There’s a review in this weekend’s Globe and Mail of a book by some woman named Jane Christmas who walked the camino with 14 other women and is now inflicting her experience on the reading public. Judging from the review, Jane’s experience wasn’t quite what she expected – and I think the operative is “expected”.

Apparently the author heard of a big hike across northern Spain from a WestJet flight attendant, which in itself is worrying, and decided to walk it as a “50th birthday present… something spiritual, challenging, unstructured, nomadic, something that would quieten the mind, give me a little quality time with God, and let my gypsy spirit out for a run”. Yikes. Just reading that excerpt makes me never want to even borrow the book from a library never mind buy the thing… and why?

Let me quote a certain 11 (!) year old: “You can’t organize the camino, it organizes you.”

There’s something distinctly consumer about this woman’s reasons for walking the pilgrimage – and contradictory… that she would want something spiritual and challenging, yet unstructured, gypsy etc… she wants “quality time with God” as if that’s something one can buy a ticket for… it all seems so controlling and demanding.

One of the things my brother wrote to me while we were walking the route, was that “everyone and their dog seems to be doing the Camino… what is it, the latest fad?” and the truth is that sadly, the camino has become something like that. I’d have to say that one of my greatest reservations about making our pilgrimage, which was planned for 10 years and spoken of for 25 years (since studying music at UBC and singing Compostela music), was that people like Shirley MacLean, Paul Coehelo and others, have popularized the Camino, and made it attractive to the kinds of people who make “life lists” of places they must see and things they must do before they die (and typically these are white, middle-class people). We met hundreds of these types of people who were obsessed with finding something and were quite frankly, difficult fellow travellers.

One of the least attractive aspects of the spiritual consumer, was the desperation with which they attacked each day – inevitably, these were the early risers. These were the exhausted types who elbowed our little ten year old out of the way as she lined up to get into an alberge to find a bed. They stepped on her as she waited for a shower. They turned lights on and spoke loudly while she was trying to have her afternoon rest. They told her she shouldn’t be in the kitchen cooking unsupervised… and so on. These consumer travellers were the ones that in the end, drove us from alberges… we could cope with minimal amenities – what we couldn’t cope with any more was rudeness, selfishness, and mean spiritedness… all I believe were a result of disappointment and fatigue.

So maybe this Jane Christmas woman is doing the Camino a favour by writing a book that complains about the experience. Maybe more women (and men) like her will stay home.

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