Away from my work, away from my friends, away from my life. Away. I needed to see far horizons again, to realign myself with the realized world of wide mind, long sight and a fineness of things. For years, I had thought about walking the Camino de Santiago one day, walking right across Spain from the French Pyrenees to the sea on the Galician coast. Suddenly, I knew ‘one day’ was now. My preparations were minimal and barely sufficient. I watched the film The Way, because I thought I would feel psychologically safer if I had some idea of the path. I tried to reactivate my rocky Spanish. I spent an evening with a friend who had walked the Camino and who gave me priceless advice about what to take. As Little As Possible. This was going to be hard, though, because straight after the month walking the Camino, I was supposed to be flying from Spain to Melbourne, for the Australian publication of my book and a series of media events and festival appearances. I was assuming I’d be well enough by then to manage it.
