Month: October 2018

My Camino wasn’t going to be rising before dawn and rushing through the popular 15-18-mile “stage” in order to make sure I secured a bed at the next town’s cheapest Albergue (like so many of the pilgrims on the path).

My Camino was going to be slowing down, engaging with the history, geography and spirituality. Stopping often to absorb the surroundings, architecture, history and people. Sitting in churches long enough to breathe in the Spirit of God. Trusting that God would provide a place for me to lay my head each night. Teaching myself how to live and walk in a relaxed manner.

 

Preparing for your day—

When you’re preparing to leave one place you know you won’t be returning to and walking 5 – 15 miles to another location, you plan carefully. You spend some time thinking about what you’re going to wear, how you’re going to pack, in case the weather changes and you need to shed a jacket or get to your rain gear and poncho in a hurry. If you happen to leave something back at the place you slept, you think long and hard about whether you really need it. About whether or not you can buy a replacement in the next tiny village you sleep in.

You get into a rhythm, and you realize quickly just what you need to have and what you can live without. Hopefully you’ve done some serious thinking about this before you’ve arrived to start the walk. Unless you’ve decided to splurge and have a carrier service cart your bag from sleeping town to sleeping town, carrying an extra 2 or three pounds of unnecessary gear in your backpack can be physically and mentally debilitating.

At first it’s a little frustrating and disarming: Where do I keep my pilgrim credentials so I can access them easily to give to the person checking me in at the albergue? Where’s the best place in my backpack to keep my reading glasses so I can access them in a hurry? My sunglasses if the clouds should part? My first aid kit? (Just in case your or another pilgrim needs some care.) A special place for the precious handmade journal my son gave me and insisted I take along. The one I’d weep buckets of tears over if it got wet or lost.

It takes your brain some time to process, the fact that you have to think carefully about these particulars, since you’re more accustomed to being able to jump in the car to rush back where you left something, make an additional trip to the store to buy what you forgot. But the brain is an amazing body part. It eventually learns to accommodate and think in different patterns and meet new demands.

 

You develop a daily rhythm:

 

 

 

 

 

 

Although this run-down may read like a tedious list, stay with me. I’ll talk about the benefits afterward.

  • Wake up and rise slowly, stretch the body to prepare it for the day’s walk.
  • Do your bathroom thing. Since the pottying and washing rooms might be separate, you need to prepare for carting your tooth supplies to a different location for preparation, and your clothes for dressing. Putting in contact lenses might require yet another locale (depending upon sink and mirror availability.)
  • Roll up and shrink your sleeping bag (if you had to use one) and then spread all of your bags of clothing and necessities out on your bed, to make sure everything is accounted for.
  • If you haven’t done so the night before, head to the clothesline to gather your clothes and give them a once-over to see if socks, shirts, undies and pants are dry enough to wear or roll up in a baggy. If not, the item will be rolled into a special bag (so as not to dampen other items) or clipped onto your backpack to dry as you walk.
  • Kinesiotape any body parts that need taping.
  • Double check the weather and temperature outside and decide on the day’s start-off clothing.
  • Get your hiking shirt(s) and pants on.
  • Prepare your feet and toes for the day, carefully put on your socks and then your shoes. (Although you may have to wait until you’re fully dressed and backpacked and headed to the front of the albergue if you’re shoes are stored in a downstairs cubby to keep the floors clean.)
  • Carefully pack up your backpack—sleeping bag in the very bottom, followed by bath towel and washcloth, silk sleeping bag liner, shower sandals, Ziploc bags of clothes and undies. The tiny pouches of daily contact lenses, foot care tape and pedicure supplies and the one containing general toiletries get tucked into available areas.
  • Then the journal and pilgrim credential (stored in waterproof bags) are slipped into the backpack and covered by the rain poncho and compressed puff jacket.
  • The upper pouch gets the Goretex rain jacket and pants (if the jacket isn’t being worn that day for general warmth), along with the assorted eyeglass containers (long distance sunglasses, travel-sized readers, and general long distance (for those times I’m taking a contact lens break). The sports sunglasses—in their case—get attached to the outside of my backpack’s hip pocket pouch for easy access. If I’m not wearing my sunhat that day, it gets folded up and stored in the top pouch too, for easy access. The money pouch, with the United States passport in its waterproof container, goes on top. Just in case we stop for a café con leche, banana or hunk of cheese along the way.
  • The outside pouch stores the Duck Back cover for my backpack (which I actually don’t need any longer since I purchased a full over-the-backpack-and-me poncho in St. Jean Pied de Pont just before setting out). It also carries my collapsible parachute bag I used for necessities like my United States of America passport and money pouch. The compact first aid get goes there, too, as well as any oranges, cheese or bananas I can squeeze into available space.
  • The two hip pouches contain lip cream, Euro coinage, the rosary Cory bought me in Rome, the prayer beads my dear girlfriend Judy bought me for my journey, and my hearing aids, which would cost me a small fortune to replace.
  • Before grabbing my coveted Pacer Poles hiking sticks, I double and triple-check for several items:
  • Hearing aids in the container (if they’re not in my ears, which Chris always checked for me too).
  • My phone, which I have only to take pictures, and in case of an emergency, should Chris and I become separated and I need to make contact with someone.
  • My precious leather journal and pilgrim credentials, to prove I’m on a foot-born pilgrimage and which gives me the right to bed down in an albergue.
  • Contact lenses
  • My money pouch and official passport, (which Chris always eyeballs too).
  • My Kinesiotape, (with which I could not walk comfortable if I were to lose).
  • Finally, the critical water bottles are topped off and placed in our backpack pockets.
  • Then the wrist sweatbands go on, followed by the Kool Tie neck wrap tied around my neck to ward off overheating and migraines, the hiking poles are grabbed, and you head out the door for another adventure, which you’ve come to realize you’re going to have. Every day.
  • The only jewelry I wore was a $15.00 faux pearl and diamond ring, so I didn’t have to worry about losing my real wedding ring or futzing with earrings. No watch, either. I relied on my phone, or the sunlight, for the time. And I didn’t bring any makeup. The only thing I applied to my face was sunscreen.

