El Camino de Santiago
The Way, one man’s spiritual journey walking El Camino de Santiago.
Filmmaker Mark Shea wished to explore the spiritual affect the Camino (Way of St James) has on pilgrims, by walking the French Way alone and documenting his own personal experiences.
I did my Camino de Santiago Pilgrimage in 2004. To be authentic, I walked the whole French Way; 34 days, 18 kg of gear, 764 km on foot. I lost 8 kg in weight!
I had read a lot about the Camino being a spiritual experience, and I wanted to try and capture on film my own reactions as I walked the way.
It is not the historical aspect, but what one pilgrim experiences and tries to capture on film.
What I loved was the honesty.
He talks of the comradeship. Of limping in one night into a refuge, and being helped by a yoga teacher from Barcelona.
Paulo Coelho, in a video interview for Manuscript Found in Accra, talks of that same comradeship when he crossed the US by Greyhound bus in the 1960s.
When Paulo Coelho walked El Camino de Santiago in the mid-1980s, few pilgrims walked the route. Last year saw the publication of a special 25th Anniversary edition of The Pilgrimage, his account of walking the route. In a new forward he describes sitting outside a bar halfway along the route and today seeing as many pilgrims pass by in an hour, as then walked the route in a year.
Top Story in USA Property News (Thursday 4 April 2013).
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