The Walk & The Way (or… How I Watched a Movie and it Planted a Seed)

Today represents a relatively significant anniversary for our family.  Six years ago this evening, I rolled into Rio Rancho, New Mexico behind the wheel of a 26-foot U-Haul truck, pulling a trailer with my ’93 Ford Ranger on it.  Behind me, my dad was driving a second 26-foot U-Haul, also pulling a trailer.  Behind him were Becca and Gideon in my Mustang, along with our three dogs and our cat.  It had been a long, hard drive, but we were home after eleven years in Oklahoma.  I can’t tell you what a relief it was to see Melanie waiting for us in the driveway of the rental house she had found for us.

Only one problem:  There was still a lot of stuff left in our house in Oklahoma, and I do mean a lot.  (Yes, I know.  If it took more than two monster U-Haul’s to move us, we have too much stuff.  You are preaching to the choir, my friends.)  To make a ridiculously long and boring story slightly shorter, I’ll just tell you that this meant that three weeks later, I was driving east again to spend two weeks packing the last of our stuff and getting our Tahlequah house presentable for potential buyers.

That two weeks proved to be seven-and-a-half of the most challenging weeks of my life.

I am notorious for grossly underestimating how long a job will take, and for overestimating my abilities.  (I suspect most men are, but that’s a topic for another blog.)  For the next fifty days or so, I’d work alone for 12-14 hours, eat, sleep and repeat.  On a positive note, by the time it was done, I’d dropped 17 pounds and was looking better than I had since graduating from high school 31 years earlier.  Unfortunately, I was also chronically depressed, angry, and lonely.  Calls to Melanie and the kids did little to improve my mood.

The move to New Mexico had wiped out our savings, so my entertainment options in the evenings were limited.  I had my iPod, my iPad, and a portable DVD player with a massive 7-inch screen.  (Remember those?)  I watched music videos by the dozens on Vevo, I discovered the first season of “The Walking Dead” on Netflix and watched all six episodes, (not the best show to watch when fighting depression). I watched whole seasons of Star Trek (the original) and Battlestar Galactica (the new one).  About four weeks in, I decided to splurge after picking up a burger and stopped at the video store.  (Remember those?)  I needed something uplifting to distract me for a few hours.

We had a pretty good video store in Tahlequah back then.  Unfortunately, nothing looked good.  Nothing.  After browsing for close to a half-hour, I had nothing to watch, and I was acutely aware that my double cheeseburger from Sonic was getting cold.  I was about to leave when a DVD cover caught my eye, tucked into the Ws in the section of the store usually reserved for forgettable, straight-to-video movies.  The cover art was unremarkable – four people walking in a line from right to left, superimposed in front a diamond-shaped yellow road sign emblazoned with the words, “The Way”, all on a simple white background.  (Think of the Beetles “Abbey Road” cover, without the cool British funky factor.) “Life is too big to walk it alone,” was the tagline across the top. 

I picked up the DVD, realized that Martin Sheen was leading the line, briefly scanned the plot synopsis on the back.  Something about walking a 500-mile trail across Spain.  It seemed moderately interesting, and my burger was getting cold, so I rented it.

Have you ever noticed how incredibly mundane some of the most important moments in our lives can be?

On arriving home, I reheated my burger, opened a beer, and plopped down in my recliner (one of the only pieces of useful furniture still in the house) with the DVD player in my lap.  Within the first ten minutes, I had forgotten I was lonely, that I was exhausted, and that I was hating my life. 

In “The Way”, Martin Sheen plays a wealthy California ophthalmologist who is called to France to identify the body of his son, (Emilio Estevez), who died on the first day of a pilgrimage on the Camino de Santiago.  Sheen’s character decides to have his son cremated, and, carrying his son’s ashes, undertakes the pilgrimage himself.  In the end, his character is transformed by the experience.

I’d never heard of the Camino de Santiago, also known as the Way of St. James.  After watching the movie, I looked it up on the internet, and learned that it was, in fact, a very real thing.  Tradition holds that the body of the Apostle James is interred beneath the Cathedral in the Spanish town of Santiago de Compestela, and people have been going on pilgrimages there for over a thousand years.  Cool.

That night, I slept deeply, and I dreamed of walking across Spain.

I’d love to tell you that watching the movie transformed the rest of my time in Tahlequah, but I don’t like to lie to you.  The rest of that time was a succession of brutally hard days, frustrating setbacks, and disappointments.  It sucked, plain and simple.  (I can think of several rather vulgar, but more accurate, descriptions, but I am unable to put them in print because of the way I was raised.)  Although I mentioned the movie to Melanie the day after I watched it, I’d almost completely forgotten about it by the time I left Tahlequah nearly a month later.

Except… apparently I hadn’t forgotten.  It was late in the day when I finally pulled out of Tahlequah, and I decided to spend the night in Oklahoma City, just over 500 miles from Rio Rancho.  That night, over dinner, I remember thinking that walking the Camino would be like walking to Rio Rancho from OKC.  Crazy, right?

What I didn’t recognize then, and wouldn’t acknowledge for several years, was that a seed had taken root somewhere inside me the night I watched that movie.

