Some of you are aware of my obsession with Spain, years in the making. And after finally getting to Madrid and points north and west…

Those Hokas featured so prominently in the last post, way back in April? Didn’t even bring them. Still have and wear and love them, but there wasn’t a need this time around. We did not walk for a week or more. We had someone drive us 6 or 7 miles out from our Santiago de Compostela hotel in the cold, dark pre-dawn and simply walked back to the cathedral over the course of a couple of hours.

I’m not above motivating myself with YouTube. Photography, cameras, travel. Laptops, iPads, phones. Mediterranean diet, exercise, health. People are really good at YouTube, and I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt that they’ve likely done some research, personally used the thing, and at the very least, are passionate enough about it to have immersed themselves and arrived at a decently-formed conclusion that they are sharing with the world.

I’m not above motivating myself with YouTube. Photography, cameras, travel. Laptops, iPads, phones. Mediterranean diet, exercise, health…

The day finally arrived: Saturday morning, June 15, 2024. The lecture auditorium at the Kimbell Museum in Fort Worth, Texas.

I never did finish that novel about world-altering fictional events that transpired early in the 20th century during a young pilgrim’s camino. Barely got past the opening, in fact. There was something inauthentic, at least to me, in writing a book about a place I had never been, or of a journey that I myself had never taken. Yet wouldn’t that be the case for any work of historical fiction?