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Dear Pilgrim,

Logistics can be a comfortable hiding spot: how to get to the airport, how to pack, and how much money to budget. Off the Camino, it’s easy to lose yourself in the safety of planning. Disney lovers, cruise-takers, and big-city tourists map out every minute of their experience, running from one checklist item to the next, leaving no space for the threatening stillness that can awaken the creatures we’ve covered up with the busyness of living.

While some logistics are necessary for a journey like this, you will reach the end of your to-do list early on the Camino. Even day-to-day details—where to walk, what to eat, when to go to sleep—are already in place for you. Don Elías—the rebel priest with the yellow paint—tagged stones, walls, and posts with yellow arrows to keep pilgrims from getting lost. Over the decades, local organizations reinforced his arrows and added markers of their own. These markers are our tethers back to reality. The farther we walk, the more our minds break free from schedules, rules, and logic. The arrows call out to the practical area of our brains to say, “You are going the right way.”

With these practical concerns covered, there is so much space—sometimes too much space—for everything that’s been waiting in the wings to slip into the open void of your awareness: the fears we latched onto before leaving, the high expectations of what we’d find here, and all the memories we suppressed at home so we could get through the day.

The mind can spin and spiral in this state; it’s not used to hearing so many long-ignored voices that now get to speak up. When this happens, I need to warn you about losing your way.

There is a danger on the road, especially in the early days, when one kilometer of trees looks like the next, and your destination seems to roll further away from you with each step, and no matter how much you search, there is no person, song, or distraction that can steal you away from the twisting feeling in your stomach telling you to stop.

I once stumbled upon an articlein The Guardian by Robert MacFarlane about the rise of the Camino’s popularity. The piece featured a famous Spanish palindrome. La ruta nos aportó otro paso natural, or “the path provides the natural next step.” Write it in a circle and it winds the same way forward as it does backward.

If you can’t see a way forward—stuck in your bunk bed, frozen on the side of the road, or fastened desperately to your cafe chair—come back to la ruta nos aportó otro paso natural. The answer to your question is to walk a few more steps, to just make it to the next village, or to find just one more yellow arrow. If you need to lie down in the grass, at an albergue, or in a five-star hotel in order to take the next step, then do it. If you need a sandwich or a beer or a chocolate-covered ice cream pop filled to the core with caramel, then get one. The road will still be there when you’ve found your way out of the labyrinth of panic.

You might assume that the final days of the pilgrimage are the easiest time to give up. But it is in these early days, when we don’t know how to get back from the no man’s land of unexpected sadness, that we may lose the path. Rest, move slowly, eat, drink, speak, sing. La ruta nos aportó otro paso natural. The path provides the natural next step.