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I have always been a huge fan of hot water: saunas, hot tubs, sweat lodges, steam rooms, steaming bathtubs filled with bath oil, scented Epsom salts or both. Relaxing in a hot bath at night is my top tier coping mechanism for just about every stress life has to offer. Twenty-three years ago, we had […]

This morning I am packing up to leave this beautiful oasis in Portugal for a few days at a Permaculture cooperative about two hours from Porto. It sounds like a really interesting place and we will be staying in little personal hobbit holes. At least that’s what these little one person shelters look like to

Michaela and I took a long, dreamy local train ride along the Douro River from a small town station to the end of the line and back. Great way to spend the day.

When Brenda Porter and I were talking the other day about running another Creative Camino trip next year, I was clear about my position—it was a definite yes! I wanted to do it again. But I hadn’t been the person who had organized all the logistics, who had sent those hundreds of emails to hoteliers

After a taxi ride and a four hour bus ride to Porto and a rendezvous with Michaela and our very cute little rental car with its six speeds, 45 minutes on a highway, multiple roundabouts, and half an hour wondering if we were lost on a very, curvy, windy mountain drive, we have arrived at

I woke up at 5 AM to a sharp pain in my throat and the urge to pee. I knocked back a Tylenol, some vitamin C and D, went to the bathroom, and crawled back in bed. It was cozy and I soon drifted back to sleep. I didn’t wake up for four hours and

My group just had their final art/writing class today and I wasn’t with them. I won’t be at tonight‘s final dinner either. However, they’re going to have a closing circle outdoors for an hour in the late afternoon/early evening and I will try to make that. I’m in my cozy cell/like room at the monastery

Six years ago, when Brenda Porter and I first listed the Creative Camino trip, it sold out in just a few days. We scheduled the trip for June 2020, and I remember when Covid first made itself known in February of that year, we hoped that it would be a little blip, and that we’d

I’m way too tired to write a long post tonight, but I still wanted to share some of the great images and captions from our day. Oh . . . and this reading I shared with the group: WALKING “None of your knowledge, your reading, your connections will be of any use here: two legs

This is typical of the little mini art lessons that Brenda gives while we are walking the Camino. Turn up your volume.

Today we walked 6.8 miles, about half the miles we walked yesterday. Piece of cake. It was so much easier, and so nice to stop earlier in the afternoon and get to relax. It was a much mellower day. The weather could not have been more perfect for hiking: warm with a little cool breeze.

When we woke up this morning, it had been raining all night, so I assumed, as many of us did, that we’d be walking in the rain all day. So, we dressed for it, but then the rain never materialized. The sun came out, but it was never too hot. It was a perfect temperature

When I led my first international tour in Bali twelve years ago, Surya Made and Judy Slattum, our on-the-ground organizers and guides, schooled me on the basics of leading a tour. They let me know that the first and most important thing you have to pay attention to is feeding people before their blood sugar