The other night I had a vivid dream I was walking along an early section of the Camino – from Zubiri to Larrasoana.

In the dream I recalled detail I thought I'd forgotten – the little waterfalls in the creek beside the stream, the coffee stop and the breakfast I ordered. A stone farmhouse on a hill framed through blossoming trees.

These kind of recollections leap at me through the day, too.

For no apparent reason, I'll suddenly recall moments walking, or stretches of the track. The most vivid of these recollections are always about The Way, not about the pilgrims I met on The Way.

It's as though the power of the track itself, the Camino, won't let go of me. It's as though it has burnt itself into my psyche.

But what's strange is that, in my mind, I can remember what was over the next hill, what was around the next corner, what was beyond the bridge.

My memory's usually not that good!

But there are things I grasp to remember, too. And that's what makes me want to go back and walk it again.

In the past few days, thousands of Indian pilgrims have been killed in monsoon floods in northern India.

I was there, this time last year. I’d gone to Rishikesh, a sacred town on the Ganges, then down to Haridwar, a larger city that had attracted literally millions of pilgrims to celebrate the first rains of the monsoons.

This year, those rains have killed thousands. And destroyed towns and villages.

Here is a link to a story in today’s New York Times about the tragedy.

And following are some pictures I took at Haridwar this time last year.

Please spare a few moments to pray, in whatever form that might take for you, for these pilgrims who died on their way.

By the way, when I was struggling on the Camino with my bung knee, I thought of this pilgrim (below) in India. I remember he was moving on his crutches as fast as our car, to get to the sacred Ganges.

One of the things that terrified me about the Camino before I left home was bed bugs.

I read forum posts, I read blogs, I saw Google images of infected bites, I saw truly disgusting YouTube videos, and I have to say, the thought of bed bugs freaked me out.

The creepy little critters.

I read that the worst time for bed bugs on the Camino was late summer and fall, and perhaps that was one of the reasons why I suddenly decided to walk in the spring.

I did not want beg bugs crawling over me in the night, in my sleeping bag, feasting on my flesh. Disgusting. 

But, bed bugs have been known to feast in April/May too, and I knew as I set off from St. Jean Pied de Port that there was every chance I would have a bed bug encounter.

One of the things with bed bugs is that if you get bitten, you don’t want to carry them from albergue to albergue. So you have to go through an elaborate procedure to rid them from your clothing, your sleeping bag and your pack.

It takes hours of washing and drying, and the thought of hanging around, washing all my belongings and waiting for them to dry, bothered me more than getting bitten.

I’d considered bringing along an anti bed bug mat to put on my mattress, and I considered various sprays to douse my bedding – but in the end, I decided not to worry.

I’d decided from the outset that I would not walk the Camino in fear. Because I believe that you attract what you fear the most. 

If you fear bed bugs, then you’ll get bed bugs. That’s what I believe. If you fear rain, you’ll get rain. This might sound weird, but I do believe that you can carry your weather with you, in your thoughts. I say that metaphorically.

I consciously excluded bed bugs from my thinking, and I never had an issue with them.

But while I didn’t fear bed bugs, I feared my dodgy knee would act up.

And it did. Big time. It nearly derailed my Camino.

I feared the walk up to O Cebreiro and because of my anxiety, I couldn’t sleep the night before. Consequently, I did the climb exhausted from lack of sleep, and it was hard. But I’d made it hard for myself because of my fear.

You attract what you fear the most. 

I heard of some other pilgrims on my walk who got bitten by bed bugs. I didn’t. Maybe I was lucky, or maybe through my thinking I didn’t attract them. I don’t know.

But we don’t realise how powerful our thoughts can be.

Our thoughts are as powerful as our actions.

I found while walking the Camino I became very sensitive to sound.

My hearing became finely tuned.

During my months of training, and in all the years I've been walking, I've always listened to audiobooks on an iPod.

I chose not to on the Camino.

I wanted to use the time to think, without interruption. Without distraction. I took my iPod, loaded to the 16GB max with books and music, but that 100gms of weight never came out of the pack. Not once. Not even on the plane home.

An unintended consequence of this is that I noticed my hearing improved. Or at least, it became more sensitive to sounds.

I heard birds. I heard streams and rivulets I couldn't see. I heard the wind.

I heard.

But I also heard things I didn't want to hear.

Cars coming up behind me sounded disproportionally loud. They would whoosh past me and they were violent. That's the word that kept coming to me as a car screamed past. Cars are violent.

My issue with the influx of pilgrims from Astorga on wasn't that they were short-cutting the Camino, or that there were so many of them, it was that they were loud.

Their laughter to me seemed like shrieking, and their footsteps sounded like soldiers with boots on the march.

That's what upset me the most, the noise they were making.

