Final Countdown to Launch

Medicine Bow National Forest, Wyoming USA

I'm in the last few days before heading out on this adventure 🚶. The plan has taken shape, containing three separate pilgrimages over roughly three months. I'm planning two in Japan 🇯🇵 (Nakasendo Way & Kumano Kodo Nakahechi) and one across Norway 🇳🇴 (The Gudbrandsdalen Path from Saint Olav's Ways). My goal is to stay focused on this blog for at least that time and see where life takes me next. As I explain to people what I'm up to, I realize that the next few months won't be a kick-back vacation but rather an engaging challenge. I expect to encounter many struggles along the way. However, I trust in the process of having a strong idea of what I'm after – pivoting out of a tech-focused life to one based on outdoor activity and closely engaged with the community that is geographically around me. The idea is to generally work backward from that vision to guide each step along the way, starting with the basics. The trick, I suspect, is finding the difference between an opportunity and a distraction 👀.

I ended up building this pilgrimage plan in the same vein. I started with just one place I wanted to visit and let the rest unfold more organically. I tend to be a hyper-focused, get-things-done-at-all-costs type of person. While that attribute has enabled much of my professional success, in retrospect, it has also come at the cost of missing out on unexpected opportunities. Some of the appeal in doing a pilgrimage is to be free to explore at your own pace, meet people, hear their stories, and immerse yourself in a culture to learn different perspectives from your own. While I do have an agenda and a roadmap, I plan to loosely follow it. If something sparks interest along the way, I plan to linger longer than planned and catch up later 🗺️. There is also the possibility of people joining me for portions of it, which I would truly enjoy.

THE SETUP

I picked these three pilgrimages because of the range of diversity I hope they expose me to. Culturally, Japan and Norway seem very different (samurai/viking), and they are also on opposite ends of the Earth 🌏. Continuously increasing my range of knowledge is something I work on to expand the tools in my life toolbox. I recommend the book "Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World" by David Epstein (Amazon Link). This book was given to me by a colleague while I was starting a global operations team, and it offers a wonderful look at how having non-traditional backgrounds and a curious predisposition can open opportunities that would otherwise be overlooked. I've generally found that if I'm in a group that is stuck on a project, thinking analogously to other environments can many times shake loose a solution to pursue. I try to be mindful that the analogous solution is still only analogous. It takes some work to transpose it back to the problem you are actually tackling.

I've built my plan for these three pilgrimages in three different ways: low-effort, medium-effort, and high-effort.

JAPAN

For the Nakasendo Way, it was fairly low-effort as I used Walk Japan (walkjapan.com Self-Guided) to build the itinerary. I used their self-guided tour package, which arranges transportation needs during the pilgrimage, as well as your lodging and most meals 🍱. They provide you with route documentation, historical notes about the places you walk through, and notable cultural nuances in Japan so you can avoid doing embarrassing things like wearing your bathroom slippers in common areas 😳. Walk Japan also has a "guided option" (walkjapan.com Guided), which can be worth the extra cost as you have someone with you to point out other landmarks and delve deeper into things you have more interest in.

The second walk I'm doing is another one in Japan, the Kumano Kodo, a sister pilgrimage to the more well-known Camino De Santiago in Spain (dual-pilgrim.spiritual-pilgrimages.com). To build out my second trekking plan, I used Kumano Travel (kumano-travel.com), which was a bit more involved to set up. Using the Kumano Travel website, you can utilize model pilgrimage itineraries to build your own plans that vary in distance and degree of difficulty (intermediate, advanced, expert, & highlights). Your own plans mainly consist of selecting your places of stay 🛌 and deciding if you want to pay a little extra to have some food provided (dinner, breakfast, and lunch-boxes). You submit your ideal plan to Kumano Travel, with a few backup options, and they handle contacting the places to stay and booking your reservations. I ended up planning my walk for July, which turned out to be a busy time of year, and they were still able to support my trip, needing to pick secondary stay options for a few days.

NORWAY

Finally, I'm wrapping up with a trek in Norway, walking along the Gudbrandsdalen Path as part of Saint Olav's Ways (pilegrimsleden.no). This is the longest currently planned walk, roughly 400 miles starting in Oslo and ending in Trondheim. Getting this planned was the most involved or high-effort 🧐. I used the pilgrim website mentioned above, which provided a mapped-out route and highlighted recommended options for places to stay. As a pilgrim, you are on your own to decide how far you will walk each day and to reach out to places to stay for overnights. This is the least traveled of the three pilgrimages, so it does take a fair bit of planning before heading out to ensure that where you are staying is available and ready for you. In the larger cities like Hamar and Oslo, there are many options and typical hotels 🏨. However, as you trek further North, you will be staying with local townsfolk who are willing to let you use a bed. There are also camping options if you'd rather rough it a bit more than I am. Many of the places to stay offer dinner and breakfast for a modest fee, as long as you let the owners know in advance. I found everyone I worked with so far to be extremely kind and responsive as I was planning out my route. This is the trek I'm most excited for because it isn't as popular as the other two, and I expect to have long stretches where I will be alone.

THE "YOLO" WAY

There is a fourth, "no-effort," way to do a pilgrimage. The Camino Frances (caminoways.com) receives enough traffic that you can theoretically just start walking and pick places to stay as you progress. I'm personally not awesome with traveling with no plan 😅, but I know folks who thrive in that ambiguity. Part of my journey involves getting better at being more free-flowing and dynamic since nothing in life really turns out "as planned." There are always unknown unknowns that surprise me as I fumble through life. While I've found that those who are most successful in life have a great ability to say "no" to these unknowns and not allow them to divert from the initial plan, being overly focused on just the end goal carries the risk of saying "no" to an opportunity that can take you somewhere spectacular and completely unexpected. I have found this to be an incredibly difficult balancing act that happens continually throughout life. It requires learning from trial and error, the ability to fail fast, avoiding the sunk-cost fallacy (Wikipedia link), and recognizing when to dig in versus pivot.

ENDING ANECDOTE

For me, I'm saying "yes" 👍 to shifting out of a tech-centered world and into something new that will bring me closer to nature. I need to be better at saying no, particularly in places where I can see that I would have a positive impact, and focus on personally fulfilling projects in my life. I heated on a podcast by Victor Pierantoni's the "Zen Stoic Path Podcast" (Spotify link) stood out to me. He was quoting the teaching of Lao Tzu:

• "To attain knowledge, add things every day. To obtain wisdom, subtract things every day."

Once again, this circles back to the fine balancing act between increasing your range of tools while honing in on a particular specialty. The continual search for that balance is the journey of life, which ultimately provides a deep sense of meaning and happiness.

Thank you again to all those who have helped enable this journey. I'm looking forward to seeing what lies just beyond the next mountain 🏔️.

~E

NOTE: Proofed and stitched using ChatGPT