So I read in today’s The State that JayBo is walking across South Carolina, with his sights set on San Francisco. He expects it will take him a year to walk the 2,800 miles and that he will emerge on the Left Coast a new, slimmer Bo. “I get to see wonderful things, meet new interesting people, and yes I will lose weight,” he wrote in his blog on his third day.

I love this story, and I am rooting for JayBo. I know how transformative a long walk can be. In the fall of 2002, I trekked solo across northern Spain. It took me a month to do the 500-mile pilgrims’ trail, known to seekers around the world as the Camino de Santiago. And while the trail was physically demanding – crossing two mountain ranges and the meseta, a vast moonscape that takes days to traverse – I found the biggest challenge was mental. The scariest part was not traveling alone or packs of wild dogs (which I’d read about in Paulo Coelho’s book The Pilgrimage), it was navigating the landscape in my head. With no distractions, no phone, no radio, nothing but the sound of my feet meeting the earth, there I was with myself. Hours upon end, just me and my thoughts.

Terrifying.

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