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For a couple weeks now, I’ve been fascinated with these little flowers that have been popping up–very short, maybe just clearing the ground by a couple inches, and with a crisp combination of white, purple, and yellow. They’re very pretty; that’s part of the allure, of course. I’m also struck, though, by where they grow: smack dab in the middle of footpaths, where all other competition has been eliminated. The downside of that, obviously enough, is that those footpaths have been cleared for a reason; feet, and the jackasses like me swinging them around, have trampled other plants into submission.… Read more: Days 19-20 – Alberobello-Bari – 79km

The whole reason that I decided to divert onto the Cammino Materano’s Via Ellenica variant in this section, instead of remaining on the Via Francigena Sud, was to see Alberobello. It’s rightly famous, but more on that in a bit. What I didn’t realize, though, was how remarkable all of the towns are in this section. As nice as it was, Carovigno was the least of the bunch, and it only got better from there. Here are some of the stories of the cities of this variant: Ostuni, even emerging from winter, is blazingly white, a beacon shining from a… Read more: Days 17-18 – Carovigno-Alberobello – 54km

There are days, I admit, when I approach the stage’s end and despair the lack of a hook, something to write about in regards to the day’s journey. In the US, I had an easier time of it, in large part because it was easier to line up audiobooks that suited a relevant topic or theme. That might seem surprising, given the abundance of history on hand in Italy, operating on an entirely different scale than what we have in North America, particularly given the available physical evidence, and certainly the peninsula has not been neglected by authors over the… Read more: Day 16 – Brindisi-Carovigno – 36km

I often think of beauty as something fragile, delicate, perpetually vulnerable to a destruction that would not only shatter the object itself, but the aesthetic quality along with it. And yet, nearly everything that is beautiful in and around Brindisi today has been trashed at some point. The bedraggled olive groves of past stages largely yield the ground to artichokes today, and they’re in fine form. As with broccoli earlier on this walk, I had never before seen a field flush with artichokes, nearly ready for harvest, so this was a revelation. In my mind, these are heavy enough to… Read more: Day 15 – Torchiarolo-Brindisi – 27km

What defines us, what stands out as our greatest source of pride, can all too often bring about our fall. It’s a slow, leisurely morning as I set forth from Cannole, complete with two hard boiled eggs and a large bag of dried figs, courtesy of Fabio and Lucia. I pause in Carbieno to grab a coffee, where I discover that throughout the Middle Ages this was the site of a popular fair, drawing attendees from all across the region, including a number of Greeks. Further afield, I encounter another extended stretch of wheel ruts, ground deep into the rock… Read more: Days 13 & 14 – Cannole-Torchiarolo – 69km

When I set out to walk across the USA, I had to rewire my brain and my feet. There’s a rhythm of life on pilgrimage, an utterly delightful one, that a trans-US walk can’t hope to replicate. The country is just too damn big. Admittedly, it wasn’t too dramatic a change on the East Coast, but the further west I proceeded, the greater the distances between places grew, and so too, consequentially, did the weight of my pack. Increasingly, my mindset each day revolved around the destination, as often the lone opportunity for resupply would come at that point. Sometimes,… Read more: Days 11 & 12 – Santa Maria di Leuca-Cannole – 81km

I first reached the end of the world in 2004. I was excited, but also a little sad. After all, Finisterre, Spain marked the conclusion of my first Camino leading students, and so as the waters churned below in an unrelenting fury, my thoughts threatened to do the same, until I took a breath and opted to savor the accomplishment, instead of ruing its completion. Over the years, I have returned to that end of the world plenty of times. It’s still a dramatic sight, for sure, but the edges are worn down by those repeat visits, by that growing… Read more: Day 10 – Specchia-Santa Maria di Leuca – 35km

Live long enough to become a hypocrite. A blessing or a curse? It depends upon each of us, I suppose, and how earnestly we live. That said, I’ve come to appreciate a certain strain of hypocrite in recent years, one willing to reconsider tough stances and modify their position when the available evidence changes. There’s a line between hypocrisy and learning, of course; it’s determined by how willing one is to accept that altered reality, as opposed to denying it into oblivion. It can be rough on the old pride, though. Here’s my hypocrisy of the moment. Younger me was… Read more: Day 9 – Gallipoli-Specchia – 42km

I’ve had two consistent companions as I follow the coast southward through Puglia, both reminders of more violent pasts. The less striking, by design, are the pillboxes, only poking a meter or so above the ground. Built during World War II to fend off an Allied invasion, these pop up every handful of kilometers, generally holding a geographically advantageous spot, with extended line of sight in both directions along the coast. More dramatic, by far, is the network of towers lining the Ionian, nearly all following the same formula–a single, stubby, square tower accessed around its midpoint by a majestic,… Read more: Day 8 – Porto Cesareo-Gallipoli – 35km

The people of Taranto are out in force on this Sunday morning, jogging along the coast in their brightest fitness apparel. By contrast, I’m lumbering along, still processing the croissant served at my breakfast that seemed to have been pumped full of a kilo of nutella. Add that to the list of things that shouldn’t be eaten by a man with a beard. It takes a while to escape the urban sprawl, which includes a large, fortified enclosure and multiple highway interchanges. Throughout, though, I’m joined by Cammino Materano waymarks, insisting that the Via Jonica–which I had been assured doesn’t… Read more: Days 6 & 7 – Taranto-Porto Cesareo – 85km

