You Can Take The Pilgrim Out Of The Camino...

...but her toenails will take at least six months to get back to normal.

If feet freak you out, don't read on.  Because these are my toes:

and these are my toenails:

See the tips of them?  Still yellow and tough from walking 500 miles.  But they are almost all the way grown out.  It will be odd when the last physical reminder of my pilgrimage is gone.  

It has taken me six months to be able to write again about the Camino.  I guess I knew that was coming; I traditionally take a long time to process important and life-changing experiences.  After being an exchange student in the Netherlands, I cried for a whole summer.  After my mission...well, I still haven't cracked open one of my journals and it has been four years since I got home.  

So what have I processed?  I just tried to write about what I have learned, but it came out in a jumble, and I deleted it.  

All I really know is I miss the simplicity of walking for a living.  I wish I had maintained the delicious inner peace of immediately-post-pilgrimage-Alexandra, but I don't know how that was to be done.  Maybe I have more of it still in me than I think, but life has certainly swept me away down some interesting roads.  Nothing has worked out as planned, except for teaching a class on dress history at Tufts.  That's been amazing.  Otherwise, no job, no place of my own, no plans past August...  Come to think of it, I believe that I am handling this uncertainty amazingly well.  That has to be a Camino legacy.

In a month I'm going to visit the Netherlands with my Dad, and then I'm going to France to apprentice to a hand-weaver.  The last bit of my pilgrim toenails will likely grow out while I'm there, having another adventure.