Walk with SMB: When the Walk Is the Point
Episode Summary: Last May, I walked the English Way of the Camino de Santiago and came home with an experience that eventually became part of the origin story of Rooted. Now, as I prepare to return to the Camino—this time walking part of the Portuguese Way—I’m looking back at what happened when I finally slowed down enough to notice what was happening around me and within me.
This is a story about walking, certainly. But it’s also an exploration of what can happen when we stop organizing an experience around the destination and allow the path itself to become the point.
SHOW NOTES
What happens when we stop trying so hard to arrive?
Last May, I walked the English Way of the Camino de Santiago—about 73 miles across northern Spain. I’ve shared one part of that story before: on day three, after the noise in my head finally began to quiet, I had the realization that eventually became the seed of ROOTED: This is where I belong.
But there was more to that walk.
There were three women who became unexpected companions and showed me something about moving through life without rushing. There were feathers that appeared in my path each day, a very unsubtle snail when I desperately wanted a sign, and a bird that seemed to reinforce the message: slow down. And there was a word I kept encountering along the way—volar, Spanish for “to fly”—that eventually found a permanent place on my wrist.
Now I’m preparing to return to the Camino and walk part of the Portuguese Way. But this time, I’m not walking all the way to Santiago.
I’m walking eight days simply to walk—to be outside, to carry less, and to see what happens when I give the slowing down a little more time.
Maybe that is part of what it means to move through life as a pilgrim: to loosen our grip on the destination, pay attention to what appears along the way, and trust that sometimes the path gives us something different from what we planned—but closer to what we needed.
Key Themes
Walking as a way of slowing down and noticing
The difference between experiencing a journey and trying to arrive
What the Camino taught me about my own relationship with busyness
Unexpected companionship and the wisdom of unhurried people
Paying attention to signs, symbols, and what we make of them
Nature as a place of connection, grounding, and remembering
Carrying less—both literally and metaphorically
Key Takeaways
Sometimes slowing down takes longer than we expect. My first few days on the Camino felt less like instant peace and more like “detoxing from busyness.”
Being unhurried is different from simply having nowhere to be. Walking alongside women who moved through the Camino without rushing helped me experience that difference.
Nature gave me something to pay attention to before I understood what any of it meant: feathers, a snail, a bird, and eventually the word volar.
The realization that helped seed Rooted didn’t arrive because I was searching for it. It emerged after several days of walking, when enough internal noise had quieted for me to notice what was already there.
Returning to the Camino feels different this time. Santiago is no longer the organizing destination. The experiment is whether I can let the walking itself be enough—and bring more of that way of moving back into everyday life.
“I’m not walking to arrive anywhere this time. I’m walking to let the slowing down go a little deeper.”
Resources Mentioned
Camino de Santiago
A network of historic pilgrimage routes across Western Europe that converge in Santiago de Compostela, Spain.
The English Way / Camino Inglés
The Camino route I walked last May, beginning on the northern coast of Spain and ending in Santiago de Compostela.
The Portuguese Way / Camino Português
The Camino I’m returning to walk this year. I’ll begin in Portugal and walk approximately 120 kilometers over eight days, ending in Tui, Spain.
Reflection Prompt
What might change if, for a little while, you stopped organizing your path around where it was supposed to lead?
Prefer to read? The full transcript is below.
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Susan:
Welcome to ROOTED, a podcast about nature and wellbeing. I'm Susan Morgan Bailey.
This is a Walk with SMB episode.
Today I'm talking about walking—specifically my experience on the Camino de Santiago last May—as I get ready to head out and walk a different stretch of it next week.
In six days, I leave for Portugal.
Part of the reason I'm going is to walk the middle stretch of the Portuguese Way. My bag is half packed in a pile on the floor, and I'm making progress toward getting ready.
I've said Buen Camino at the end of every single episode of this show since episode one.
If you were with me back then, you know a little of what that means, and you know that on day three of a walk I did last year is where this whole podcast actually started.
What I haven't told you is the rest of it: where I was walking, who I was walking with, and what happened to that word after it followed me home.
So before I go walk again, I thought it would be fun to come back and talk a little bit more about some of the parts I left out from my walk last year.
When the Destination Stops Being the Point
But here's where we'll actually start—not last May.
I want to go back six or seven months ago.
I learned about a human sustainability conference in Porto, and two of my friends were interested in attending. It's free, so I thought, why not go to the conference?
