Tag distance walking

Top Ten Retirement Adventures: No. 2

Reg Spittle 4 Comments

Sue’s words transformed our lives.

It was 2012. We had just watched Martin Sheen’s movie The Way, in which the actor walks the 500-mile Camino de Santiago across Spain to honor his son’s memory. Played by real-life son Emilio Estevez, his son had died in a snowstorm during his first day on the trail. The movie was great, but I was blindsided by Sue’s delayed reaction.

“We should do it.”

I blurted out my response. “What? Walk 500 miles?” My head was spinning. I pictured sleeping and changing clothes in coed dorm rooms, showering in coed bathrooms, and carrying a backpack. My anxiety was in high gear.

“We can’t do that!” I thought my words would settle the issue.

I was wrong. So wrong. For months, Sue was a broken record.

“But what if we can?”

In spring 2013, our Merrell shoes carried us across Spain. My anxieties were quelled the first day when fellow pilgrims quickly became friends and I eventually put my fears where they belonged: in the rearview mirror. We made many newbie errors, but it didn’t matter much.

We have been walking distance trails ever since, building experiences and friendships that have formed powerful memories, leading me to again undertake the unexpected: I wrote my first book. It is Camino Sunrise: Walking With My Shadows. I have heard from readers in 10 countries and continue to feel honored every time someone orders a copy.

I am grateful that Sue never gave up on the Camino. She convinced me to take a huge risk. She showed me sometimes the best things in life come when we tread outside our comfort zone.

I hope I continue to find comfort in being uncomfortable the rest of my life.

Top Ten Retirement Adventures: No. 7

Reg Spittle 3 Comments

Nostalgia fills me when I think of my number seven retirement adventure. Within hours of arriving at our European destination in May 2014, the sale of our longtime Mariposa, California home became final. Our modest home on three forested acres held twenty-five years of memories, highlighted by the childhoods of our three sons, Andrew, Brad, and Chris. Yosemite National Park was our backyard.

Sue and I were homeless. Well, not exactly. We had packed our lives in a storage container awaiting our move to the quaint southern Oregon town of Ashland. Once we found a home there, that is. We would live in a rental condo in Ashland while we searched.

But first, we would walk a trail packed with more nostalgia and memory-making. One of Europe’s most popular trails, the West Highland Way, awaited our boots. In Scotland, which just happened to be our beloved home for a year while I worked there on a Fulbright teaching exchange. Our sons hadn’t reached double digits in life at the time and loved life in a tiny Fife village and school, where they were welcomed like celebrities.

Scotland has almost always been kind to us, and it continued in granting us mostly fair weather on our 150 miles from Glasgow to Loch Ness, except for one six-hour deluge that reminded us to never take Scotland for granted. The scenery was astounding, especially the Highlands, which thousands of sheep graciously shared with us.

After our trek, we had a blast with Scottish friends for a week, then traveled to Oxfordshire, England, and Copenhagen, Denmark to visit wonderful friends we had made on our first distance walk.

Adventure number six is next. Another trek, you ask? Good try, but nope.