Tyler van Opstal- Some brief notes on American Camino

    Similarly to my entry on The Hero with a Thousand Faces, I have no intention of retreading over a summary of American Camino’s contents when we have satisfactorily done so in class. Instead, this entry will be on how I read the book, which to keep in theme with the book’s subject was almost exclusively while walking. I read while walking with decent regularity, but American Camino is the first book that I have intentionally reserved for walk-reading which certainly altered how I experienced the book. 

    To explain how adding intention altered my experience, I should first describe my usual process for reading while walking. I rarely plan to do so- I go for a walk without reading far more than I do with- and most of the things that I read on walks are books that I pick up on my walk if I go shopping or a book that was in my bag if I’m carrying it and feel the desire to read. If I do not finish the book while walking, I either finish it at home or set it aside to be forgotten for a while. When I made the determination at the start of the semester that I should read American Camino outside at least but preferably on walks, it required that I put forth actual effort into doing so. I’d initially resolved that I would not go on any walks just to read the book and would instead slot it into my usual wanderings, which usually occupy at least an hour of my day and therefore provide more than enough time to do so. Unfortunately, this resolution quickly failed as the spontaneity of my walks prevented me taking American Camino with me often- when I was stricken with the urge to go wander, the urge to get outside was strong enough that I was rarely willing to take the time to gather a specific book before leaving. Equally unwilling though to give up on my pledge to read American Camino on the move, I begrudgingly planned a trip in advance for me with the express purpose of reading the book. 

    The easiest trips for me to add American Camino into were my semi-planned shopping trips, which usually involve walking a few miles down Warwick (Paperbacks Inc and World’s Best Comics are lovely stores in the Hilton Shopping Center, a bit under four miles down the road). Not an unusually enjoyable walk itself since it is along a noisy road, but the distance and the additional slowness that comes from walking and reading meant that I had ample time to read large sections of the book on Saturdays going to the bookstore.  

    More enjoyable was the longer trip I took near the middle of the semester to complete the book. Since I was already planning the outing specifically for reading American Camino, I decided to make my destination thematically appropriate. After some reflection, I concluded that even more on theme than any of the local wooded parks would be the Peninsula Memorial Park, a nice piece of land with memorial gardens and a large columbarium in addition to the cemetery itself.  

    The trip to a cemetery is a pilgrimage undertaken by innumerable people over most of human history, as people travel to pay their respects- whether at a funeral or years, even decades, after the death- to the deceased. Some of this pilgrimage was seen in our class movie Cold Fever, both in the main character’s trip to Iceland an in the grave photographer’s capturing of moments on others’ pilgrimages. Once I arrived at the Memorial Park, I first closed American Camino to complete a walk of the park while giving it my full attention. I had been there on other occasions before, but to make even an imitation of a pilgrimage without giving in due deference would have been cruel to the site and the spirit. Once I had paid my deference, I took back out American Camino and read it, walking with some care amongst the many graves, until I had finished reading about journeys and was ready to make my own back home.