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Author speaking about his pilgrimage on the Podcast - Camino Project
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From Slow Camino by Terence Callery - introduction to the book
“Mr. Avery, your son, I am afraid, is dead. He has died of exposure in the Pyrenees Mountains,” said Captain Henri.
“What…what, it is not possible. What was he doing there?” asked Tom Avery.
“He was on pilgrimage. It was his first day on the Camino de Santiago.”
These lines of dialogue (as I remember them) are from the film, The Way, written and directed by Emilio Estevez and released October of 2011. The film’s lead, Martin Sheen, plays the part of an American doctor whose son is killed in a freak storm in the Pyrenees Mountains. It was on his first day of hiking the Camino de Santiago, which is Christianity’s most important pilgrimage. Early in the film, we learn that the father quite upset that his son is dropping out of a master’s program in anthropology to make the walking pilgrimage from St Jean Pied de Port, France to Santiago de Compostela in northwest Spain—a trip of 800 km that the guidebook says can be completed in 33 days.
Tom Avery must go to France in order to claim his son’s body, and Sheen does a masterful job portraying the father’s guilt, believing that the tragic death in the mountains was somehow his own fault. He should have known his son better. He was hurting from the worst sin we can commit, the sin of omission. While the film is an adventure story and a travel log, it is largely a father–son story, and authenticity is infused into that story by the real father–son relationship of Martin Sheen and Emilio Estevez. Only after French Police Captain Henri educates Sheen about the Camino, telling him that he himself has walked the pilgrimage twice and plans to do it again, explaining that it is a walking meditation and that it is an inward journey that is made at the same time as the physical journey—only then does Sheen begin to understand his son’s pilgrimage. The time arrives to make funeral arrangements, and Tom Avery must make a decision. The film’s viewer is totally surprised by what happens next.
Tom decides that his obligation to the memory and legacy of his son is to finish what he started. He has the backpack, all the gear, and he has the guidebook. He will walk the 800 km from St Jean, cross over the French–Spanish border, go up the Pyrenees, walk through Pamplona and into the wine-growing region of Rioja, walk thru the great cities of Burgos and Leon past Gothic cathedrals, hike next to the wheat fields of Spain’s breadbasket, ascend the Galician Mountains, and arrive finally at the tomb of St. James the Apostle in Santiago de Compostela.
He will make the pilgrimage that his son cannot. What’s more, he will spread his son’s cremated ashes along the way.
Two years after viewing the movie, I flew to Spain and walked the Camino de Santiago in a rare example of life imitating art. Somehow the film had burrowed its way into my brain and set up housekeeping there. It clung to me like static electricity on a new sweater. It was only after a series of events, which included a divorce and putting my farm up for sale, that I was free from all the obligations that had previously tied me down to both a career in Maine’s aquaculture industry and a successful alpaca farming business. Now I could break away and make the Camino a reality.
One film reviewer on the Rotten Tomatoes website wrote: “It’s inspiring, cathartic, poetic, hopeful, and makes you want to throw on a backpack start walking and find yourself.”
The more I learned about the Camino, the more I wanted to go. Once I got the John Brierley guidebook, The Way of St. James, it was a done deal. It was simply a matter of time before I would book the flight on Iberia Airlines.
Just as Hemingway’s masterpiece, The Old Man and the Sea, is not about fishing, this book is not about walking across Spain. The walk is simply the backstory that contains another story. There were things I had been thinking about for a long time, larger truths that began to crystallize as I made my walking meditation. There was a construct of self that began to fade as I allowed myself to exist more and more in the present. There was an inner strength that blossomed as I fell back from both the past and the future and into the infinite moment.
“Mr. Avery, your son, I am afraid, is dead. He has died of exposure in the Pyrenees Mountains,” said Captain Henri.
“What…what, it is not possible. What was he doing there?” asked Tom Avery.
“He was on pilgrimage. It was his first day on the Camino de Santiago.”
These lines of dialogue (as I remember them) are from the film, The Way, written and directed by Emilio Estevez and released October of 2011. The film’s lead, Martin Sheen, plays the part of an American doctor whose son is killed in a freak storm in the Pyrenees Mountains. It was on his first day of hiking the Camino de Santiago, which is Christianity’s most important pilgrimage. Early in the film, we learn that the father quite upset that his son is dropping out of a master’s program in anthropology to make the walking pilgrimage from St Jean Pied de Port, France to Santiago de Compostela in northwest Spain—a trip of 800 km that the guidebook says can be completed in 33 days.
Tom Avery must go to France in order to claim his son’s body, and Sheen does a masterful job portraying the father’s guilt, believing that the tragic death in the mountains was somehow his own fault. He should have known his son better. He was hurting from the worst sin we can commit, the sin of omission. While the film is an adventure story and a travel log, it is largely a father–son story, and authenticity is infused into that story by the real father–son relationship of Martin Sheen and Emilio Estevez. Only after French Police Captain Henri educates Sheen about the Camino, telling him that he himself has walked the pilgrimage twice and plans to do it again, explaining that it is a walking meditation and that it is an inward journey that is made at the same time as the physical journey—only then does Sheen begin to understand his son’s pilgrimage. The time arrives to make funeral arrangements, and Tom Avery must make a decision. The film’s viewer is totally surprised by what happens next.
Tom decides that his obligation to the memory and legacy of his son is to finish what he started. He has the backpack, all the gear, and he has the guidebook. He will walk the 800 km from St Jean, cross over the French–Spanish border, go up the Pyrenees, walk through Pamplona and into the wine-growing region of Rioja, walk thru the great cities of Burgos and Leon past Gothic cathedrals, hike next to the wheat fields of Spain’s breadbasket, ascend the Galician Mountains, and arrive finally at the tomb of St. James the Apostle in Santiago de Compostela.
He will make the pilgrimage that his son cannot. What’s more, he will spread his son’s cremated ashes along the way.
Two years after viewing the movie, I flew to Spain and walked the Camino de Santiago in a rare example of life imitating art. Somehow the film had burrowed its way into my brain and set up housekeeping there. It clung to me like static electricity on a new sweater. It was only after a series of events, which included a divorce and putting my farm up for sale, that I was free from all the obligations that had previously tied me down to both a career in Maine’s aquaculture industry and a successful alpaca farming business. Now I could break away and make the Camino a reality.
One film reviewer on the Rotten Tomatoes website wrote: “It’s inspiring, cathartic, poetic, hopeful, and makes you want to throw on a backpack start walking and find yourself.”
The more I learned about the Camino, the more I wanted to go. Once I got the John Brierley guidebook, The Way of St. James, it was a done deal. It was simply a matter of time before I would book the flight on Iberia Airlines.
Just as Hemingway’s masterpiece, The Old Man and the Sea, is not about fishing, this book is not about walking across Spain. The walk is simply the backstory that contains another story. There were things I had been thinking about for a long time, larger truths that began to crystallize as I made my walking meditation. There was a construct of self that began to fade as I allowed myself to exist more and more in the present. There was an inner strength that blossomed as I fell back from both the past and the future and into the infinite moment.