I didn’t know what answers I would find, but I did know that I was trusting that “the Camino would provide.”

I was curious how it would be given the controversy over bathrooms in America and transgender individuals. Here gender didn’t matter. Just respect for privacy.

I knew pilgrims would be starting on the trail before daylight. The Camino Frances presents a particularly difficult challenge.

Immediately as I emerged from my albergue, I saw a lanky man with a headlamp and a backpack just below me on the road. Following him made sense.

“What is your intention for walking the Camino?” That is the question I knew I was going to be asked when arrived in Saint Jean de Pied Port to get officially registered for the pilgrimage.

I had nearly eight hours on the train which led to a rich time of reflection. One question surfaced almost immediately. It was “Where can I best serve?”

I knew I didn’t want to do this alone anymore. I would be starting out alone, but I wondered…

Pilgrimages really start the day that you commit rather than the day you take the first step on the trail.

I was feeling calm. In fact, not only calm, but liberated! I wrote in my journal on the flight from Calgary to Paris, “Opening! Opening! Opening!”

As I boarded the plane in Portland to Paris with a quick layover in Calgary, my heart was swirling with varying emotions associated with letting go.

It was my executive coach who first noticed that I had gone strangely silent.

Don’t ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive…

I am nearly finished reading Susan Beaumont’s book, “How to Lead When You Don’t Know Where You are Going: Leading in a Liminal Season.”

My life is my message. It might be raw. But it is also real.

Friday morning, February 16 I got the news that my mother had died. Quite honestly I felt it more as a gift than a tragedy.

So here is the deal. I am not sure exactly what I am going to write over the next six weeks.

Today I write. Tonight I will play guitar. That is, unless a flash flood crosses my path before then!

The point being this: By that eighth day I had learned to trust.

“Unmet goals are often considered failures. There is no failure with intention; only discovery.”

Pedal Pilgrim and the Cherokee Nation’s Remember the Removal Bike Ride organization are now partnering on a Trail of Tears pilgrimage project.