It’s been a really cool morning and built a fire in the stove which is unusual for May.  It’s been overcast but just this minute spotted some blue up there.  It’s the usual back and forth of spring weather.  Was working on the corn yesterday and am ready to plant.   A couple of more days for the soil to warm some more would be good.  Farmer John in Iowa tells me that his corn is up there.   Well, we’ll catch up.

We have a morning walk here in a little over an hour.  Maybe I’ll have some company, feel like company today.   Yesterday I dedicated the walk to a friend of Catalina’s, Father Michael, who got a recent diagnosis.  Ah.  I did a rosary and put rocks on the pile for the dear man.

And yes, Catalina is coming up here over Memorial Day weekend to be with us.  She in in the art history department at one of the Catholic colleges in Berkley.  I get confused on this as there is more than one.  Anyway, she has been so interested in Phil’s Camino the trail for a long time now.  She has written a magazine article about it and now has plans for a book, pretty amazing.  And that’s why she is coming up, to walk the trail, meet the family and interview us for this project.  I’m honored.

Little did I know when I built the trail back is 2013 that it would have the impact that it has had.  Little did I know that there is historical precedent for the activity of building facsimiles of bigger things, far away things maybe.  People in the past have made things to remind them of something bigger or have made things to participate in to get an idea of a larger experience.  This is the reason for Phil’s Camino in the first place.  Sure it was to be an exercise program for my cancer rehabilitation but it was also a way for me to have an inspirational experience, simultaneously.   I needed something more than the “health club experience”.   I had done that for my last round of chemo and it was chore, been there done that.  That was satisfying for my inner gerbil and that was about it.

So, the freedom and downright joy of walking outside in Nature, with friends, with interesting conversation, with thoughts of St James and the Spanish trail, with prayers being said so astounding.  Annie O’Neil helped me a lot at this point with her visit and with her book, “Everyday Camino with Annie”.   It was a rich, heady mix of ingredients.  I found something valuable and it worked for me which was the important thing.

OK, glad you came.  Come walk sometime soon.  Love, Felipe.