Pre-trip jitters

Querido Santiago, Please get me on the damned Camino.

I like new places and I’m no stranger to travel. I’ve lived outside of the U.S. for extended periods more than once or twice. I’ve even made some pocket change reporting on such antics.

But I must confess that no matter how many times I’ve taken off for a new adventure, I still have trouble right before departure. A week or two before takeoff I fall into a melancholy edged with panic, lying awake at night wondering What in the hell were you thinking?

Sometimes I think it’s a physiological response—my body is saying, Please, no. Don’t make me go up to 60,000 feet and be slingshot halfway across the world. Stay home. Be Safe. And sometimes I think it’s just fear, plain and simple. I often travel alone, which I almost always end up loving, but the idea of being out in the big bad world with no one to talk to or help me if I go down kind of makes me crazy.

I always make it through these pre-trip jitters but it amazes me that I still have them, after decades of roaming the world.

Maybe it happens when the trip finally starts to seem real. This time I followed my usual practice: I said yes to the vague outline of an idea, then forget about it until I got close to the departure date. Now the idea is rushing towards me in all its thorny specificity.

Vague idea: Most of the Camino de Santiago is flat.
Reality: There are mountain ranges you have to walk over. One pass is closed from September to May because of snow. Snow in Spain? Who knew.

Vague idea: Depending on where my finances were at the time of the trip, I’d splurge now and then on a nice hotel (when the cheap and crowded pilgrim hostels got me down).
Reality: My finances are, as usual, in the toilet. So most nights I’ll be in those bunk-beddy sweaty-sock sleepover-camp hostels.

The up side of all this, I guess, is that I’ve never let fear or poverty keep me from going where I want to go. The 64 million euro question is, Why do I want to go? Maybe it doesn’t matter. Something compels me. It pushes me along the Camino and gets me to the next albergue. Where, Santiago willing, I’ll get the top bunk.