 

Not much to worry about.

 

Preparation time—

Because Chris and I were unhurried, this procedure took us about an hour. On days we wanted to rise early to beat the heat or walk longer distances, we managed to whittle it down to 45 minutes. Because most albergues expect you to vacate by 8:00 AM—to prepare for the next gaggle of pilgrims flooding their dormers—you’d likely have to rise earlier than you might have preferred. Especially if you’re sharing a room with pilgrims on a sprint to their next bed, who awaken you with noisy departure preparations or abrupt, dream-shattering light so they can be off.

 

Typed out on a word document, the process looks boring and tedious. Too methodical and repetitious. But it quickly became a comfortable ritual, one that gave consistency to our lives and only mildly jostled the brain. Each possession had a purpose and its place. Nothing useless or unnecessary. Everything we carried was meant to meet the basics of our daily needs. There was nothing but the necessaries to weigh us down. And most of it, besides the eyeglasses to see, the hearing aids to hear, the United States passport to move around Europe and get home, and the water was not critical.

 

Joy, and possibilities, in tedious structure—

The mundaneness had its advantages.

Since my brain had very little to be concerned about every morning, and became accustomed to the repetitive program, it was left with plenty of room to engage in the geography, the new surroundings, sights, smells, tastes and varied languages. New people and interesting conversations. All enjoyed without distractions or waste. Just as I was doing physically, my brain was relishing being able to take a breath.

I started enjoying the simplicity of carrying lightly and started pondering what I carried through life back home—what I’d picked up and carted along in my life “just in case”—that could be discarded.

There were plenty of buying opportunities, (and I had a wad of Euros in my pouch), but with so little room available, and the burden of extra weight to consider, I pondered each purchase with care and conscientious analysis. Something else I knew I needed to do more of in life.

 

Seriously consider the weight and substance of everything I own, everything I do, everything I buy.

 

It wasn’t that I was embracing a minimalistic attitude or view of life. If anything I probably found greater emotional joy than I had before in thinking about the beautiful and varied things that enrich my life and bring me happiness and satisfaction. The family heirlooms and pictures that trigger happy memories and the release of feel-good brain chemicals.

 

But I started asking myself some questions. Questions you may also want to ask yourself:

 

Introspection—

  1. What things do I too hastily pick up and burden my heart, mind and life with? Do I carefully count the cost of carrying them before picking them up?
  2. What belongings do I have that add nothing to my life, or, worse yet, only make it more complicated and burdensome?
  3. What should and would I divest myself of in order to enjoy a richer, fuller life?
  4. What should I divest myself of in order to invest in deeper, fuller relationships with family, friends and strangers?

 

It didn’t take long for me to start pondering those questions and soaking myself in the simple, divested life of a pilgrim. After all, I had traveled all that distance to hear what God had to teach me through the experience.

And I was determined to listen.

I’ll tell you more about that NEXT WEEK!