My hearing had become so sensitive, and attuned to the natural sounds of the Camino, that extraneous sounds were almost painful. And at times they were disturbing.

I'd become to regard the sounds of The Way as sacred. Church-like. You don't shriek in a church. You don't talk loudly. You don't clomp your feet. You respect where you are.

As a filmmaker, I understand sound. Not many people realise that when you're making a movie, you spend more time collating and editing sound than you do image. It's way more complex.

There is no such thing as silence. It exists in space, and in hermetically sealed environments, but nowhere else.

The Camino was never silent. There was always a cacophony of sound, if you cared to listen, even on the Meseta.

Especially on the Meseta.

I listened.

Now, many of my most wonderful memories are of things I heard. The cuckoo birds. The rush of water by the track outside of Samos. The wind on the high plains. The distant sound of cowbells in misty Galicia.

My camera enabled me to see, but in not using my iPod I was able to hear.

I forgot to mention the biggest little change of all –

Nothing scares me now.

Nothing.

I've already mentioned a big change since walking the Camino – I no longer need glasses.

But I've also noticed little changes.

Since coming back, I now keep my mobile phone on silent. I can't handle hearing it ring. And if I miss a call because I haven't heard it, I don't care. I used to obsessively respond to my phone. Not anymore.

I don't do Facebook anymore, either. Not like before.

Before the Camino, I'd have posted at least four to six times a day. Since returning, I've posted perhaps maybe six times in five weeks. It seems folly now. And ego driven.

Also, I used to always put the alarm on at night. The house is securely locked, but still I would always arm the security alarm. Not anymore.

Personal grooming – I used to use moisturiser each day. Didn't on the camino. Haven't since. And I still haven't put a battery in my razor.

Little changes. They actually mean big things…

In his groundbreaking book, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, mythologist Joseph Campbell established the concept of the “Hero's Journey.”

Essentially, what Campbell did was he examined classic myths from various cultures, and using concepts gleaned from Carl Jung, came to his monomythic theory:

“A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man.”

Okay, let's apply that to a pilgrim who leaves home to walk the Camino.

The hero (pilgrim) as Campbell describes in his book, starts in an “ordinary world” and gets a “call to adventure,” to enter an “unusual world of strange powers and events.” The hero/pilgrim then must face a “road of trials,” some of them intense and requiring assistance from others.

The hero/pilgrim ultimately must face a severe test, and if he or she survives, is then granted a great gift, or “boon.” The hero/pilgrim must then decide whether to return to the village, or the “ordinary world,” to bestow this gift or boon on the rest of the community, or the world.

There are so many parallels with someone getting the “call” to walk the Camino, a strange world of unusual powers and events – facing a road of trials, having to overcome an intense challenge, and receiving a gift before returning home.

But, one of the essential elements of the Hero's Journey is returning home. Returning home to bestow the “boon” on those that he or she left behind. This is for the betterment of the home, the village, the community and the world.

In times past, reaching Santiago was only half the journey. The other half was walking back home. Very few pilgrims do this now. I saw about 6 doing the return journey on my pilgrimage.

But some, even when they do return home, remain on the Camino.

Before the Camino, I used to wear glasses. I wore glasses for 15 years.

Now I don’t need them anymore.

Something happened on the Camino.

I used to need glasses for my long distance sight. I took two pairs with me on my Camino – my regular wire-framed glasses, and a pair of prescription Polaroid sunglasses.

Early on I discovered it was too much trouble to wear the regular glasses because I was forever taking them on and off when I was taking photos. I did though at times need my prescription sunglasses, so I wore them for about a week, until they broke. I had to throw them away.

I still needed sunglasses though, not only to stop glare (yes, I was lucky with sunny days on my walk!), but also to keep dust out of my eyes when the wind blew.

I didn’t have time to wait around for an optician to make up a new script for sunglasses, so I bought a €45 pair of normal Polaroid glasses. I began to wear them.

I discovered that I was able to see perfectly fine. Detail in the distance began to come into focus. Soon I was able to read signs that I couldn’t have read without prescription glasses.

What happened? Two things, I think:

1. I relaxed. The Camino relaxed me, and took the tension not only out of my body, but out of my eyesight. When the muscles in my eyes relaxed, I was able to see better.
2. I began to exercise those muscles in the same way I was exercising other muscles while walking the Camino. My eye muscles had become lazy with glasses. The optics did all the work for them. When I had to use my eyes without the aid of prescription glasses, they responded.

Today I drove 600kms – it took me 8hrs. Usually when I drive such long distances, my eyes get tired and I need my glasses, otherwise I get headaches. Not today. Only when I was driving into the setting sun late in the day did I put on my €45 Polaroids – the ones I’d bought in Spain.

It seems now I don’t need prescription glasses anymore.

Thank you, Camino! 

Bill