Camino Bound

I'm sitting in my office for the last time before I take off for Spain.  It will be ten days and thousands of miles before I'm back here.  In the intervening time, I will walk an ancient path, in the company of Pilgrims, and visit a sacred place where they claim to have the bones of Jesus' brother, the Apostle James.
As you might imagine I'm pretty stoked, but their is also a bit of nervousness.  There's a lot of travel that is not on foot and therefore, not in my control.  Planes and trains, TSA and customs, hotels, and waiting areas. Plus there is all the stuff I'm leaving behind: Michele, Jack, Cate and Zeke, my comfortable bed, my daily routines.  For the next 10 days my life is going to be focused on a journey, and I feel a little like Bilbo Baggins, who really didn't want to leave the comfort of Bag-End, but I know that what awaits me is worth the ride.
What awaits, in addition to lots and lots of walking and a fair amount of less pleasant modes of transit, will be a clarification of what is really important.  I'm quite sure that three days from now, when my feet finally find the Camino de Santiago, the spiritual journey will already be well under way.  In fact it has already begun.
The process of packing and preparing has been eye opening.  There is so much that I probably would take if I wasn't walking, but the prospect of carrying EVERYTHING on your back, clarifies the difference between want and need quite well.
I'm clinging to a couple modern conveniences, mainly for airports and flights, but I'm going to unplug when my feet are on the ground.  I'm going to break the habit of looking obsessively at my iphone every five minutes or so, I'm going to stop trying to "keep up" with everything in the world, and just pay attention to the way under my feet.  I'm not going to listen to anything, but the sounds of the world and the voices of my fellow pilgrims, I'm going to discard the little bubble of isolation that we spend so much time carefully maintaining, and be open to new places, people, and a journey that will lead me there and back again.
The next time I write this blog, I suspect, I will have some new things to talk about.
I may be a rather different person.
Here we go.