In commercial terms, “The Way” was barely a blip on Hollywood’s radar.  Written and directed by Emilio Estevez, Martin Sheen’s oldest son, the movie was shot on location with a minimal cast, a minimal crew, and a virtually non-existent budget.  It debuted in limited release in the USA on October 9, 2011, nearly a year after its limited release in Spain.  According to IMDB, its cumulative worldwide gross as of August 31, 2012 was $9,158,000.  (They obviously didn’t count the $2.50 I spent to rent it in late September of the same year.)  To paraphrase a blogger I follow, who knows quite a bit about the movie industry, those are the kind of numbers that end careers.  Here’s what’s interesting, though:  While the number of people who have seen the movie is relatively small, of those who have seen “The Way”, the number who loved it is quite high.  The movie review website Rotten Tomatoes gave the film a “Freshness Rating” of 83% from critics and viewers alike.  To again paraphrase the same blogger, those are the kind of numbers that can make a career.

As for me, I’ve often asked myself why I liked the movie so much.  I’ve watched it many times since that September night in 2012, and I recognize that in many ways, it is rather ordinary.  I love that it tells an uplifting story.  I love that the characters are all flawed and human.  I love that it speaks of faith, without ever becoming preachy.  I love that the journey is transformative.  As I’ve learned more about the behind-the-scenes stories behind its creation, I’ve also come to love that it was made as a family project, outside the normal conventions of the movie-making world.  It was highly improbable that this film ever would have been made, and yet, it was.

Sorry to disappoint all of you who’ve always known me as a Star Wars geek, but it seems I have a new favorite movie.

I’ve heard that there are many people who have walked the Camino de Santiago in the years since the movie was released, simply because they saw “The Way.”  Wow.  At the risk of sounding judgmental, that seems like a very shallow reason to undertake a 500-mile walk.  I will not be one of “those” people.

That being said, I intend to walk the Camino de Santiago in just over two years’ time.  While acknowledging that there is a world of unknowns between today and that future time, I plan to celebrate my 57^th birthday by setting out from the French village of St. Jean Pied-de-Port and hiking up the Pyrenes, heading west into Spain.

I know, I know.  I just said I was not going to be one of “those” people who walk the Camino just because I saw a movie.  I’m not.  “The Way” did not make me want to walk the Camino, at least not in a real-world, going-to-do-it kind of way.  No offense to Martin Sheen or Emilio Estevez, but the movie wasn’t that compelling.  What “The Way” did was make me aware of the Camino de Santiago.  To my knowledge, I’d never heard of the Way of Saint James before that night.  Other than being vaguely aware of the Good Friday pilgrimages to the Santuario de Chimayo here in New Mexico, I don’t think I’d really even contemplated the idea of Pilgrimage in any real sense.  It simply wasn’t on my radar.

I’ve already shared how the act of walking had become my way of dealing with stress, how a few miles could transform my viewpoint.  If you’ve read any of these blogs, you know that I am a believer in our ability to take deliberate action with intent of transforming ourselves.  I also believed then, as I do now, that our creator does not require us to be “religious” to connect with him.  In hindsight, I have become convinced that these elements all combined to create a pocket of fertile soil that nurtured the seed that was planted when I first saw “The Way.”

In the years since I saw the movie, walking the Camino has been something of a “bucket list” item, something that I wanted to do, but certainly never expected to do.  In fairness, my bucket list is, by and large, rather impractical.  I also want to fly an X-wing fighter, and to stand on the bridge of the starship Enterprise.  As I said, I may want to do these things, but I don’t really expect them to happen.

If you know me at all, you know that I am NOT adventurous.  I haven’t travelled the world.  I like going home to the same house, year after year.  I like to feel safe, to feel secure.  I like my life to be predictable.  And yet, despite this, I am making concrete plans to walk the Camino.  Weird, isn’t it?

Sometime in the next few days, (which could mean weeks), I’ll do my best to explain what’s been happening inside me, and to convey something of the sense of wonder I’ve been experiencing the past few months.  It’s actually been rather cool.

In the meantime, I do want to address a fairly relevant question that may have occurred to some of you by now.  What the HELL does any of this have to do with the purpose of this blog?  You know, “An exploration of creativity, the creator and spiritual growth.”  How does The Walk tie in to creativity?

I apologize in advance, as I strongly suspect my words will be somewhat inadequate.  All I have to offer you tonight is the evidence of this blog itself.  For five years, I didn’t write.  The last four years, I have lived in Santa Fe, arguably one of most creative cities in the USA, if not the world.  Furthermore, I have been working as a gallery director on Canyon Road, one of single greatest concentrations of galleries on the planet.  I have been absolutely saturated in creativity, and yet, I haven’t been creating. 

That all started to change in the past few months, as the Camino has moved from a pipe-dream to a possibility to something I will do.  The rebirth of my creative drive has been directly connected to this progression.  Although I do not yet fully understand why, I know that for me, the Camino is directly connected to the vitality of my creative self.  I think that I even have some meaningful thoughts on how you, my dear readers, may be able to discover your own equivalent of the Camino.  Don’t worry – I rather doubt that you’ll need to commit to a 500-mile walk. 

If you’d like to watch “The Way”, it’s available to rent on Amazon.  Sadly, it’s no longer available on Netflix, nor is it free with Amazon Prime.  If your local library has DVDs, check there.  If you’re still reading this blog, I feel safe telling you that you’ll find it worth watching.  If you’re a movie geek, like me, here’s a link to the IMDB page on the movie:  https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1441912/?ref_=fn_al_tt_2

I’ll return with more soon.  Soon, as in a few days from now.  Weeks at the most.  I know what “soon” means now.