When the Body Fails, the Route Changes
Julie McGue
Author
The orthopedic doctor’s last words before leaving the chilly exam room still ring in my ears: “You need to rest that knee. I hope you have trip insurance.”
My left knee has bothered me since last winter, when the heel of my bootie caught on a cobblestone crosswalk in Bozeman. I went down spectacularly, and that knee took the full brunt of my fall. But despite that painful misstep, during the spring and summer months, I continued to play tennis and added training miles in preparation for my 100 km walk along the Camino de Santiago. Like a lot of athletes, even aging ones like me, I push through discomfort. It was only when the pain began waking me up at night that I called my internist and asked for an MRI. Honestly, I did this as a precaution, never imagining I’d have to cancel my forthcoming trip to Spain.
For the next twenty-four hours, “I hope you have trip insurance,” followed me like a toddler’s whine. It pierced my thoughts during the day and invaded my sleep at night.
After the doctor visit, I went through various stages of decision-making, and yes, grief. I mourned the camaraderie of the creative pilgrims I’d gotten to know through our preparatory Zoom calls. I mourned all the training miles, the suitcase and daypack already assembled, and the carefully arranged flights and hotels. Even the tedious work of canceling reservations and filing claims seemed to mock how thoroughly I’d prepared for my pilgrimage.
Most of all, I mourned what the trip meant to me: three weeks devoted to two of my favorite activities: hiking and writing.
This Creative Pilgrimage, organized by my writing coach and mentor, Laura Davis, was to include eight days of hiking from O Cebrerio to Santiago de Compostela in northern Spain. The daily hikes, anywhere from three to eighteen miles, were to be interspersed with writing, sketching, and watercolor painting. It’s the identical trip I completed in 2024, with the same group of leaders. But this time, I was returning for more than the scenery or the pleasure of walking the Camino. I intended to use the journey as research for my next memoir, the third in the Twice trilogy.
The braided narrative I’m writing traces my interior journey through widow grief and sets it against the rigors of hiking the Camino. The story reveals what it’s like to forge ahead through unknown territory—both physically and mentally—searching for a route through loss and envisioning what life might look like in the last chapters of life.
When I walked this itinerary before, I was a fresh widow who happened to be a seasoned writer. Then, I let the journey unfold without asking it to become source material. I experienced it as a participant, enjoying it as it evolved.
This time, I planned to return with a different purpose. I wanted to study the landscape and collect the sensory details I had not known I would need. I wanted to pay attention to the connections between that physical path and one of the most pivotal stages of my life—a passage that had rocked my tidy little world and left me unsure how to proceed.
As I write this, I’m disappointed on so many levels. I’m angry at my body for failing to fall in line with my goals. I’m irritated with myself for not addressing the knee pain sooner. And I’m grappling with how to proceed with the book research from where I sit today.
In speaking with trip organizers, another possibility has emerged, a new route if you will. I plan to follow the group’s pilgrimage, virtually. And I will revisit my photos and journals from the 2024 trip, mining them for details I recorded but may have forgotten. Not the Camino experience I envisioned.
No photograph can replicate the rhythm of walking day after day, the changing light across the trail, the conversations that unfold mile by mile, the feeling of entering Santiago on foot. Following the Creative Pilgrims from home will not give me the camaraderie or the immediacy.
The Camino has always been about finding a way through unknown territory while testing physical limitations. I trust that my body will heal, and that I will write the story I am meant to tell, even if I must approach it from this new route. Sometimes the journey asks not that we keep moving, but that we learn what to do when we must be still.
Follow Me Here
October 7 & 27: I’m co-teaching two webinars for the Author Learning Center at 1:30-2:30 ET with author Jennifer Briggs, titled: Memoir or Fiction: Choosing the Right Path.
October 9-11: Find me at the She Writes Press author retreat at the Westin Rancho Mirage Resort in Palm Springs, CA. Thrilled to be selected as a presenter for the panel, “Marketing for Memoirists,” and can’t wait to see my She Writes sisters.
October 23-25: I’ll be joining fellow writers at Florida WritersCon in Orlando, Florida. The FWA Collection, Volume18: Fragments anthology will be released during the conference. I’m proud to have one of my essays included in the collection.
March 8 – 12, 2027: I will attend the Her Spirit women’s writing retreat put on by Story Summit in Tucson, Arizona at El Conquistador Tucson, A Hilton Resort.
Due to a publishing glitch, the second book in my Let’s Go with Lulu children’s book series, DJ and Lulu Go to the Car Wash, will release later in the year. It’s based on the real-life story about adventures with my oldest grandson during the COVID era.
Follow Julie by visiting her website, subscribe to her bimonthly newsletters, and listen to previous podcast recordings where she discusses topics like adoption, identity, family relationships, sisterhood and belonging.
“These days, my love for Mom looks like dental consults, runaway cocktail napkins, and intercepting sweepstakes entries before they leave the building. Love has become part devotion, part deception, and part damage control.”
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I felt the presence of the journey thorough your words…