actually, to answer your last question.
I don't consider my way to the camino as running away from something as much as running towards something.
I have travelled a lot, and had reached a stage where it just couldn't really get big enough. Having just returned from a (very dissapointing) trip to Thailand I started planning the next trip choosing between island hopping the carribean and mountain gorillas in uganda, not really able to make up my mind.
I had almost setteled on the caribbean and was in the middle of researching hotels in jamaica and choosing islands to visit when (seemingly for no reason at all) I asked myself why exactly it was that I was about to spend a fortune going half way around the world. Why did I kep chasing the ultimate, always returning home dissapointed ? Was the ultimate really out there or was I actually "running away" ?
This led me to go over my very best memories, and realising that they always included other people, and while trying to solve the puzzle of what best to do to meet people (which is sometimes, but not always, really hard when travelling alone) I remembered a book I had come across, but never read, some fifteen years ago. A book about something called The
Camino de Santiago de Compostella.
Having the laptop allready on my lap I stated googling, and found myself reading excitedly all weekend. Then I started talking, and every time I would say "The Camino" I would get teary eyes and a lump in my throat (still do sometimes) and that really setteled the matter.
I didn't come home an entirely different person, but I did change, and I could feel by the way I was treated by people in the time after that they felt it too, even strangers acted differently towards me. I am still changed in many little ways, which may not be so little after all, and this year I am going back for seconds.
Point beeing, sometimes it is just really hard to tell if one is running away from something or towards something or if it is all just a matter of perspective. I chose to believe I am running towards...