In 19 Days I Lead 4 People Down the Camino. Here Is What I Am Actually Doing About It.

What preparation looks like the 7th time.

Aug 17, 2026

Camino artwork in Montbonnet, France, points the way for pilgrims, all walking the same path for different needs.

In 19 days I begin walking the Camino for the 7th time, and this walk has a shape none of the others had.

Contemplative walking is central to my work and my spirituality, and it has been present on every one of these walks. I have guided people along the Camino before, walking this way, and the practice threads through everything else I do, including my work as a certified forest bathing guide and forest therapy practitioner. What is different in September is that the contemplation is no longer the undercurrent. It is the explicit purpose.

This came about because people kept asking. Over the years, enough walkers and readers have wanted to know how to walk this way, and wanted it connected to the deep history of the Le Puy route in particular, that the retreat finally took form around the question. Four people will walk with me from Le Puy-en-Velay to Conques, 7 days and roughly 95 miles, on my 2026 Contemplative Walking Retreat. The group filled months ago. Some of them may read this before we meet, which I am aware of as I write it.

You might expect the final weeks before something like this to look contemplative. Mine mostly do not.

What I Am Actually Doing

I am walking more.

The daily miles here in the Catskill Mountains of New York are lengthening, because the plainest preparation for walking 95 miles is walking, and the body does not accept substitutes. Alongside that, I am testing gear I have been trying all summer, a new pack and some clothing, on the same lengthening walks. You wear the thing, you walk, you notice what rubs, what does not hang right, or what is not easy to get on, off, or into.

I am also clearing my desk. For 7 days on the route, I will be out of touch, so these weeks are about finishing what can be finished and closing what can be closed. The ordinary work of making a hole in a calendar so the hole stays empty.

That is the honest inventory. Miles, a bag, and a desk.

Everyone Else Is Preparing Too

This is the season for it.

The university year begins in these same weeks, and I have watched enough Septembers arrive from inside a campus to know the feeling. Syllabi finishing. Rosters settling. Everyone from first-year students to senior faculty doing some version of what I am doing, closing summer down and provisioning for what opens next. The whole academic world is packing a bag right now.

Which makes this a reasonable moment to say the quiet thing about preparation seasons: most of the list is not yours. The weather on move-in day, whether the students are ready, whether the semester goes as planned. You can influence almost none of it. What is actually yours is a short list, and it is nearly always some version of mine. Condition the body. Test the gear. Clear the desk.

The Worries Come Anyway

There is always some nervousness, and I have stopped expecting it to skip a year.

Will I be in good enough shape? Did I prepare enough? Will the weather cooperate, will the flights be smooth, will the trains run on time? I could go on, though you get the picture. Six walks have taught me that this list never empties. It just stops being in charge. The worries arrive, I notice them, I attend to the one or two items I can actually affect, and I let the rest travel with me as far as the trailhead, where they have always, every time, been the first thing the walking takes.

Surrender to what you cannot control is a lesson the Camino teaches from the very first mile. It turns out the lesson starts before you leave. The forecast you refresh and cannot change, the train schedule, the body you have trained as well as time allowed: this is the pilgrimage already underway, 19 days early, wearing the costume of logistics.

Walking Beside, Not Above

The 4 people coming are a mix of first-time Camino walkers and seasoned pilgrims looking for a quieter, more contemplative way through.

What they share is the shape of the retreat itself. This is a private retreat that takes place in a small group. Silence, reflection, and introspection are supported rather than scheduled away, and most of each day people will walk on their own, individually, at their own pace. We gather at thresholds, and I invite deepening into the experience while supporting the participants, individually, as needed. The miles between belong to each walker and to the Land.

My role in that is smaller than the word “guide” suggests, and that smallness is deliberate. I have walked this route 6 times, which makes me the one who has walked with the teacher the longest, rather than the teacher. The Camino and the living Landscape teach. I hold the structure, carry the practical knowledge, and walk beside.

I do this work as a Wild Guide, ordained to help people reconnect with the natural world as something more than objective living stuff out there. My forest therapy training points in the same direction. That reconnection asks for patience, and it asks us to reframe how we talk about and refer to the beings around us. A week of quiet walking through the Aubrac is one of the better classrooms I know for that reframing, and it requires no instruction from me once it begins. It requires that I get out of the way at the right moments, which is preparation in itself.

What the 7th Time Knows

Before my 1st Camino, I prepared for a year and arrived exhausted from preparing. Surprisingly, what did not work for me was preparing for something that only later experience could provide.

Before this one, I am walking my miles, testing a bag, finishing my work, and letting the worry list ride along uncharged. The difference is not that I care less. The difference is that 6 walks taught me where the transformation actually happens, and it is nowhere in the run-up.

So, as your own September approaches, whatever you are provisioning for—a semester, a season, a walk of your own—sort the list once. Do your part and let the rest go. That was never yours to carry.

To the 4 of you who may be reading this: I will see you in Le Puy. Bring less than you think you need.

What are you preparing for as summer closes, and how much of the list is actually yours?

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