It hit me very hard yesterday that this piece of my life—at least actively—has come to a close. I miss my friends. I miss eating bread and drinking wine and sleeping in bunk beds like teenagers at camp. I miss the stickiness of the clingy dirty clothes, the smell of old sweat and stinky socks. I miss the laughter. I even miss the pain of my swollen, blistered feet being squished into the shoes I bought in Pamplona, my wound juices just marinating in my darn toughs.

Some people would say that it’s a good thing to be going home, to slow down and settle back into a routine. and sure, walking across Spain in a month is entirely bonkers, yet it felt like the most natural thing in the world. As though using my feet to transport my being one hundred kilometers was, in fact, slowing down. And in a way it was. It settled me into all the heartbreak and betrayal I had been so focused on recently. It settled me into my body and the ways it felt different each day. It settled me into both my own physical endurance and emotional gentleness. It settled my soul into peace—and that’s what I was on the hunt for when I decided months ago to go on this long ass stroll. And truly my experience would’ve been so very different if it hadn’t all happened the way it did.

I am convinced I met and walked with some of the most genuinenly curious and wonderfully inquisitve people I will ever meet in this life—and that’s what I began to crave, the genuineness of human hearts when they are presented with a package of both a challenge and a truly wholesome journey. The open-mindedness, the resiliency, the honesty and true humor in choosing to walk across a country with a spare change of clothes, some soap, a sleeping bag, and socks shoved into a sack on your back. What a goofy thing. What a humbling and exquisite journey to be a part of.

I realized after I made it to Santiago, that if I had to pick one thing to do for the rest of my life, it would probably be this. Just walking. and as a soul that loves to explore and roam, to pick just one thing in this life is a pretty big deal. Even the discomforts didn’t take away from the joy of just walking to new places, being curious, and wandering. To discover new lights in new people. To explore fresh flavors with your tongue, capture wonders with your eyes, and mold your feet to the path that so many walked before you and so many more to come.

There are many words I can piece together to paint a picture of el camino de santiago and the way it made me feel, yet it all feels simply inadqequate, nor does it begin to do the experience the justice it deserves. But I will say one thing that has been the truest thought in my head, the camino brought me home. It reestablished the confidence I have in myself to create home, to disvover it anywhere and to welcome everywhere. It reminded me who I am in terms of safety and peace, and the ways I’ve created and gifted home to not only myself but many others. I don’t think it necessary to walk across a countries to rediscover this (ha!) but maybe it’s buried within the simplicity of walking. To do what we’ve been doing for as long as we can remember, to focus on the biggest milestone in turning one year old, to go back to the basics—all the way back. Maybe it reawakens the child inside us all—calls to it, let’s it breathe into our cells so that we can finally acknowledge, with complete confidence, that the purpose of this life is to be curious and wander.