Just say no to convertible pants

In preparing for my walk, I have to quell a perverse desire to do it all wrong. To ignore the good advice about sturdy boots, sun protection, and packing light.

Why not hike the route in green suede wedgies, dragging a wheeled suitcase, a Chinese rice paper parasol over my shoulder, lugging a hardcover copy of Christopher Hitchen’s God is Not Great? I dream of being belligerently unprepared, but still walking circles around the geared-up masses.

And masses there will be. Since the pilgrimage started to come back into its own in the late 1970s (after centuries of few pilgrims walking the route), each year brings more walkers. Two thousand four hundred and ninety-one pilgrims officially completed the Camino in 1985, requesting the Compostela (the certificate that says you walked the route). In 1995, 19,821 pilgrims did the same, and in 2005, the number was 93,921.

Of course, if I gave in to my anti-gear urge I wouldn’t add my number to the burgeoning holy hordes. I’d last less than a day on the trail. So I’m getting serious, making the effort to find the right tools for the job. I have a good pack (I hope—I’ll report on how it treats me on the trail), and two pair of good and well-worn-in boots to choose from (I’ll only bring one, of course—boots are heavy). My boyfriend is an avid backpacker so I can borrow a few key items from him, including a lightweight sleeping bag for the pilgrim hostels, which will probably prove to be the real challenge of the trip.

The pilgrim hostels, known as refugios or albergues, require a pilgrim ID (a credencial) for admittance. They’re ridiculously cheap at around 5 euros a night, but it’s been a long time since I slept in communal quarters, with bunk beds and shared bathrooms. Other Camino blogs warn of loud groups keeping you awake at night and early-rising bag rustlers who wake you up before dawn. I’ll bring earplugs, of course, but it may be like trying to change the course of a river with a hat.

The amazing thing about these hostels is that some have served pilgrims since the 9th century, like the one in O Cebreiro, a few days’ walk from León. During the height of the pilgrimage traffic, in the 11th and 12th centuries, some small towns along the Camino had half a dozen hostels (where now there is one or none). Often the hostels were geared toward a specific nationality—one refugio for French pilgrims, another for the Germans, etc.

But back to gear. Though I’m trying to find the right equipment for this walk (as few things as possible, and as light in weight as can be achieved), I have to draw the line at convertible pants. You know the ones I mean—a zipper at mid-thigh lets you—presto! —transform an ugly pair of pants into an ugly pair of shorts. When they’re pants you’ve got a zipper weighing down the thigh region and poofing it out; when they’re shorts you’ve got an odd half-zipper hem that makes them hang weird.

Now I like multifunctionality as much as the next girl—witness my Swiss Army Knife and my love of sporks. But convertible pants, though deceptively useful, are All Wrong, like the teletubbies. My heart sinks when I think of this neither-nor conflagration of two important items than in a perfect world would have maintained their separation.

It’s not just that they’re nerdy. I favor stretched-out long underwear bottoms under hiking shorts. This droopy-drawers over baggy shorts look is neither flattering nor fashionable, and it embarrassed my mother when we hiked together near Sea Ranch in Northern California. But convertible pants are beyond nerdy; they signal that something is not quite right. The horizontal seams make me think of a seam in a human limb—suddenly we’re in Frankenstein or crash test dummy territory.

Which is all a long way of saying, I suppose, that I’ll be taking both pants and shorts on this trip. Ask me how I feel about convertible pants once I have blisters on both feet, chafed shoulders, and am jettisoning every unnecessary ounce.