Excerpt from the book:

Pilgrimage: a journey of the soul and the body, a unique combination of inner and outer experience fusing together step by step, mile by mile, through thirst and hunger, pain and exhaustion, joyfulness and determination.

Pilgrimage: you hear a call that cannot be denied. Perhaps it began as a whisper twenty years earlier, perhaps it began as an ear-splitting shout a week before. Soon or later, you feel compelled to respond. You make plans to go on pilgrimage.

Pilgrimage: a setting forth, a leave-taking from the familiar, from familiarity. A trip into the unknown, both interior and exterior. A moving away from what is known into what is unknown but longed for.

The journey begins with separation leaving home and friends, leaving behind the well-known signposts of location and behavior, of expectations and rewards, conscious, intentional movement into an unfamiliar realm, both physically and psychically. Perhaps this separation is marked by a blessing ceremony; perhaps it is marked by pinning the scallop-shell emblem of the pilgrimage to Santiago onto your backpack, or by hanging the shell by a ribbon around your neck.

You enter into a time in-between, a "liminal" period named after the threshold at the bottom of a door, the threshold that the bride was traditionally carried over to signify her movement into a new state of being. Like the bride, you, the pilgrim, cross the threshold and enter into a new realm, one full of possibilities as well as challenges. What lies beyond the distant mountain range? What waits behind the next curve in the road? What deep insight will be revealed after a day of walking in silence or after an afternoon of conversation with companions?

Your routine role and status get left behind. Blisters form, legs become weary, shoulders ache, regardless of your amount of education, your job title back home, your level of physical preparation. You become a pilgrim, sharing with fellow pilgrims the travails and pleasures of the journey.

Time itself becomes different, marked not by the clock but by the movement of the body through space. And space itself becomes different because you are walking through sacred space. You have entered a landscape punctuated by shrines and churches, hermitages and cathedrals, sacred springs and sacred mountains. Day after day, week after week, the longer the better, since distance and time help your body grab hold of the experience, help your heart open up, help your mind detach from old patterns, help your soul expand into itself. you move toward your goal.

And then the goal is reached. You may find, however, that it is no longer the goal, its importance having dissolved with every step on the Camino. Or it may still be the goal, one that has grown more important with each day's yearning. Each pilgrim's journey is unique, and each time you travel the Camino the goal will be different.

Finally, you return to your home community, your friends, your family. This may be an eagerly waited return or an apprehensive return, a return made with feet dragging each step of the way or with feet joyfully dancing toward home, a home that will never, ever, be the same again because you will never, ever, be the same again. The changes may be subtle or obvious, slow growing or erupting full-blown into your awareness. But changes there will be. For you are now a pilgrim and you have been become a life-long member of a new community, a community made up of the millions of fellow pilgrims, living and deceased, who have walked the Camino before you.