Our family in May of 2022 (we definitely need a new one!)
This is the blog for our grand family adventure. I can’t promise to update it every day, but I’ll do my best to keep people posted on where we are, what we’ve been up to, and some our thoughts along the way. I thought today I’d give some background on this trip.
About a year ago, I started thinking seriously about what I would do for my upcoming sabbatical. It’s one of the great blessings of my profession, and I really wanted to take advantage of the time to recharge my batteries, spend some time with my family, and produce something worthwhile. At some point along the way, I started considering the Camino de Santiago (Way of Saint James) as an option.
I’ll be writing lots about the Camino, but for today I’ll just oversimplify by saying that it’s an ancient pilgrimage that starts at various places throughout Europe and ends at the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela on the Northwest coast of Spain. The most famous traditional route is called the Camino Francés (French Way). The main route begins in the little town of Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port just on the French side of the Spain/France border — not far from Pamplona, and follows about 500 miles of trail to Santiago. It’s something that I’ve known about for a long time, and something I’ve always wanted to do, but I’ve never had the chance.
As I was saying, sometime about a year ago, I decided that it would be an amazing sabbatical project to hike the Camino with my family. Again, I’ll have much more to say about that later on, but you should just know that it’s important to me that we do this together.
It wasn’t until about February or March of this year that I finally got the courage to bring this up to Betty (another story for another day), but the important thing is that I did get the courage to propose, and miraculously, she said yes!
We also wanted to take advantage of the time off of work to travel out west to visit our family in Utah, Arizona, and Mexico. It’s been years since we’ve been out here. So we decided to just make it one grand adventure. Six months, a giant road trip followed by some time traveling around Europe (France, Italy, Spain, Germany?) and culminating in hiking the Camino from April to June.
I’m pretty sure anyone reading this will already know our family, but in case you didn't, I’d just point out that when I say the whole family I mean, me, Betty (my wife), and our five kids. Kimball (17), Anahi (15), Alicia (14), Ian (11), and River (3).
We have a few different goals on this trip:
We want to come together as a family and help the kids overcome some of the challenges they are facing.
We want to learn what it means to be a pilgrim, and we want to travel like pilgrims. That means slowing down, paying attention to the beauty around us, seeking out sacred things, connecting with the people around us, and trusting that God will show us the way. This is NOT a vacation, but rather sacred travel. We believe there is a difference, and we want to learn what it is.
Along with that, I’ll be prepping a book about our experiences (this blog will help me keep notes on what’s going on. In particular, I’m interested in why an LDS family would be interested in doing this ancient Catholic pilgrimage.
Finally, it’s a photography project. I love how when I’m shooting, it makes me slow down and pay attention to the world around me, and I want to have beautiful pictures to remind me of this once-in-a-lifetime experience. I’m hoping to maybe even have a show at the college when we get back.
So that’s a brief summary of what we are up to. I’d like to write most days, but I’m not sure if I’ll be able to. Please let us know if you have any questions or comments about the trip, as it will help guide the blog.