Human sustainability is my jam. It is a different way of saying human wellbeing—helping people thrive. That's what I do for a living.
And then I thought, wow, I could go to the conference and walk the Portuguese Way while I'm there.
So I set that plan in motion.
Then two months ago, on a Sunday afternoon, I started to play around with my walk. I was going to go out a week early and walk from Porto. From Porto all the way to Santiago de Compostela is about 220 kilometers—roughly 150 miles. Please don't check my conversions.
I was trying to figure out: How can I go early and do some walking, then get myself back to Porto, go to the conference, and then get myself back north to pick up somewhere along the path so that I could get to Santiago? And then I would need to get back to a major city to fly home.
As I sat and played with it for a couple of hours, it just felt stressful and a little anxiety-inducing.
Somewhere in the middle of that, I was hit with the reminder that the point—for me, at least, and for many I know who walk the Camino—is the walk, not Santiago.
The point is the experience of the walk.
And I realized: Rather than hustle back north after the conference, I could simply stay in Porto and experience Porto.
Hmm.
So this time, I am not chasing Santiago.
My threshold will be Spain. I will cross the Minho River and end my walk in Tui.
I'll get to Santiago again someday. But for now, early next week, I'm going to begin eight days of walking.
No big cathedral at the end.
This is really, for me, about the road and being back outside.
Walking the Camino
In case you're not familiar with the Camino, I wanted to share a little bit about it.
The Camino de Santiago isn't one path. It's a whole web of them across Western Europe. They all converge on the same cathedral and space in Santiago de Compostela, Spain, where tradition holds the remains of the Apostle James are entombed.
People walk the Camino for a number of reasons. Some to see St. James. Some walk for faith. Others walk for processing. Others walk because they just want to take a break from life.
And some walk for a reason they can't quite name that comes to them as they walk.
There's a phrase among pilgrims—which is what you're called when you're walking the path—that the Camino provides.
It doesn't mean that nothing goes wrong.
To me, it means that if you move toward where you're headed with an open, unhurried presence, you tend to get what you need.
Maybe not what you planned for, but what you need.
And that is part of Buen Camino that I didn't get to when I introduced the connection to the Camino in that early episode of this podcast.
Detoxing from Busyness
Last May, I walked the English Way, or Celtic Way.
And the first few days, my mind could not stop talking.
I can distinctly remember getting to my destination after the first day of walking and thinking, okay, my point was to slow down, relax, and learn to slow down and relax.
And then thinking: Do I want to do nothing here or over there? Should I do nothing here or there in this sweet little town on a river?
I was busy trying to relax.
A few days later, I realized I was detoxing from busyness.
But at the time, I was just in go mode, as I am so often.
Those first few days, my mind worked—a lot. Observing the path, analyzing the path, thinking about my life, thinking about what I was seeing.
Old habits, walking right along with me in those early steps.
The Women Who Walked With Me
On the afternoon after my first day of walking, at the albergue—which is what they call the pilgrim hostels along the way—I met three women.
Krystyna from Poland, age 63.
Di from Australia, age 73.
And Lee, her bestie, also from Australia, age 65.
I was the young one of the group, which was exciting and empowering and gave me such hope for my future in a new and different way.
We chatted a bit, hanging out at the albergue, and from the next morning on, we just kept walking together.
Krystyna reminded me so much of my own mother and my aunts, who were half Polish. Funny and tough and brave in a way that didn't announce itself.
And Di and Lee were tackling approximately their eighth Camino.
Eight.
They were just so impressive and so fit and healthy and worldly and fun and down to earth.
Di became a kind of guide to me without ever trying to be one.
She was the one who reminded me, especially in the beginning: “This is your Camino. You do you. You do not need to keep up with us. You do not need to follow us. You can go faster. You can go slower. You can do whatever you want.”
But she was also the one who reminded me: We're not in a rush.
It was really helpful to have someone remind me of that, because I feel like my whole life I've been hustling.
So here I was: strong women, unhurried women, hanging out with me—years ahead of me on this path together.
Walking.
Feathers, a Snail, and a Bird
Every single day, one of the fun things is that I found a feather.
Not a small one, but big, beautiful ones right in my path.
I started calling it my feather of the day.
For me, on the pilgrimage I was on, I was looking for signs. On a pilgrimage, many might look for signs that they're on the right road or that they're being looked after.
