Send Me What You Cannot Carry
For those who have something they are holding quietly, and may not have a place to set it down
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In a few weeks, on May 30, I will begin walking the first section of the Le Puy Camino alone.
This will be my sixth Camino. It will be my second fully solo walk.
Before I leave, I will print the list of intentions on a single sheet of paper, fold it, and carry it in my pocket for the seven days of the walk. Some intentions will arrive with the sender’s name. Others will arrive anonymously. Both are equally welcome, and both will be carried with the same attention.
Some of what I carry will come from people I love. Most will come from readers, friends, and others I have never met, all of them with something they would like another person to think of, quietly and steadily, for an entire week in a place far from ordinary life.
If something has been weighing on you, or someone you love is going through something hard, you do not have to face it alone. For seven days, you and what you are facing will be in my thoughts as I walk through a landscape that has received the weight of pilgrims for over a thousand years.
Why I Carry Intentions While Walking Alone
A solo Camino is often described as a personal retreat.
It is that. It is also, in a quieter way, one of the most relational practices I know.
Walking alone creates a kind of silence that is difficult to find elsewhere. There is very little to manage once the walking begins. The path unfolds. The villages appear when they need to. The cows look up from their grazing as you pass. The wind moves through the beech trees on the high ridges of the Aubrac. The day has its own rhythm, and the living world keeps its own time alongside it.
Within that rhythm, something becomes available.
There are long stretches of hours when my attention is not being asked for anything in particular. That attention does not disappear. It opens.
Carrying intentions is a way of placing that open attention in service of others.
I am not making a claim about outcomes. I am not promising what prayer accomplishes or what the world will do with what is carried. I am saying something simpler. For seven days, in a landscape that has received pilgrims for over a thousand years, I will carry a folded piece of paper in my pocket, and the people I am thinking of will travel with me through fields, woods, and quiet villages, held in the same attention the path itself draws out of me.
The path becomes different when you walk this way.
You are not only walking for yourself.
A Practice Older Than Any One Walk
Pilgrims have carried the intentions of others for as long as pilgrimage has existed.
Those who could not walk sent their concerns with those who could. The journey became something shared. One body walked, but it did not walk alone in purpose.
I am not interested in idealising that history. What matters is what remains available now.
The understanding that walking can be done on behalf of others is still alive in the rhythm of the route itself. When I cross the Aubrac plateau, with its low stone walls and grazing cattle, or move through the river valleys west of Le Puy en Velay, I am stepping into that continuity in a small and human way. The paths have been walked by countless others for these reasons. The land remembers what it has been asked to hold.
The distance is the same. The meaning is not.
How I Carry What Is Given
The practice itself is simple.
At the beginning of each day, usually at first light, I unfold the paper and read what is written there, slowly. I do not try to change anything or direct anything. I let each intention register, the way you might think of a friend before the day begins.
Then I fold the paper, place it back in my pocket, and walk.
Throughout the day, certain intentions return on their own. A change in the wind. A break in the trees where the morning light comes through. A pause beneath a chestnut at midday. A cow looking up from a hedgerow. Someone or something rises into mind, gently, without effort. I do not force this. I allow it.
At the end of the walk, I find a quiet place outside, away from buildings, and I burn the paper. The smoke carries what was written into the air. The ash returns to the earth.
What has been carried is released back into the larger life of the world.
An Invitation, If You Have Something to Send
If there is a name, a situation, or a quiet request you would like carried, you are welcome to send it.
Religious, spiritual, and secular intentions are all welcome. Nothing specific is required.
You can submit your intention through the form on my website here.
I will print the full list at the end of the day on Wednesday, May 27, and carry it with me beginning May 30.
If you are reading this and feel a small pull to send something, I encourage you to follow it. The window is short, and once I leave, the list is set.
If you prefer not to send anything, that is also complete in itself. Pausing to notice what you might have named is already a form of participation.
What Solo Walking Actually Is
Solo walking is often described as solitary. That has not been my experience.
I leave alone. I walk alone. Yet the paper in my pocket connects me, step by step, to a quiet community of people who have entrusted me with something real. The trees know I am carrying something. The wind moves through what I am holding. The streams alongside the path receive the names as I pass.
That, too, is solitude without isolation.
The path holds the one who walks, and it also holds what they carry for others. The living world walks with me and receives what I bring, the way it has received the carrying of pilgrims for over a thousand years.
If you would like me to carry something for you, the form will remain open through Wednesday, May 27. If you have practiced something similar in your own way, I would be glad to hear about it.
If this post resonates with you, please like or leave a comment.
The Rewilding the Soul EcoSpirituality Certificate at Cherry Hill Seminary, where I teach, is currently underway with this year’s cohort. The September 2026 Contemplative Walking Retreat I am leading on this same section of the Le Puy Camino is full. New offerings, including future retreats and additional teaching opportunities, will be announced here in the months ahead. For now, the practice itself is what matters most, and it is fully available to begin today.
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Beautiful piece, Jeffrey, and I may consider doing that myself for my walk in September. And maybe I'll send one over to you as well.
I struggled a lot with loneliness on my first Camino and this illusion of separateness and abandonment. It's old stuff, which I have really been working through for the past three years. I love this idea because it pierces that illusion. As I have written before, my first Camino was both the loneliest and the most connected I've ever felt. On this and future Caminos, I am intending (ha, there you go!) to encourage and allow that sense of connection to fill me.