about for the rest of their lives.<\/p>\n

\"Close-up
Holding a foraged mushroom.<\/span> (Photo: Emiliano Granado)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

V. Sustenance<\/h2>\n

We reached Guitiriz around midday, about ten kilometers of walking behind us. A Galician spa town, built around a century-old thermal hotel and three medicinal springs. It was less than Jos\u00e9\u2019s usual Camino pace, but the point today, he had decided, was not kilometers.<\/p>\n

We wandered, looking for a bar or a caf\u00e9. We found Bar Comba not far from the river. It had a television tuned to the news, a foosball table under a faded poster of Nighthawks. Beige tables with red vinyl seats, a back room with checkered cloths where two lone walkers were already eating. And a bar\u2014metal, utilitarian. With Jos\u00e9, if there\u2019s a bar, you sit at the bar.<\/p>\n

Jos\u00e9 ordered for all of us. What arrived was simple. Chicken wings atop a heap of fresh-cut potatoes. (Always potatoes here.) A lentil soup. Then bacalao con coliflor<\/i>, cod and cauliflower.<\/p>\n

Jos\u00e9 is not into shared plates. Too fussy. Just eat. He handed out spoons and we dug in. A bottle of house white appeared\u2014Turbio, cloudy and young and slightly sparkling, served icy-cold in squat stemless glasses.<\/p>\n

Jos\u00e9 stared at the salt cod and cauliflower with reverence. \u201cSuper sophisticated,\u201d he said. \u201cLike, it\u2019s a fucking sophisticated dish. Cauliflower, codfish, potatoes. Try to get this anywhere else.\u201d<\/p>\n

There was just enough play in the texture of each component\u2014the cod debrined but still flaked, silky with moisture; the cauliflower holding its nuttiness; the potatoes supple. The magic weaving through it all was a paprika-red ajada<\/i>, the garlicky olive oil that is one of the pillars of Galician cooking, pooled at the bottom of the dish like a second sauce.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhatever date you have, commit to less and enjoy it more,\u201d Jos\u00e9 said between bites. \u201cDon\u2019t try to do 30 kilometers a day. Do 10, 15. That\u2019s plenty.\u201d<\/p>\n

He noticed older men gathering at a table for a card game and asked them what they were playing. Tute,<\/i> they said. His eyes went to Patricia. She was already shaking her head. He looked at the card players. He looked at Patricia. He stood up and told the men he would be back next year.<\/p>\n

There is no version of Jos\u00e9\u2019s restaurant empire\u2014not Minibar, not Jaleo, not anywhere\u2014that could have produced this particular afternoon: damn good cheap wine and the luck of finding a spot with sustenance when you really needed it.<\/p>\n

Show up. Keep moving forward. Be ready to receive the world.<\/p>\n

Our plates were empty. The bottle was finished.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou really have so many meals left in your life, you know?\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Portrait
Jos\u00e9 on the Camino in Guitiriz, close to Taberna de Modia.<\/span> (Photo: Emiliano Granado)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

VI. The Phone in His Pocket<\/h2>\n

We walked out of Guitiriz into the afternoon. The trail climbed through a mix of pine and chestnut trees. You could hear chestnuts knocking through the canopy. Galicia\u2019s percussion.<\/p>\n

I remarked how they looked like sea urchins. Jos\u00e9 was surprised I\u2019d never seen a raw chestnut\u2014though I\u2019d somehow eaten plenty of sea urchin. He picked one up, opened it with his pocketknife, and handed me the kernel to taste.<\/p>\n

Then his phone buzzed.<\/p>\n

He looked at it. He held the screen out to me. It was a photograph from his team in Gaza\u2014a new community kitchen going up, pots stacked on the floor, stoves getting wired in. WCK measures these kitchens in pots. A small one starts with seven. \u201cEvery day I get photos,\u201d he said. \u201cEvery day.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jos\u00e9 has 1.3 million followers on Instagram.<\/a> When he posts a photo from a WCK kitchen, it moves money and attention\u2014which is why the photos he gets every day are also a problem. Post them, and people accuse him of covering up the war. Don\u2019t post, and no one knows anyone is being fed. \u201cI\u2019m not covering up anything,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019m only saying that this is happening. And all the realities are real.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gaza. Ukraine. It was a lot to carry.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s why I need to walk more than ever,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

He put the phone back in his pocket. Just follow the arrows. At the end, there is a cathedral.<\/p>\n

It is the only operation Jos\u00e9 Andr\u00e9s runs that does not require him to improvise in the face of catastrophe.<\/p>\n

\u201cI try to live multiple lives on the same life,\u201d he said. \u201cWhich is a curse and a blessing.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Camino is not where he escapes those lives. It\u2019s where he tries, very hard, to feel all of them at once without being crushed by the weight.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou want to be disconnected,\u201d he said. \u201cBut you need to be connected, because in case something happens.\u201d Days earlier he had taken a call in the middle of the trail\u2014about how to keep funding the meals in Gaza. That conversation would turn into a crucial meeting weeks later.<\/p>\n

