One day on the camino, I got talking to a woman and she told me this story, this fable: “Sometimes I do some personal assistant work for this older man back in Scotland. He lives downtown, and he’s got a terrier, and the terrier gets a walk every day, on the same route on the…
Life
Essays on people, love, change, work, questions, and other things that matter a lot.
How Do You Write About the Suburbs?
How do you write about the suburbs? Right now I’m staying in Puyallup, in the big house I grew up in. It’s got new carpets and my room is painted and we have different dogs than when I was a teen, but it’s the same house. Everything is familiar, so what is there? My days…
Seattle!
Just like that. Just like that. Just like that I’m wearing a turtleneck, soaking my feet in hot water scented with spicy healing oils, listening to rich orchestral music, on my second massive American mug of tea, burning a candle, the lights low in the house full of things that are mine. There are root…
My Travel Guide
I stumbled across a poem by Constantine Petrou Cavafy called Ithaka. As I walked, I memorized an English translation of it, and it’s served as a guide throughout the Camino, urging me on when I'm unmotivated, slowing me down when I rush, inviting me to enjoy myself when I'm afraid of spending money, reminding me…
Free Man
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 Problem with You Not Being Here
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…
Solvitur Ambulando
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?…
Falling in Love on the Camino (where all your dreams true if you want them hard enough)
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…
A Very Expected Long Journey
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…
Breakfast at the Coffee Shop
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…
Craving Colors
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…
The Tree of Life
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…
Chelsea the Writer 