Until then, take some time to count the cost of your belongings and attachments?

Blessings,

Andrea

May you prosper in all things and be in health, just as your soul prospers (3 John 2).

Photos by Andrea A Owan

Blister Care on the Camino de Santiago: A Personal Case Study

The pilgrimage was a success, emotionally and spiritually, and, for the most part, physically! I even got comfortable with carrying 23 pounds. By the end of the trip, I didn’t even notice the weight, and neither did my arthritic back!

Unfortunately, though, I injured my right knee and didn’t stay off of it enough. The last day of walking pretty much did me in. It was too far—15 miles—too fast on a bad leg. Then I tramped 7 miles across Paris to ascend the Eiffel Tour. Now, I’m back to very low daily mileage, icing and making sure I put my leg up every afternoon. That usually means a nap accompanies the leg elevation, which isn’t such a bad way to spend a rainy fall afternoon.

But most of the other days were rousing successes physically, actually better than I hoped, including the blister prevention and management. Here’s a quick rundown on that aspect of my journey:

 

Daily rituals—

The morning prepto start walking usually went like this:

  1. Make sure all strategic body parts (like the sore left ankle) were clean and properly supported with Kinesiotape.
  2. Kinesiotape the ball of my right foot.
  3. Tape (usually with Kinesiotape) the second, third and fourth toes to avoid blisters.
  4. Slather the heals and toes with Foot Glide cream.
  5. Put the light sock liner on.
  6. Sprinkle Gold Bond medicated foot powder (to absorb moisture) in the main sock, squish it around for good coverage, and put the sock over the liner.
  7. Slide gaiters over my ankles before putting shoes on.
  8. Place lambs wool in the right toe box to cut down on toenail bruising from foot sliding forward in the shoe and banging on the toe box. (This worked wonders! I knew my ballet training with toe shoes knowledge would come in handy some day.)
  9. Insert foot in shoe and make sure no seams or bunched up sock areas are annoying or noticeable.
  10. Properly double tie the shoes and attach gaiters to laces and spread them down around the heals and mid-shoe areas.
  11. Make sure my toes were comfortably spread out while walking rather than scrunched up in the shoes.

 

Post-walk ritual—

  1. After peeling off soaked clothes and taking a shower, dry feet thoroughly and check for blisters and hot spots, and then check toe nails, cuticles and rough skin that needs trimming and filing. (I tried to keep my feet and toes as smooth as possible, without grinding off all of the calluses on my big toes and heals. I used a fairly rough mani/pedicure board for this.)
  2. Walk around the rest of the afternoon and evening in open-toed flip-flops to make sure my feet stay dry. Sometimes my Kinesiotape stayed on in the shower, so I kept it on the body parts it was anchored to the next day.)
  3. Slather feet with lotion and put socks on to sleep in.

 

Even with this ritual, which I adhered to religiously, my fourth toes sprung leaks with some nasty blisters; the one on the right toe had two blisters with one under the callus that runs down the middle of my toe. The other toe had a pretty sizeable blister, probably because I didn’t correctly place my blister pressure pad on it a couple of days and ended up increasing the shear rather than decreasing it.

The results—

No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t keep those fourth toes blister-free, which is probably due to the fact that they curve and twist like little commas, due to all of the time I spent with them hooked around a balance beam while growing up. So I had to do some minor surgery on those.

 

First steps in dealing with the blisters—

This is where the Spenco 2ndSkin and moleskin strips and cutouts saved my life.

  1. For several days, I provided extra padding over the blister and around the toe to protect the tender, elevated skin and keep it from breaking. A little piece of Second Skin cut to the length of my toe was placed over the blister and then covered with Kinesiotape or moleskin. If it was just a hot spot I was tending to, I applied a generic blister pad.
  2. Then I decided I needed to do some lancing of the one blister because it appeared to be getting larger. So I sterilized my cuticle scissors and made tiny slices at the base of the blister and gently pushed the fluid from the blister. Then I went through the same padding procedure.
  3. But one blister was a toughy. It kept re-sealing itself, so I kept cutting. Several slices on the last go around to make sure it stayed drained. Then I applied the Second Skin and wrapped it across the top and around with moleskin. To alleviate some pressure and attempt to straighten out the toe a bit, I placed a small wedge of lambs wool between the fourth and third toe.
  4. In spite of pretty fire-red blisters and skin, I walked a lot of mileage without blister pain. Now, about 10 days after completing the walk, I’ve snipped off the dead skin layers. And we’re back in business!

