Lori & Jane have been a “tight corporation” (according to Jane’s Grandpa) since meeting in 1982 in Minnesota. We celebrated 10 years together in 1992 and got legally married (thanks for coming everyone!) in 2014.

Over the course of our lives together, we’ve taken many wonderful trips at home and abroad, and several long walks — in New Zealand, Tasmania, Corsica, Scotland, Ecuador — for a week or maybe two — but never hundreds of miles. That changes with this walk in Spain. Four hundred miles over 37 days, averaging 12 miles per day.

For several years as we approached our retirement years, Lori spoke of wanting to walk the Camino de Santiago in Spain, a 500-mile pilgrimage route (since the Middle Ages!) from the Spain-France border to Santiago de Compostela. She sees it as a physical test of discipline, endurance and resilience, and also a spiritual journey, as we reflect on our lives together, the world around us, and the years we have ahead in this retirement/refirement phase.

Jane is also walking this route in honor of her Mom, who died far too young at 67 from breast cancer (at the exact same age as Jane is now). Betty Berg Leonard would have loved this journey. She was a student and practitioner of religious study and spiritual practice, a strong Presbyterian appreciative of all walks of faith.

Betty walks with us in spirit, and Jane (a breast cancer survivor) is carrying both Betty’s Swedish Viking ship necklace and her Viking Early Christian Celtic cross. Vikings were travelers, nomads and great warriors who mixed with all cultures, as we will do, too, walking The Way of St. James. (And thank you, friends Barb & Kate — for the Saint Christopher necklaces. Saint Christopher is the patron saint of travellers, for protection and guidance for those who embark on journeys, both physical and spiritual.)

We tried to do this walk last fall, but about a week before that attempt, Jane tore her hamstring while training on a 15-mile walk in St. Paul and that was that. A few months healing, and more training this summer, (and a broken wrist for Lori about two months ago – now healed!) and here we are, a year later giving it another go.