100 KMS WITH A FIVE-YEAR-OLD

Walking The Camino de Santiago

“Mum, who manages the future?”

This question escaped from my five-year-old son’s lips as I huffed and puffed, heaving my backpack along the electric green fields of Galicia, Spain.

“In theory…God,” said my husband, a few steps ahead. The question blew me away, and I couldn’t help but wonder if my son would have been so deeply philosophical during his ordinary school day.

“Yes,” I responded. “God manages the future. But every choice we make, every thought and action, shapes what will be. It’s a team effort,” I finished, and he seemed satisfied.

I knew why it had come up.

Walking along the Camino de Santiago, it feels like someone or something is running ahead of you and painting the stunning landscape. Wild lilies stretching up to the sky, the light hitting a freshly filled puddle, a forest cafe, or, as we witnessed at such a forest cafe, a group of middle-aged pilgrims dancing wildly to reggae music in the middle of the day, drunk out of their minds on pristine life. An eighty-year-old pilgrim stopped to join them—a Norwegian woman with a hunch in her back and deep smile lines. She was received with a lot of “WHOOPS” and a “Go low! Go low!”

“Honey, I’m eighty,” she responded mid-jig. “If I go low, I don’t get back up again.”

That’s the Camino—filled with a sense of meaning and uplifting, foliage-scented freedom. I walked the entire French Way twelve years ago—an atheist at the start of the walk, and agnostic by the end. And here I was, walking it again as a mystical Christian.

I met my Spanish husband walking the Camino, and now that our son is five, we wanted to share the magic with him. At a local church event, an international guest speaker—Father Jose Noriega—gave a talk on how to educate children. The main message was that kids learn by doing projects, and we all learn best together.

We should teach by doing.

And so we’ve been thinking of ways we can all learn together, taking on challenges that highlight our values and the wonder of life and God.

I hardly imagined that my child, with his five-year-old legs, would manage more than fifty kilometers over the five days we planned to hike. The idea was that after ten km or so, he and I would jump on a bus or into a taxi, and I’d let my husband walk ahead and enjoy his journey.

We woke up early, caught the bus to our starting point in Tui, on the border of Portugal and Spain, and had breakfast. My son was tired, having not slept enough after our four-hour trip from Madrid the night before. But my husband and I were buzzing. Having both done the Camino several times, either entirely or in part, you get that tingle that something special is happening the moment it begins—like waiting to unwrap a present on Christmas morning.

I’ve always wondered where the magic of the Camino comes from… it is just walking, after all. But I believe it’s because this defined route gives life a frame. When my father was teaching me how to draw, he would always insist that I sketch a frame inside the paper. Then you know what to see—what you want others to see. Life is so big, so beautiful, so intense…it’s hard to know where to look. It’s hard to know what it all means. But a frame—a structure, a beginning, middle, and end—limits, make the mundane moments sparkle like light on a cut rock.

So there I was in Portugal, in a café, sipping my morning coffee. A thin waitress with wobbly hands brought us breakfast, followed by another skeletal waitress who brought the bill. These women were addicts. I remembered that in Portugal, drugs are legalized in the hope of treating addicts like humans who need help, not criminals who need prison. They were lovely, and it may sound naïve, but I wanted to scream: This is what happens when you strip a society of its spiritual story! Of course, I may be wrong, and some may say it’s offensively simplistic—but that was the thought that crossed my mind as my throat tightened from the sadness of such beauty killing itself.

We got on our way, and after a few hundred meters, my son stopped and screwed up his face.
“I don’t want to…” he started.
A sudden dread hit me. My husband and I looked at each other with a wince.
“But look,” said my husband, pointing ahead. “There’s a yellow arrow!”

The Camino is marked with either official or makeshift yellow arrows the entire way.
“Let’s follow them.”
A gust of energy swept through my son, and he went charging ahead, thrilled by the idea of an adventure… finding the yellow arrows.

Most of the journey was like this—our son alive with the game. It struck me so clearly here: a human needs a goal, a human needs signs, a human needs a reason why. One minute, my five-year-old didn’t want to take another step… but as soon as he had a Way, he was determined, excited, ecstatic.

He ended up walking a whopping 100 km of our 125 km trip. The only reason he didn’t do the whole thing was that one day we had particularly heavy rain and a dark afternoon. Other than that… a tiny boy happily walked an incredible distance.

I came to Christianity through this realization: we need structure, we need signs left by our ancestors—we need The Way. But it was very pleasing to see that truth again so clearly in the energy shift of my child.

One particular afternoon, there were many forks in the path that circled back to meet. My son would squeal with delight.
“Mum, you go this way and Dad and I will go the other way.”
We both ran around and pretended to be surprised to find each other.
We played this game maybe five times. I turned to my husband, knowing our son was enjoying this hiking experience the way we were, and I said,
“This is the best day of my life.”
“Mine too.”

My little boy would walk in silence for twenty-minute stretches, then stop, turn, smile widely, and say, “I love you, Mum,” and keep walking. With no other children around, he let himself be led by the adults. He pushed himself a little, feeling like one of them. We also made a game of collecting smiles from pilgrims. He was shy at first, but soon he was high-fiving strangers, saying “Buen Camino” in a loud, confident voice, and handing out wildflowers.

I watched him mature—come out of his shell. Because there were no other children, he met the expectations of the adults and drew the attention and positive energy of everyone he met. This boy, who at five years old is downloading his internal monologue—the one he’ll carry with him for life—now knows: I’m special. I try hard. I can keep up. I’m tough. I’m kind.

On the first evening, when I put him to bed on the fold-out sofa, I told him the story of how his parents met doing this walk, and his eyes were shining with wonder.

And on the last day, in the final stretch, he was too tired to walk after lunch, after a long 95 kilometers. So his father popped him on his back, and we marched onward… hoping to reach Santiago on foot, hoping to complete our new mission of 100 km together.

We arrived around 5:30 p.m., sweaty, soggy, but brimming with joy, before we flopped onto our bags in front of the staggering Santiago Cathedral. My husband took our son for a celebratory ride on the merry-go-round, and I sat in the square in disbelief and deep gratitude. The last time I’d walked this way, the entire way, I’d been asking for something, searching for something… and now I felt like I’d found it.

I was no longer searching for anything but a better way to say, thank you.

The day after we arrived home, my son woke up by himself and strode out of his bedroom with a grin.

There was something different about him, but I couldn’t—and still can’t—put my finger on it.

“Paquito is different,” I said to my husband.
“What do you mean?” he asked.
“I mean… he’s more mature. He’s happier. He’s more comfortable in his own skin.”

A few minutes later, my husband found me and said, “You’re right… he is different.”

That’s the magic of the Camino. No one can ever quite put their finger on it, can never quite put its power into words.

But five days with his parents, in nature, in flow—bored a lot of the time, mind wandering—he had grown. And in the last week, he’s been closer and sweeter with me than I’ve ever known him to be.

I’ve heard it said that bonds form in the in-between moments—the down times, when we can just be with each other. As the modern world is measured to within an inch of its life…our order now is to seek out these moments of slowness and simplicity to form these rich relationships that give life meaning.

After 100 km, I see it clearly now: the journey is the teaching, the path is the prayer, and walking together is how we remember who we are—and who we’re becoming.

We’re not just raising a child.
We’re walking him home to himself.

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