Essays on people, love, change, work, questions, and other things that matter a lot.
Spain haunts me. Even when I was on the Camino, even in the first days of it, I dreaded leaving. I met someone who hadn't. It's early on, in Estella, barely a week in. I turn onto a cobblestone street with looming walls. A tall man with bleached hair and tan skin is playing a…
The journey's too big. Too many details are on this single line we are walking, and too many people are on this single line, and this line is too old and has too much history, and there is too much beauty on this path, and too much boredom and it’s cruel to do this, to…
Today was the first day on the Meseta. I walked alone all day. I walked 31.5 kilometers which is about 19 miles. I began the day thinking deep thoughts: how can I make money? Will I always be single? What’s wrong with me? What’s right with me? Am I making the most of this time?…
I prayed I would meet someone on the Camino, and I met someone. On the morning of the 9th, a German we will call Mike, because that is his real name, asked to walk with me. He said that I wasn’t like the typical American with my big sunglasses and dorky hat and I said…
So today is August first (or it was), and the idea is that on September first I'm going to start walking across Spain till I see the bones of an Apostle and the end of the earth. It's a journey much has already been said about, and my own words on it came when recently…
I wanted to eat the yam in my cupboard for lunch, so for breakfast I walked down the road to a bustling coffee shop across the street from Starbucks. I selected a bagel and a twelve ounce drip and I tried to apply for a job, but the internet was down. So I seized the…
I don’t crave food very often but last year I started craving colors. I craved blue most of all. I don’t know why I got to craving blue. I saw at Whole Foods that blue is the color of the throat chakra, and that energy center is in your throat and it's related to speech and…
I tore out of Seattle and drove six hours, half of them before dawn, and stopped when I saw the ocean, sickeningly white and churning with the sky. Sitka spruces braced themselves on the bluff, gnarled and forever flung back by the wind and rain that screamed over the swells smacking the edge of my…