 

Survival kit—

My toes wouldn’t have survived without my blister care arsenal:

  • Foot Glide
  • Double-layered socks
  • Sock liners
  • Drymax socks (these are now my favorite go=to socks!)
  • Moleskin
  • Spenco 2ndSkin
  • Kinesiotape
  • Toe clippers and scissors and cuticle clippers
  • Told Bond Powder
  • Kinesiotape

I also used Desitin Maximum Strength cream for its zinc oxide protection and drying, and its medicated healing capabilities. That was applied at night after a thorough cleaning and drying and before putting on my socks.

 

Toward the end of the journey, I was measuring and pre-cutting my tape and moleskin to reduce the morning prep time. And I actually had to snap Chris’s Kinesiotape from him to enlist on my feet, legs, knees, and ankles. Good thing for me that he didn’t need it!

 

Other pilgrims’s foot woes—

We ate dinner one night with a gentleman who was walking the Camino for the second time. He recounted his devastating first experience, with such severe blisters that he couldn’t walk. Some of them broke on their own and ended up getting infected after he showered without wearing shower sandals. Then he contracted something like trench foot. Only after he managed to secure some hefty antibiotic did the infections subside and he finished his walk. It sounded ghastly!

In one of the hostels I watched an older French couple sitting in the lounge. She had her feet on his legs, and he was lovingly applying ointment and bandages to her blistered feet and toes. Her oooh, ooh, ooh’s were replaced by grateful sighs when he carefully slid socks on her feet and tenderly massaged them.

Then, on our last official day of walking, Chris and I encountered a pilgrim perched on a large boulder on the side of the path. Her foot was a mess, and she was trying to improve her predicament by taping a large-wound Telfa pad sheet (like the kind you see with the “plastic” side to control fluid draining and infection) on the bottom of her foot. She had it cut (as closely as possible) to the shape of her foot. I suspect she was trying to reduce friction. It didn’t look as though it was going to turn out so well for her.

She looked miserable.

 

Not to be taken lightly—

Blister problems can be more than annoying and painful. They can be dangerous. And they need to be taken care of immediately. I’m fortunate to know how to care for blisters and be able to take care of them on my own. But even my blister ailments could have gone south very quickly. The one blister got so red I became concerned about infection. I applied triple antibiotic cream to it for a couple of days as a precaution.

I was fortunate.

 

Planning and preparing for problems—

If you’re planning any long distance hiking, make sure you prepare your feet well by training, wearing the right shoes for your feet, wearing friction-reducing sock liners and attending to your hot spots as soon as they crop up, NOT after you’ve put in your mileage. If you wait until the walk is over, it might be too late to get control over them. Stay vigilant.

Be prepared.

Make sure you’re all set so you can enjoy the walk!

 

NEXT WEEK we’ll take a quick look at more equipment you don’t want to hike without. Equipment that can reduce the stress on your joints and feet.

Until then, take care of your feet so they can keep you moving!

Blessings,

Andrea

May you prosper in all things and be in health, just as your soul prospers (3 John 2).

Photo of my own toes taken by me!

Cultivating Gratefulness

Gratefulness is big business these days. Foundations have been formed to study and teach it. Brain potential single-day educational programs on gratefulness are making their way around the country. Oprah is focusing on it this month in her O, The Oprah Magazine. You can find presentations about it on TED talks. There’s even a website dedicated to nourishing and deepening your gratefulness.

The fact that we even have to teach people how to be grateful and how to exhibit gratefulness tells me something: gratefulness doesn’t come naturally to us. We have to think about it and work on it. Our hearts and minds really aren’t prone to it.

 

The problem?

So what’s the problem, aside from human beings generally being bent toward selfishness, self-preservation and self-promotion?

Are we too distracted by noise and sensory input from disquieting sources to appreciate the good things in our life?

Do we overlook the good things because we’ve become jaded to them and pay too much attention to the advertising that tells us what we have isn’t good enough and we need to keep striving for more, thus making anything we do have seem boring and unsatisfying?

Do we violate the 10thCommandment of “Thou shall not covet” too much and become depressed at what we consider to be a lack?

Do we buy too many things that we think will give us fulfillment and everlasting enjoyment and discover too quickly that they do neither, so we continue our search for more?

Do we really know what would prompt us to satisfaction and gratefulness?

And once we focus on gratefulness, how do we keep it a habit?

 

Taking a closer look at gratefulness—

In the next six Mondays leading up to Thanksgiving Day that we celebrate here in the United States, we’ll focus on gratefulness. What drives it, why we seem to suffer a lack of it, and why we need it. We’ll look at scientific research on it and see what God and some of His most remarkable people—like King David—have to say about it, or how they display it.

