Lee Ferris, multimedia specialist at Mount Saint Mary College, took this photo during his Camino de Santiago pilgrimages.
Lee Ferris’s journey of 500 miles through Europe began, oddly enough, with a trip to his local movie theater.
Ferris, multimedia specialist at Mount Saint Mary College, discussed his life-changing Camino de Santiago journeys during a recent presentation at the college. The talk was part of the “Travel To” series, which is sponsored by the Mount’s Career Center and coordinated by Megan Rossi ’13, Study Abroad Coordinator.
The Camino de Santiago (the pilgrimage of Santiago de Compostela) is a network of loosely connected paths through several European countries, each leading to the shrine of the apostle Saint James the Great in the cathedral of Santiago de Compostela in Galicia, Spain.
“How did I get the idea in my head to walk 500 miles across Spain? In my case, it was from a movie I saw about a year and half after my dad passed away,” Ferris explained.
That movie was The Way, a 2010 drama/comedy starring Martin Sheen. In the film, Sheen is a father whose son (played by his real life son, Emilio Estevez) passes away while walking the Camino de Santiago. Sheen vows to complete the journey in his son’s place.
Ferris, an experienced outdoorsman, was intrigued. It wasn’t long before he decided to give it a go.
Though some choose to ride a bike, Ferris traveled the entire length of the pilgrimage on foot – not once, but three times. He first walked the Camino in 2013 starting in France, then in 2016 starting in Portugal, and most recently in 2018, starting in Spain.
“So you want to walk 500 miles. How hard could it be?” posited Ferris. “I changed my mind about saying it’s easy – because it isn’t.” But sore feet aside, “after the first three days, you don’t even think about any of that stuff. You’re just on your way, and you’re enjoying it.”
Ferris would walk for eight to ten hours a day before stopping for the night at one of the many towns along the way. The trip encompasses paved streets, dirt roads, and trails, with terrain ranging from forests and farmland to deserts and cities. The trip takes about 35 to 40 days for the average traveler, Ferris said. He also urged travelers to wear a new pair of boots at the beginning, because they’ll be ragged by the end of the journey.
He invited audience members to try on the actual backpack that he brought on his Camino journeys, stocked with the things he used during the trip. It weighed about 20 pounds. He brought just two “luxury” items: his iPod and a good pillow.
Over the course of 500 miles, “You get to know every ounce of weight in your backpack,” he explained. Some of the most important items to bring, he said, are a rain coat and a warm jacket. Although most days travelers don’t need them, “You always want to be warm and dry,” Ferris explained.
It might not seem like enough gear for a five-week trip, but as the saying goes, “The Camino will provide.” There’s plenty of restaurants along the various routes that often give a discount to travelers, small inns where Camino travelers need them, and plenty of clean water to be had along the way. Ferris said most travelers spend about 15 to 20 euros a day, which adds up to about 1,000 to 1,500 U.S. dollars for the whole trip.
The Camino did indeed provide for Ferris, even when his ATM card stopped working for about three days. With no money in his pockets, he stopped to rest in one of the towns along the way. Lo and behold, he found 80 euros sitting in the return slot of a vending machine.
“And for the next few days, it paid for me to stay,” he said. “And it paid for another traveler too. We always shared what we found.”
All of this might seem like a massive undertaking – and that’s because it is – but there are many compelling reasons to go on a Camino de Santiago pilgrimage.
“Everybody was there for a different reason,” Ferris said. “Sometimes it was a breakup, sometimes they wanted to find more spirituality in themselves, a lot were walking for religious reasons, and some were doing it just for exercise.”
So why did Ferris go?
“I thought, when I started, I would be just a tourist,” he explained. “But for me, it was a very spiritual journey.”
The Camino has more than 20 recognized routes, leaving Ferris plenty of options for a subsequent trips. It’s possible he’ll do it again, he said – but he’d probably take the same path he took in 2013, starting once again in France.
And in case you’re wondering, yes, Ferris is well aware of the song “I'm Gonna Be (500 Miles)” by The Proclaimers: he listened to it on his iPod while walking the Camino.