Quarantined, Self

The CDC explains that the practice of quarantine specifically involves ...the separation of a person or group of people reasonably believed to have been exposed to a communicable disease but not yet symptomatic, from others who have been exposed, to prevent the possible spread of the communicable disease.

Two years ago, when the world was an entirely different place, my soulmate husband Joe, and I were planning an event that, at the time, we had no idea would be a practice session for what is our current way of life.  We could not have known that our experience on the Camino de Santiago in the northernmost corner of Spain, would become the training ground for what was to come a mere two years later.

We're in a quarantine at this very moment.  Time, for us, and the rest of the world, has frozen and for so, so many, time has become hellish and unbearable.  Our quarantine now is the effort, the weapon, and perhaps, the only one,with which we will fight a physical disease, one that is taking lives by the thousands as it sweeps mercilessly across the globe.

We are doing our part, and taking it all one day at a time. We are not unfamiliar with what is now referred to as "Social Distancing".  Our days on the Camino paced us oftentimes, miles between people.  Yet, we felt joined at the hip with others along the way, knowing that we were sharing something big, special, important.  For our five days of walking, for that one hundred miles, we separated ourselves from the rest of the world and isolated, keeping our distance from the symptoms of the world, a universe spinning out of control.  On the Camino de Santiago, it is almost impossible to harbor an evil thought, to have a worry about the outside, material world.  On Camino, it is easy to allow for distancing, not only from other people, but from despair, woes, and fears.  On Camino, the beauty and the gift comes from quarantine.  The separation of a person or group of people reasonably believed to have been exposed to a communicable disease........

BUEN CAMINO