When I set off this morning, I anticipated the first walk of the young trip oriented singularly towards the destination. Aside from Matera, none of the towns I’ve stayed in thus far exercised much of a gravitational pull; beyond a trip to the supermarket, I didn’t have concrete plans in mind for any of those places. But Taranto? I was pumped for Taranto, one of the biggest cities in Southern Italy and a rich history to boot. It has been nice to kick off a long pilgrimage with low-urgency stages, allowing me to meander through the introductory kilometers while imposing… Read more: Day 5 – Crispiano-Taranto – 26km

It’s a funny thing; I’ve been thinking about the Cammino Materano for months now, if not years, and yet I’ve nearly completed my walk on it now, at least for the time being. There’s one firm exception to that statement; I’ll detour onto a variant of the Via Ellenica in order to visit Alberobello when I’m heading north on the Via Francigena Sud. And there’s a conceptual exception as well, in the sense that my walk southward over the coming days is inspired by what will eventually become the Via Jonica, another part of the Materano’s spiderweb network of trails… Read more: Tour d’Italia, Days 3 & 4 – Castellaneta-Crispiano – 56km

A walk across Italy offers an excellent excuse–not that any such excuse is required–to spend time rereading Italy’s greatest writer, Italo Calvino. So my journey began with If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler, which felt more than appropriate for the occasion. The novel’s conceit is a joyride through postmodernist narration, with the author first addressing the reader directly before yielding to the text of the novel proper, only to discover that a printing error has resulted in the replacement of the intended text with a Polish one. Further hijinks ensue. The two readers of the novel, needless to say,… Read more: Tour d’Italia, Days 1 & 2 – Matera-Castellaneta – 70km

From the moment that I decided to step away from my teaching role and commit to at least a couple of years of walking and writing, I knew, of course, that I would finish the US walk. At the same time, though, I also had this walk through Italy top of mind, to the extent that they functioned as a sort of paired set. There are a few reasons that Italy held such prominence for me. First, and simplest of all, it has been a long time since I walked in Italy. After I led my first student group on… Read more: Tour d’Italia, Day 0 – Matera

One week from today, I fly to Italy to set forth on part one of what I’m dubbing the “Tour d’Italia,” which will lead me across the country twice. This spring, I’ll walk (mostly) south to north, looping down around the heel and then up to the Slovenian border. In the fall, I’ll start on the Swiss border and work my way to Palermo, Sicily. This happens to be a Jubilee year in Rome, so it’s one in which the pilgrimage routes in Italy are receiving added attention and investment, and there will be an even greater swelling of tourists… Read more: The Tour d’Italia – Part One

One of my frustrations with Camino guidebook-writing is that, by the nature of the format, it requires a mile-wide, inch-deep kind of discussion. There are a million interesting stories on the Camino, which means each gets a line or two in the book and no more. This isn’t a knock on guidebooks; it’s just a limitation of the genre. My goal for my new book, then, which I’m referring to in my head as The Camino Companion, is to spotlight those stories in more detail, giving them room to breathe. I’m still using guidebook stages as an organizational tool, so… Read more: A Preview of My Upcoming Camino Book

Note: in March 2022, I used spring break to squeeze in a shorter pilgrimage from the medieval monastic center of Cluny, France to Le Puy-en-Velay, where the Via Podiensis begins. I never posted this account here, but it’s worth sharing given the dearth of available information on this route. No single place, aside from Santiago de Compostela, is more closely associated with the rise of the Camino than Cluny, so it’s a place all pilgrims should consider integrating into their plans. —— I’m usually a planner, thinking and overthinking every part of a trip. This one, though, is an outlier.… Read more: From Cluny to Le Puy-en-Velay

What’s the point of an epilogue, anyway? I’ve been listening to some mysteries while on the road. It’s not a genre I had consumed much in previous years, but it’s a better fit for audiobooks than more classically literary stuff. I’ve noticed how important epilogues are to these kinds of stories. The final chapters often accelerate to the finish, with the endgame unfolding at high speed as the brilliant detective hustles to avert disaster, thwart the villain, and save the day. The epilogue, then, offers the value of distance and perspective, as characters look back on the events, pull back… Read more: Days 102-104 – 10/16-10/18 – Portland to Cape Meares, OR – 84 miles

The sun burst over the Eastern Gorge, the Columbia River glittering below, as the hills were cast in a soft, pink hue. An early departure from The Dalles saw me climbing steadily into the hills, accompanied by a resurgent urgency. Only two stages–admittedly, two long stages–stood between Portland’s eastern fringe and me. A much shorter third stage would deliver me home. I climbed to the short summit on Seven Mile Hill Road, leaving those views behind, and then transitioned immediately into the descent to Mosier, passing through a series of peach and apple orchards. The sounds of Mosier Creek Falls… Read more: Days 99-101 – 10/13-10/15 – The Dalles to Portland, OR – 101 miles

If you’ve followed the journey thus far, you know that there wasn’t a singular Oregon Trail, with a tidy, uniform line of wagon wheels rolling westward in perfect formation. On the Platte River, for example, Mormon pioneers tended to follow the north side, while the Oregon and California Trail folks held to the south. And even there, they spread out widely, in order to track down water and eat less of one another’s dust. The Choose-Your-Own-Adventure aspect of route-finding only increased once the travelers reached the Columbia. For some, the walking and riding were concluded for a spell, as they… Read more: Day 98 – 10/12 – Biggs Junction to The Dalles, OR – 24 miles