And, hopefully, at the end of the six weeks, you’ll come away with a heart set more on a permanent attitude of gratefulness. An attitude that will evolve and blossom into a lifestyle!

Until then, be thinking about the things or people in your life you are truly grateful for and why. Better yet, get a journal and turn it into a thankfulness notebook. I think you’ll be surprised at the affect writing them down has on your heart and spirit.

 

See you next week!

Blessings,

Andrea

May you prosper in all things and be in health, just as your soul prospers (3 John 2).

Photo by Gabrielle Cole on unsplash.com

Enjoying the Benefits of Not Reading

FOR MY Free-for-All Friday posts, I often refer to and recommend a book I’ve been reading, one I think you’d enjoy or that could grow or enlarge your faith. But I haven’t read much the last month, which, for an author who’s a voracious reader, is really unordinary. I was enjoying the benefits that come from not having my eyes plastered to the words in a book or magazine or characters in a text or email.

Spending 25 days on a pilgrimage can do that to you. Change your focus.

But I don’t mean to imply that I didn’t read anything. I read—and tried to decipher—signs written in foreign languages. (I’m happy to say that, for the most part, I did pretty well with this!)

I also read special pilgrim maps, so we wouldn’t get lost or miss one of those special yellow and blue shell signs marking the route. (Our biggest obstacle to this was getting our brains used to the British-sourced maps that direct you to the top of the page for south, rather than the other way around. I never did get my brain adjusted. Thankfully, Chris did!)

And I read brief historical literature or pamphlets about the towns, villages, castles or churches we visited, and the people who made them famous.

And I read a few bus terminal signs and restaurant menus. And several texts from my kids. But not very many. And I wrote several brief ones in return. On Chris’s phone.

 

Satisfying a goal—

Part of our pilgrimage goal—mentally, physically and spiritually—was to deliberately divest ourselves of the daily anxieties of life. Like staying engaged in the endless world discourse, reading breaking news flashes, television-scrolling news briefs, texts and emails so we could “be in the know.” Instead, we wanted to be fully engaged in our moment-by-moment experiences. Undistracted from the here and now. Totally absorbed in where the map and our feet took us, in the conversations shared (and I do mean shared) at festival seating meal tables, in the geography of the land, and in the habits of its inhabitants.

 

Totally absorbed in what was happening to our bodies, minds and spirits.

 

I didn’t lug along a computer. My iPad rested peacefully in its pocket in my desk cabinet back home. I didn’t bring a magazine or book to kill time during down times. From the moment our plane lifted off the John F. Kennedy International Airport runway on its way to Paris and I returned home 26 days later, my phone was engaged in Airplane mode. (Actually, it took me two additional days after returning home to shut off the Airplane Mode toggle.) I had it along only to take pictures, and if a dire emergency warranted a call. It never did.

Frankly, I was surprised at how quickly and happily my brain and five senses responded to this new program.

They became fully engaged and magnified as they absorbed the sights, sounds and smells of pastoral settings brimming with sheep, cattle and horses, succulent green grasses, dank and mildewed medieval churches and monasteries, lazy rivers, spring-fed, dripping water fountains, the excited conversations of expectant pilgrims ready to start their journeys, the laughter of people enjoying al fresco dining and intimate conversations, the tick-tick-tick of un-capped hiking poles on cobbled streets.

And that was just on the first day!

My brain was so busy absorbing the sensory input I focused on that it didn’t have an opportunity to log one iota of regret at what it was missing out on.

 

And for the first time in a very long time my brain and I felt fully alive!

And so very grateful to be so.

In my last Free-for-All Friday post, I mentioned that I would be on a pilgrimage to discover a body and soul waltz. Now that my official pilgrimage is over for now, I can tell you my body and my soul quickly embraced the new tempo and melded together in perfect timing and rhythm, playing off of one another and gliding in synchrony.

It was a dance I didn’t want to end, and I’m making sure it won’t.

Next week Friday I’ll tell you how I’m accomplishing that. Maybe you’ll find some ideas and tips to accomplish the same things in your life.

I hope so.

But please join me this coming Monday when we’ll start preparing our hearts and minds for Thanksgiving!

Until then,

engage all of your senses in the moment. Be not only conscious but conscientious in every thought, word and life nuance.

Blessings,

Andrea

May you prosper in all things and be in health, just as your soul prospers (3 John 2).
Photo by Ian on Unsplash.com