Each Step is the Journey: The Call of the Camino

by Patricia A. Klinck

The origins of the Camino de Santiago cannot be found in books. Its story is woven from legends and myths told by the ancients over the centuries and retold by pilgrims. Those who answer its call are often in search of a greater good, a more powerful truth, a fuller understanding. But what is its true meaning? What can this age-old pilgrimage—declared the first European Cultural Route and a UNESCO World Heritage Site—offer us in the twenty-first century?
Each Step is the Journey explores the Camino through the experiences of a somewhat skeptical narrator as she walks the eight-hundred-kilometre Camino Francés from St. Jean-Pied-de-Port, France, to Santiago, Spain. Along the way, she struggles with fear, doubt, and loneliness, yet encounters moments of breathtaking beauty, fierce compassion, and longed-for understanding that will forever change her way of being in the world.
If you have ever been compelled to respond to a calling, this book is for you.

Genres: Travel

218 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2013

Reviews

[Meaghan Delaney · Rating 2 out of 5]

Terrible.

As a pilgrim of the Camino myself, as a Catholic, and as someone who read an ACTUALLY GOOD Camino memoir only just a month earlier, this one is not it.

This author really wanted to make this “readable” by novelizing the experience, but it only succeeded in making her sound pretentious - as though she would remember such details as “his jaw tightened” or “her shoulders tensed” or “her eyes shuttered” in a conversation 25 days into the walk!

This woman also inexplicably positioned herself as an “educator” of the Camino to her readers and her fellow pilgrims. While book knowledge of the historicity and religious significance of the route is all well and good, she claimed no religious interest or affiliation (a “vibes only” kind of spiritualism), and felt the need to both defend the Church’s history and traditions, and judge the people who “only” walk the last 100km

(I also had a hard time respecting her “spiritual guides” who - the way she tells it- appeared to literally walk beside her. One of whom was *gasp!* her husband who died when he was 21! The exception to this complaint was when she described feeling her father’s presence with her)

All in all, it brought back a lot of my negative memories of the pilgrimage, and I got annoyed by how she would novelize her conversations, and hard-core judge her fellow pilgrims. Not sure how this one won an award.

[Tami · Rating 5 out of 5]

The author is currently a Calgarian <3 I loved this book.

[Kylie Bevan · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5* I struggled with the fleeting and startling emotions of the author however felt an understanding of the meditative nature a long walk can have.

[Timothy Phillips · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an account of the author’s pilgrimage walk from St. Jean Pied de Port in France across the Pyrenees and then 790 kilometers across the top of Spain to Santiago de Compostela. Many have walked this journey and written about it, including Hollywood performer, Shirley MacLaine and Paul Coelho. Each account is different because a walk of this dimension is not just a walk; it is a highly personal story of self exploration.

Patricia is from Calgary and decides to walk this journey with married couple Mac and Wendy, also from Canada. Patricia is walking because she want to practice her Spanish and to visit the cathedrals of Burgos and Leon. Mac wants to know what it feels like to walk 800 kilometers and Wendy want to explore the camino as a metaphor for life. The reasons for walking are bound to change as the walk progresses as well as their private agreements on how they will do this journey together. Among the other major characters they meet on the Camino are Dave and Marion. All these participants seem to have their quirks, are set in their ways and are even a touch fiery, so there is bound to be some conflict in the month that it takes to reach their destination.

As opposed to other books written about the camino, there is s lot of dialogue between the characters and I can easily imagine a stage production of this story. The author has cleverly woven details about the Camino into the various conversations. Like a stage production, there is some continuity in that that characters often reappear further down the trail, sometimes at the end of the day, quite often in bars or restaurants, refugios or hotels.

“Each Step is the Journey” joins the list of well written books about the Camino. and really helps describe both the physical and emotional aspects of this expedition.

[Graeme Connell · Rating 5 out of 5]

Where are my hiking boots? That's the feeling I had on completion of this book. It's a finely woven tale all about walking and what you find on the way if you take the time to simply stop, look and listen. I did not think that walking 800 kilometres could be so rewarding and yet Klinck let's me pace with her as she discovers and unfolds the call of the Camino, a network of pathways in northern Spain that pilgrims have walked for thousands of years. She speaks with such candour that I really felt as though the pack was on my back, that my boots were filled with water, that my body shivered in the rain and rejoiced in the sunshine and in the company of friends of the Camino. Each Step is absorbing and exciting read for the armchair traveller who one day perhaps will discover his or her own walk of personal discovery.