*Different Paths**: Struggles on the French Camino to Santiago de Compostela*

This is a difficult story for me to tell. But I tell it to try to gain some clarity about the venture and about my relationship with my brother, to relive an experience that, despite the conflicts and confusion, I treasure.

“‘Dave! Let’s do the Camino!’

I was immediately touched by the excitement in Ricardo’s voice, flying over some 2,500 miles from his home in central Mexico to mine just outside Washington, DC.”

— Different Paths

September 26, a day that Ricardo describes in his notes as “one of the most beautiful in my life.” We were up in time for the sunrise, our spirits unmistakably on the rise as well. A photograph shows us grinning broadly, arms around each other’s shoulders, backpacks firmly in place. We were ready to set off, climbing westward up the Pyrenees on a mild sunny day as the steeply wooded countryside gave way to open hills and moorland, with views back down into the rich green of the valleys below.

As we gradually approached the frontier between France and Spain, we were treated, appropriately enough, to a performance by a border collie. She was herding hundreds of sheep with a speed and agility that allowed her to race from one side of the pack to the other, making sure that none of her charges strayed. The grayish white mass moved as a single wave, flowing in response to the dog as if from her snout extended a magic wand, invisibly pushing those sheep in the direction of fresher pastures.

We pilgrims, with the pull of the Camino itself, needed no frisky animal nipping at our heels. The process of natural selection had sorted us out into a single file, the faster from the slower, and, with heads down in concentration, lost in our own thoughts, we continued our climb. Reading about the route in the guidebook, I had been intimidated by the challenge of almost 1,300 vertical meters from St. Jean Pied de Port to the Col de Lepoender, but the approach proved in fact to be so gradual that crossing into Spain came almost as a surprise. We then proceeded down through beech tree forests, very carefully managing the descent over slippery stones that could cause a twisted ankle or broken leg, the end of the pilgrimage before we even had a chance to get started.