\u201cWalkers are more important than talkers,\u201d he said. \u201cThat\u2019s the biggest thing.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Jos\u00e9
Climbing the Camino in Guitiriz.<\/span> (Photo: Emiliano Granado)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

VII. Going Back<\/h2>\n

By late afternoon we reached Taberna de Modia, a small tavern at the side of the trail. Jos\u00e9 talked to the owners at length about their eggs, their tortilla, their cider.<\/p>\n

Before we left, the owner mentioned\u2014almost as an aside\u2014that their tortilla was made fresh every morning.<\/p>\n

Jos\u00e9 turned to Patricia. She was already looking at him. He told the owner he would come back the next morning to try it.<\/p>\n

The owner nodded with the polite skepticism of someone who has heard pilgrims make promises before. Pilgrims move on. That is what they do.<\/p>\n

The next morning, we went back.<\/p>\n

This required retracing a portion of the previous day\u2019s route. The trail at that hour was quiet and cold. Just before the Taberna, the road turns into an old Roman road, worn smooth by millennia of feet, hooves, and cartwheels. Jos\u00e9 stopped and looked at the smoothed-out stones for a moment before moving on.<\/p>\n

The tortilla at Taberna de Modia was good. Rustic. The kind that arrives at the table large enough for everyone and then some\u2014the center creamy and wobbly, the outside browned just enough to hold the thing together. Jos\u00e9 cut into it and didn\u2019t say anything for a moment. In Galicia, when the tortilla is right, the silence is the compliment.<\/p>\n

This is why he is treated like a saint wherever he goes in Spain. Not because of the awards or the organization or the congressional testimony. Because he remembers that someone got up and made it.<\/p>\n

\"A
Mojones are the official stone or concrete distance markers on the Camino, with the iconic shell symbol representing the different routes leading to Santiago.<\/span> (Photo: Emiliano Granado)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

VIII. Poetry<\/h2>\n

By the end of the day, we had walked close to 16 kilometers. Jos\u00e9 was quiet in a way he hadn\u2019t been all day. Then he took out his phone.<\/p>\n

He played a song through the small speaker. Jos\u00e9 sang along to parts. You could tell that he had known this song for a long time. He showed me the lyrics.<\/p>\n

Caminante, son tus huellas
<\/i>el camino y nada m\u00e1s;
<\/i>Caminante, no hay camino,
<\/i>se hace camino al andar.
<\/i>Al andar se hace el camino,
<\/i>y al volver la vista atr\u00e1s
<\/i>se ve la senda que nunca
<\/i>se ha de volver a pisar.
<\/i>Caminante, no hay camino
<\/i>sino estelas en la mar.<\/i><\/p>\n

The song is \u201cCantares,\u201d based on the poem \u201cCaminante, No Hay Camino\u201d\u2014roughly, \u201cTraveler, There Is No Road\u201d\u2014written by Antonio Machado in 1912. Joan Manuel Serrat set it to music in the late 1960s, popularizing the poem. It is about walking. It is about the nature of a path, Jos\u00e9 tells me.<\/p>\n

He translated his favorite line.<\/p>\n

\u201cWander,\u201d he said. \u201cThere is no path. The path is made by walking.\u201d<\/p>\n

He let that sit for a moment.<\/p>\n

\u201cI walk,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd when you keep walking, you never get lost. Eventually you get to the place. It\u2019s not about getting there. It\u2019s about going.\u201d<\/p>\n

He and Patricia were planning to do the whole Camino the following year. From Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port in France, over the Pyrenees, across the full width of Spain. Sixty days, minimum. No support car. No bags shuttled ahead. Just walking. The longest meal of his life.<\/p>\n

I asked if he could put the phone away for that long.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou put it down for a few hours,\u201d he said. \u201cYou pick it back up. You put it down again. Eventually you have walked to Santiago.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s the whole thing.\u201d<\/p>\n

He smiled and shrugged. The smile of a man who knows it\u2019s impossible. The shrug of a man who\u2019s going to do it anyway.<\/p>\n

After Haiti, after Ukraine, after Gaza, he knows that time is the one thing you cannot pressure-cook. You either take the 60 days or you don\u2019t.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf I don\u2019t do it now,\u201d he said, \u201cI don\u2019t know if I\u2019ll do it ever again.\u201d<\/p>\n

Patricia was already a few steps ahead. She didn\u2019t look back. She has been walking with this man for a long time.<\/p>\n

He followed.<\/p>\n\n

This article is from the Summer 2026 issue of Outside magazine. To receive the print magazine, become an Outside+ member here<\/i>.<\/i><\/p>\n

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