I arrived in Paris this morning.
The plane landed. My suitcase is here. The clock says it is evening.
My body is less certain. It wants to sleep and eat at the wrong times. My attention keeps drifting back toward the desk I left behind, to emails I could send, classes I could plan, and small tasks that seemed urgent at home and have no place here at all.
You can cross an ocean in a matter of hours and still take several days to arrive.
If you have recently started something new and cannot understand why you do not yet feel like yourself inside it, this is the same thing.
A Different Kind of Preparation
Last week I wrote about preparing for the Camino: condition the body, test the gear, clear the desk. Do your part, and then let the walk do what only the walk can do.
That was preparation from the viewpoint of a task list. Some things can be completed. A bag gets packed. Shoes get tested. Work gets handed off.
This morning I am noticing the part that cannot be checked off.
On September 5, the 4 people joining my 2026 Contemplative Walking Retreat and I will step out of Le Puy-en-Velay. That date is fixed. There will be a cathedral door, a morning blessing, and the first waymark leading us out of town through the Saturday market.
The movement toward that morning has already started, unevenly, without waiting for my permission. My body needs to find the time zone. My mind needs to stop reaching back toward work. The pace at which I eat, walk, and notice things needs to change, and none of that happens because I have landed.
The calendar names the day one season ends, and another begins. Nevertheless, the rest of me moves at its own speed.
The Body Keeps Its Own Calendar
I have walked this route 6 times, and I know what it will ask of me.
The way out of Le Puy begins with climbing. The days that follow involve long distances with some weight on my back. At home, I walk daily with my pugs, and while those walks are real, they are not 5- or 6-hour days on a trail.
My working life happens mostly at a desk. Teaching, writing, meetings, planning, all of it trains my body to stay in one place while my attention travels elsewhere.
Now I am asking it to do the opposite. For the next few weeks, my body will move across the landscape while my attention learns to stay close. This hill. This breath. This bird, cow, or tree watching me walk by.
That reversal cannot be rushed. A body does not reorganize itself because the mind has made a decision.
What Paris Does
These 12 days are not an attempt to recover the training my working life had no room for. Several weeks of long walks do not compress into 12 days, and trying would cost me more than it would return.
What I can do here is let ordinary life change my pace.
I walk because walking is how I move through this city. If I need something, I walk to get it. The miles accumulate without becoming a workout, and without my measuring whether they are enough.
The city is not the whole of it. I am also planning to get out for some hiking in the region over these days, into the forests and river valleys within reach of Paris, where the ground is uneven, the miles are quieter, and nobody is selling anything. Pavement teaches the legs one thing. A forest floor teaches the ankles, and the attention something else, and both of them will be asked for on the Aubrac.
The walking does something else, and this is the part I did not expect when I first noticed it. Contemplative walking asks you to let the world around you have your attention, rather than to arrive somewhere with your attention already spent. That practice does not require a trail. A plane tree on the boulevard is available for it. So is the pigeon working the edge of a café terrace, and the particular quality of light this city has in late August. The practice I will be guiding on the Aubrac is the same practice I can do on the way to buy a plug adapter or shop at the market, and doing it here is how my attention finds its way back into the body that carried it across the ocean.
Meals happen at a table instead of beside a computer. Food arrives at recognizable times and gets eaten slowly. Sleep moves toward the local clock on its own schedule.
Walking, eating, sleeping, errands. Nothing dramatic. I am not trying to become a conditioned walker before I reach Le Puy. I am trying to inhabit my body again.
By the time I board the train, I want my legs to have remembered something and my attention to be less divided. The route will take care of what remains.
Arriving After the Beginning
We speak of beginnings as though they happen all at once.
A job starts on Monday. The house changes hands on a particular day. A plane lands. The date is exact, and our arrival rarely is.
You may already have entered a new season while some part of you remains in the old one. The circumstances have changed, while your habits and attention keep working from older information.
That lag can feel like reluctance. Most of the time, it is the ordinary duration of becoming present to a life that has already started.
The Camino makes this visible because the transition happens through the body. The first days always finish the preparation. Feet adjust. Shoulders learn the pack. A pace emerges, and the mind stops looking elsewhere.
The walk asks nobody to arrive as a finished version of themselves. It receives the person who actually appears, which is the only kind of readiness available to any of us.
While I Am Walking
From September 5 through September 11, I will be on the route with the retreat participants and fully out of touch. That is part of the design.
There will still be something here on Mondays. It may have been written before I left. It may be brief. It may come from the walking once I return. The usual rhythm resumes with me in mid-September, carrying whatever the route provides.
For now, my work is modest. Walk where the errands lead. Eat. Sleep. Notice the city, and let my pace begin to change.
If you have recently entered something new and wonder why you do not yet feel settled there, the more useful question may not be what is wrong with you. Give the adjustment the days it actually takes. Walk somewhere this week with nothing to accomplish, and let whatever is around you have your attention for 20 minutes.
Then tell me what you noticed. What part of you is still traveling, and what has already arrived?
If you find this useful, 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 available to you wherever you are walking this week.
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