Starting From Home

From Canada’s Pacific North-West to A Coruña, Spain

“I think I can… I think I can… I think I can.” - The Little Train Camino That Could

My Camino began at home in Victoria as the first “stage” of my pilgrimage in Spain. This is because I was going to walk “the path less traveled,” the route my ancestors might have taken from Ireland and the UK - the Camino Ingles from A Coruńa. I was a Camino Coward, someone juggling chronic pain and big dreams for a screenwriting career. I was an underdog with a pen, with the first draft of “Wayward,” and a cast of characters who would sometime lead me, and my plot line, astray. For a recap on the Camino Ingles click here.

Setting intentions in the Labyrinth & seeking blessings for a Buen Camino!

I would look back at this small labyrinth at our Cathedral when I got stuck in a labyrinth of city streets in A Coruña, on my first Camino day in Spain. In my screenplay, Wayward, Farren would live out my experience and connect with Dora, Liam’s daughter, who would set her course right and thus begin their journey together.

I made the needed 30 km to qualify for my Compostela in three 10 km stages, walking through the busy streets of downtown Victoria, the quiet Lochside Trail with its forested lanes and country roads, along the noisy bi-way off the highway, and the seafront road into Sidney. Though the terrain was very flat, it was a mini-Camino in all its diversity.

Being a pilgrim in my own hometown was a wonderful reminder that when you write about travel, home is a great place to write about. The power of your pen can help make it a destination for others if it isn’t already.

This 30 km qualifier for my Compostela in Spain was official!

In Wayward, Dora, wise beyond her years, tells Farren that a Camino is just a path and that a pilgrimage is something any of us can go on without ever leaving home. Many of us do just that. Somedays, some experiences, are pilgrimage enough, and life events are like the extra stones that some pilgrims carry to atone.

What life events have felt like pilgrimages to you?

Did you walk alone through them?

Did you share portions of the journey?

Did they result in a pilgrimage of the pen? And if not, then when?

Ultreia! Forward, together.