Sickles Market Blog: Will Walk for Food

Earlier this month, I was one of the almost 150,000 people from around the
world who each year step away from their fast-paced, oil-fueled lives to slow
down and make space for an honest-to-goodness, on-your-feet pilgrimage. El
Camino de Santiago, or the Way of Saint James, is one of the three major
pilgrimages that a European Christian would have striven to complete in the
Middle Ages, the other two being to Rome and to Jerusalem. Whereas Christians
today make the latter pilgrimages by plane, train or automobile, people from all
over the world are still using their feet (or bicycles or horse) to reach
Santiago de Compostela, a city in northwestern Spain, where St. James is
thought to be buried. There is no fixed starting point for the Camino, as a
medieval pilgrim would have stepped out of his home, whether in England,
Germany, or Italy etc, and started walking, but today most pilgrims, who don?t
live in Spain or Portugal, begin a 500-mile walk from St. Jean Pied de Port, a
small French village at the base of one of the few passes through the steep
Pyrenees.

There are many reasons to embark upon a modern-day pilgrimage--religious, spiritual, reflective, cultural (my reason), and athletic, etc. No matter what reason motivates you and no matter where you begin, you soon realize, since pilgrims carry all that they have on their backs, is how little we truly need: just some suitable clothing and footwear, selective toiletries, shelter for the night and from inclement weather, companionship (the kilometers go by slowly alone), and restorative food and drink.

Source: http://sicklesmarket.blogspot.com/2012/11/will-walk-for-food.html

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