“Men wanted for hazardous journey. Small wages. Bitter cold. Long months of complete darkness. Constant danger. Safe return doubtful. Honour and recognition in case of success.”

Those were like magic words as five thousand guys answered that newspaper add. This was 1914 and Sir Ernest Shackleton was getting a crew together for an Antarctic expedition. What a wordsmith. I think I’ll put that up on the frig. And thanks to Terry Hershey’s blog, Sabbath Moments, for that.

Well, the Camino is not quite that harrowing these days, hopefully. Could change the bitter cold to bitter heat though. But seriously, pilgrimage in the old days was sort of like that. I am reading some material that Catalina just sent to me on the topic. I am supposed to be on an interfaith panel on pilgrimage down in LA and I want to make sure that I am up to speed, so I have been studying.

One other little factoid that I uncovered was the number of old pilgrimage shells that have shown up in Europe. A cherished memento of the trip may be in the family archives. Is that species of shellfish which we know as the Camino shell common on the Atlantic coast of Spain and not the Mediterranean? There is something for someone to investigate. Do we have a clamologist onboard?

We have a walk and tapas this afternoon, a party, a send off, before my treatment day tomorrow. But before that I have to get out to the corn and continue the weeding operation. I promised myself that I would get that slicked up before the trip to Southern California.

OK, constant danger loves, Felipe.x