Eight Caminos, Plus My Own: One Year from the First Ultreia Walk.

A year from today, on October 1, 2027, a small group of people will stand together on a cool October morning in Ponte de Lima, Portugal, and take their first steps on the Camino de Santiago with me.

I can already see it. It will be early and brisk, and some of them will be drinking coffee. They'll be standing together, but not really together. They arrived in Portugal the day before and met each other that night. The talk will be small, the polite kind you make with strangers you suspect you have something in common with but don't know at all yet. Everyone will look eager. Everyone will also look a little wary, the way people do when they're about to begin something both thrilling and daunting.

I know that morning because I've stood through it many times.

Over the years I've led groups of students, staff, and faculty to New York City, Puerto Rico, Mexico, Austria, and Bolivia. Every one of those trips started the same way, with a group of committed, curious people who arrived as strangers. The one I think of most is Cochabamba, Bolivia. The graduate program I taught in was mostly online, so most of my students had never met in person. We would show up at the airport as individuals, each looking excited and, honestly, a little scared. Many had never been outside the southeast United States, let alone the country. And Bolivia is dramatically different from the US.

On one of those trips our luggage was delayed, and everyone needed a change of clothes. So as soon as we arrived, we went to La Cancha, the open-air market in Cochabamba, which they say is the largest in South America. It is beautiful chaos. Navigating it on day one, with the culture shock still fresh, was a lot. The cheapest things we could find were t-shirts, and the cheapest t-shirts all had "Bolivia" printed across them in the most touristy way possible. Many of us walked out looking like a souvenir stand. There were a lot of laughs. Nobody planned it, but that minor inconvenience is where the group started to become a group. Every day after that, I watched them grow more confident, more open to the sounds, smells, and tastes of a new place, and more connected to each other.

Watching that happen is why I kept doing it. Years ago, Linda, a colleague I led study-abroad trips with, pointed out that it would be a lot easier to just teach a class on campus. Leading a trip didn't pay more. It didn't get you tenure or promotion any faster. It didn't really benefit you directly in any way. We did it as service for our students, for our discipline, and for the communities we connected with. What I got out of it was the satisfaction of helping others connect with a place, a people, or a way of being in the world they would never have found otherwise. When my friend and mentor Terry recently asked me why I was doing this at all, that was my honest answer. Ultreia is a continuation of a life of service, and it comes from the same place.

But all those first mornings taught me something else, too. I know the people joining me will change. What I don't know is how, or how much.

That part depends on them. On how they connect with the moment, with each other, and with the experience. Each day on the walk, I'll give each person a walking question written just for them. It's a touchstone for the day, something to carry through the kilometers and come back to in the evening, alone in their rooms. What they do with it is up to them. I can provide the context, ask the questions, and encourage them along the way. I can't force the outcome, and I can't predict it. The Camino gives back about as much as you're willing to let it.

People say everyone walks their own Camino. It's a bit of a cliché, but there's a lot of truth in it. For me, it means that next October I'll be walking up to eight Caminos with my group, plus my own. I don't yet know what any of them will look like. I don't know who will show up, or what they'll bring with them: a lifetime of experiences, successes, and challenges, and their own hopes for the walk. I'll know some of it from our conversations beforehand. I don't yet know which questions I'll need to ask, what they'll need to work through, or what walking alongside others every day will do to them. I just want to be present for each one.

Even the question of who will show up has already gone differently than I expected. I assumed the group would be made up entirely of people I'd never met. Instead, a number of close friends have told me that the way I described Ultreia spoke to them, and they're thinking about joining me. Some of them have traveled with me before. Maybe that shouldn't have surprised me, but it did.

That was true on my own Camino, too. It's the thing that surprised me most about the walk: you are never truly alone. Even when nobody was in sight, someone was always nearby, and they'd catch up with you at the most unexpected times with a "Buen Camino." Coffee shops and small cafés appeared beside the path just when you'd stopped expecting them. It is not a walk into the wilderness.

That's what I most want the people who walk with me to discover, and not only about the Camino. Many of us at this point in our lives and careers are convinced we're the only ones feeling this way, even though plenty has been written about exactly this transition. We aren't alone in it. And once you know that, you can start asking the bigger questions, the ones the daily walking questions are there to open: who you are apart from what you did for a living, how you want to live with your family, your friends, and your community, how you want to serve, and the difference between what you want to do and what you have to do.

If you're new here, welcome. A year from today, I'll be standing in Ponte de Lima, watching a group of strangers take their first steps. I don't know yet who they'll be, but I look forward to seeing who they become.

If any of this sounds familiar, the sense that a chapter is ending and you can't yet name the next one, I work with people navigating exactly this. You can find me at www.walkwithultreia.com.