Updates coming soon! Much goodness ahead for my memoir Moving: Breaking Down and Growing Up Along the Camino de Santiago, plus other news.

In the meantime, you can find me on Twitter. Buen Camino!

[Image © Benjamin Scuglia]

UPDATE: October 2012

The next two essays in my Camino de Santiago travel series have been posted to the Out Traveler website. If you read my original emails and/or blog posts two-and-a-half years ago, you might recognize some of the stories.

I don't know yet if they'll run any additional installments, but the traffic has been good. I'm researching self-publishing and unless something really great falls into my lap, I'm on track to publish the book next May to coincide with the third anniversary of my adventure.

Thank you for your support! Please log in to Facebook to like, share or leave a comment; if you're on the Twitter machine, please retweet. Help me spread the word that there's a new travel writer in town and he needs to pay some bills.

CLICK HERE for Part 1 ("500 Miles: Hiking the Camino de Santiago").

CLICK HERE for Part 2 ("Pain & Solace").

CLICK HERE for Part 3 ("Self & Solitude").

Breakthrough: 'Out Traveler'

After two solid years (and change) of rejection—I'm poorer than ever, sorry to report—I've had a breakthrough: I sold a series of essays about my Camino de Santiago adventure to Out Traveler, the premiere LGBT travel website. They are well-regarded and highly visible in the travel field, so this is an awesome break. If any publishers and agents land here, I'm open to offers. Otherwise, the book will be published next spring.

Please enjoy this first essay. It's a taste, an amuse-bouche, if you will, for what the book will look like. Help me spread the word!

CLICK HERE (link safe for work, save for some salty language).

Photo credit: © Benjamin Scuglia.
Email: Talk to Me
Twitter: @500Turtles
NEW: Amazon Kindle: CLICK HERE

Moving

For the past several months I've been reflecting on the lessons of the Camino as I've dealt with matters of money and other related stresses that have hung over me like a gritty, dark cloud. This past week has been some kind of culminating point. I suppose it will go into the book. It may not. But things are different now.

I was walking to the bus stop yesterday, trudging along in the heat, sweating and cranky and anxious, worried about money and bills and the possibility of having to leave my longtime apartment and go elsewhere. And I felt a nudge at my back, a gentle but firm push. It stayed with me for a few blocks, this sensation of being steered by an invisible guide. I almost looked over my shoulder several times to see if anyone had come up behind me and laid a hand on my lower back.

I remember this on the Camino. I remember feeling a gentle tug, now and then, at random moments, and it was enough to redirect my thoughts—for a short while, at least—away from my woes and the steady drumbeat of I am not enough. I can't do this. I am a failure in everyone's eyes and in the eyes of God, whatever She/He is.

I haven't felt that gentle nudge since returning from Spain. If it's happened, I have not noticed. On the bus, I thought about it and my life and my bills and deadlines and perceived failures and how all of it seems to be coming to a culmination point right now. And the word "moving" came to me again. The word had already come up that day in conversation, because I might actually be moving soon.

This time, it had new meaning. I realized it was the new title of my Camino memoir. And so it is, unless something else comes along with greater resonance: Moving: Breaking Down and Growing Up on the Camino de Santiago.

Whatever else happens today, next week, next month, I'm moving again.

Photo credit: © Benjamin Scuglia.
Email: Talk to Me
Twitter: @500Turtles
NEW: Amazon Kindle: CLICK HERE

Post-Camino: Moving on

Two years ago today, I boarded a redeye flight from Barcelona back to Austria, thence to Bratislava, Slovakia, where I would work for another couple of weeks before flying home to Los Angeles. My experience as a peregrino was well and truly over. I may have mentioned this in a journal entry already, but when I arrived in Bratislava I was picked up at the airport by a co-worker and driven to the office, where my boss was awaiting a Camino debriefing. He had a friend visiting him and, lo—she used to live in Spain, right on the Camino de Santiago itself! She was delighted to have a chance to talk to me about it. And she had great advice about taking it easy and letting this crazy, life-altering experience to really settle in. Two years on, and I'm still wrapping my brain around it. Next stop on the itinerary: finishing the book. Stay tuned!

Until then, may you always find a yellow arrow when you need one. ¡Ultreya!

Photo credit: © Benjamin Scuglia.
Email: It's Hot in Topeka
Twitter: @500Turtles
NEW: Amazon Kindle: CLICK HERE

Art of the Camino (Pamplona, Santiago)

Two years ago today was my second day of post-Camino decompression. Take my word for it: Barcelona during World Cup is a righteous antidote for almost anything.

Top photo: Day three of my journey, on the busy road to Pamplona. It was cold and raining incessantly; I was hungry, my feet felt like blocks of wood, and I'd nearly run out of water. The owners of this private house had opened up their garage as a temporary refuge for the weary peregrino. There is a stylized shell hanging over the entrance as an indication. Unfortunately, as you can see, a large group of hikers had taken up residence and were showing no signs of moving aside to accommodate anyone else. I leaned against a wall, ate a soggy power bar and then walked on.

Second photo: A bit of Camino art just an hour or two outside of Santiago de Compostela, Day 34. I doubt you'd be surprised to learn that there was a line of pilgrims waiting to have their photo taken with this monument representing the culmination of a long, long walk.

Photo credit: © Benjamin Scuglia.
Email: It's Hot in Topeka
Twitter: @500Turtles
NEW: Amazon Kindle: CLICK HERE

Barcelona blues

I really don't know why I spent two days in Barcelona, two years ago this week, and took almost no photos. Nor did I record many thoughts. Barcelona during World Cup fever is a sight to behold—when I left at 4 AM to catch a redeye flight, the streets were still packed with revelers—so it's not as if I didn't have plenty to talk about. I walked up and down Las Ramblas, visited the astounding Sagrada Família—more cathedrals!—and didn't realize until later that I was in full-bore, post-Camino decompression mode. I wasn't depressed so much as bereft; didn't expect that kind of reaction at all. I think I really knew I'd left my old life behind.

Since I don't really have many photos of Barcelona, I offer you this stretch of magical pathway on the Camino outside Sarria.

Photo credit: © Benjamin Scuglia.
Email: It's Hot in Topeka
Twitter: @500Turtles
NEW: Amazon Kindle: CLICK HERE