That's what the feathers became for me.
Proof once a day that I was exactly where I needed to be.
On day two, though, before any of that quiet arrived, I had a genuine panic moment in the morning.
I was convinced I'd taken a wrong turn somewhere. I couldn't find the way marker, which is sometimes a big solid marker, sometimes a yellow spray-painted arrow somewhere.
And, of course, I didn't want to take extra steps on a 15-ish-mile day.
In that panic, half out loud, I asked for a sign.
And the next thing I knew, I saw a snail—an enormous snail—right in the middle of the path in front of me.
Gratefully, I did not step on it.
Some part of me thought: Really? A snail?
Slow down.
That's the sign.
I remember almost laughing at how unsubtle the message was.
Then a little further on, moments later, when I was questioning the sign, a bird flew right across in front of me and landed on a branch at eye height.
It just seemed like it was looking at me.
Like: Do I need to make it any clearer?
That's the sign.
Okay. I got it.
And with that began me leaning further into slowing down, having some fun, not taking everything so seriously.
I didn't know yet that birds were going to become a significant spine of this story.
I just knew that in that moment I'd asked for something, and the path had answered twice.
In a matter of moments, a snail and a bird telling me the same thing two different ways.
“This Is Where I Belong”
You may already know this part or remember it from when I spoke about it in an earlier episode.
By day three, something had gone quiet in me.
Not all at once. It just thinned out.
And somewhere in the middle of that day's walk, in the quiet, a thought arrived, clear and simple.
The same one I told you about in episode one:
This is where I belong.
Not behind a desk. Not indoors, moving through a life mostly disconnected from the natural world.
I belong outside, present, moving at three miles an hour instead of racing through my inbox.
I definitely knew at that moment—and I still believe today—I am meant to live in connection to nature, not separate from it.
More of it in my life than I already had.
And with that recognition came something physical.
I felt a little less burdened, a little less weighted down by worry, by striving, by the constant low hum of trying to keep up with the life I'd built.
That's the whole seed of this podcast, right there.
Nature has become a lens for me even further than it already was—a grounding force, so many things.
I am having fun playing with nature.
Volar
Somewhere early in the walk—I can't tell you exactly which day—I kept noticing a word.
Maybe on a sticker randomly placed along the path, or in a small piece of graffiti. And then, later in the walk, on this massive graffiti wall, impossible to miss.
The word was volar.
V-O-L-A-R.
I didn't look it up right away because I'd promised myself I wouldn't use my phone or the internet while I was out there.
I just kept noticing it.
When I finally did look the word up, I learned that it was Spanish for “to fly.”
And pilgrims on the Camino are called peregrinos, a word that shares its roots with birds—migratory birds, the ones who fly the same long road season after season by instinct.
It landed less like a surprise and more like a recognition.
Because for me, as I think back, my wings had felt restrained for a long time.
I could feel it in my shoulders—actual physical tension and weight carried there.
Life stuff.
A life of carrying and moving at a pace that had clipped something without my noticing until I slowed down enough to feel the absence of it.
When I reached Santiago, I got a volar tattoo on my wrist next to a scallop shell, the symbol pilgrims have carried for centuries along the path.
And a reminder to me to continue to trust that the path will provide.
The path isn't just in Europe.
Every day I walk the path.
Every day I can show up to life as a pilgrim: walk lightly, try not to control everything, trust that I will be cared for, and carry less so I can fly and move lightly through life.
Returning to the Path
Which brings me back to the pile of things on my floor that need to fit in one reasonably sized backpack so I can carry everything on the path.
This time it's not the English Way. It's the Portuguese Way.
I'll be walking the middle of a long path, approximately 120 kilometers, spreading it out over eight days.
A little more time than last year to let my mind actually finish quieting down instead of just touching the edge of it and then coming home.
I'm not walking to arrive anywhere this time.
I'm walking to let the slowing down go a little deeper.
To carry less than I need on my back—and everywhere else.
To come home with it a bit more woven into how I actually live.
Not just something I remember happened to me once on a road in the past.
Thank you for walking with me today.
If this conversation resonated with you, I'd be honored if you'd subscribe to ROOTED so we can continue exploring together. And if you know someone who's sensing something's missing, someone who might need to hear this, please share this episode with them.
Buen Camino, friends.
Until we meet again.
