Four Pairs of Shoes

I went through four pairs of shoes before I walked the Camino, and my best friend Phil walked the whole thing in a pair of old slip-on Sketchers.

Neither of us got a single blister.

I've had a year to sit with that, and I still can't decide what it means. I'm going back next October, and I'm already deep in it again. Topos or Altras? How much cushion is too much cushion? Whether to bring sandals for the rain? Which pack? A year out, and I have browser tabs open.

Here's how the first round went. I'd always been a boots guy, with a nice pair of Gore-Tex boots I wore out regularly. Then I started reading, and the reading said waterproof runs hot. Heavy is the wrong tool for a route that's mostly paved road, boardwalk, and cobblestone rather than the dirt and roots I knew.

So I started hunting for new shoes. Hokas, which didn't feel right. Keens, also not right. Topos, which I was sure would be the answer until I couldn't get the insole to seat properly and sent them back too. Finally, in something close to desperation a week before my walk, I drove to a local running store and let someone fit me. That's how I ended up in Altras.

They were comfortable but they had a hot pink sole thick enough that they were impossible to miss. I spent three weeks mildly self-conscious about my shoes. Two-thirds of the way in I met a man from the UK named Paul wearing the exact same pair. We noticed each other's feet at the same moment and complimented each other's judgment. His looked better than mine. I have no explanation for that.

Add it up: four pairs of shoes, months of research, a fitting at a running store, and a stranger from the UK confirming my judgment two-thirds of the way in. Meanwhile Phil walked the same road in Sketchers and was fine. The tidy conclusion is that none of it mattered. That comfort is the only thing that counts and I could have saved myself the trouble.

I don't believe it. I've read enough forums to know how many people limp into Santiago in the wrong shoes. Phil got lucky. I got prepared. Both of us got there, and the preparation didn't buy me anything I can point to except the absence of a problem I'll never be able to prove I avoided.

What it definitely didn't buy me was dignity. I did all the work and still spent three weeks looking at hot pink.

This time the pack question has changed underneath me.

Ultreia will be using a luggage service, so the bulk of what I bring gets moved from lodging to lodging without me. That should simplify things. In practice it's opened a new problem, because now there's room for just-in-case items, and just-in-case has no natural limit. I'm still being selective about what goes in the big bag, mostly out of habit.

The real decision is the daypack. I have a 13-liter lumbar pack, a 22-liter daypack, and the 35-liter I carried last time, which won't be anywhere near full. Lighter is obviously better. But the calculation isn't only about me anymore.

When I picture myself on the road in October with people walking with me, what I picture carrying is extra water. A snack. Band aids. Hikers wool, which I found in my research and which saved my feet. Sunscreen. A phone charger. Nothing too unusual. Nothing anyone couldn't carry themselves, and most of them will.

But something always comes up that nobody planned for. I researched everything that went into my pack, including a sun hoodie I studied longer than some of my graduate coursework, and I still brought liquid laundry detergent in little single-use packets. At my second stop I opened my bag to find most of them had burst. The stuff sacks contained it, which was the one piece of planning that held, but everything inside that sack was coated. Next time, solid detergent. That one I can fix.

The rest of it I can't. Water runs out further from the next café than the map suggested. The sun is worse than the forecast. A hot spot on your toe turns into something that needs attention in the next twenty minutes rather than tonight. The road asks for things you didn't think to bring, and that's most of what the road does.

So the pack question isn't really about gear. It's about how much margin I want to be carrying when it happens, and margin has weight. The 13-liter is a lighter walk for me. The 35-liter means I'm carrying a lot of things that may never come out of the bag. Somewhere in between is the guide I want to be, and I haven't found it yet.

There's one more thing, and it's the part no pack size solves.

The last time I walked, I was searching for direction. I'd come out of a long career and I was carrying a loss I hadn't finished processing, and the Camino gave me the kilometers to do it in. I came back with clarity. That's not a figure of speech. Something got resolved out there that hadn't been resolving at home.

I'm not that person now. I'm not lost, and I'm not searching, and the thing I carried last time that made the walk work isn't in the closet where I could go get it.

I don't experience that as a problem. I'm looking forward to October. I expect to revel in it, in the community that forms on the road. But I'll know what's coming. I'll know the shape of the days, the sound of the albergues at night, what the cobblestones do to your feet by kilometer twenty. I won't be surprised by any of it.

There's a small sadness in that. Not enough to keep me home. Just enough to notice.

So I'm buying test shoes and reading about rain gear and weighing three packs against each other, and I understand perfectly well that this is the part of the trip I can control, which is exactly why I'm so interested in it. You can decide what goes in the bag. You can't decide what the road will ask you for, or whether you'll still be the kind of person it can ask.

Phil, for the record, has not mentioned his shoes once.

Rob is the founder of Ultreia, a coaching and pilgrimage practice for professionals at the threshold. Learn more at www.walkwithultreia.com.