Don’t let them push you around, my youngest son said halfway through the Camino de Santiago. You don’t have to get up early if you don’t want to.
I didn’t know that was an option, replied his brother from his bunk.
This subversive banter is what our family sounds like now. The old hierarchy has loosened. We are four adults negotiating the day.
When we tackled the Camino a decade ago, my husband and I knew the walk marked an ending of sorts. One son had just finished school, the other his degree. Their lives were waiting elsewhere – different cities, countries, work, relationships. This 30-day walk was wedged into the narrow gap before those lives took hold. We were on borrowed time.
We had walked with these boys since they were babies, first carrying them in backpacks, then coaxing them along with snacks and stories, eventually handing them the weight of their own packs. Summer holidays meant hiking; winter meant ski touring. This was our family’s culture. They mostly accepted it, though not without resistance. One son declared that once he left home, he would never climb a mountain again – a vow he later broke by independently hiking coast to coast across Britain.
Most of our family myths have been forged on foot – getting lost in New Zealand, the flooded tent in Tasmania, the years-old drama of the stolen lollies, for which each son blames the other to this day.
By the time of the Camino, walking together was familiar, but the emotional landscape had shifted. We were no longer parents and children. We were four people with sore feet and competing lunch preferences. Decisions were democratic and, in my biased opinion, often flawed. When it became clear our allotted 30 days were too short, I suggested catching the bus. I was promptly outvoted. In hindsight, this was a rehearsal for a different kind of parenthood. One where I let go of command.
There are few scripts for parenting adult children, especially once they leave home. We mark births and deaths publicly. Weddings come with great ceremony. But the exodus of grown children mostly happens without fanfare. One morning, bedrooms empty. Daily intimacies vanish. They are simply not there. The Camino turned out to be a ritual I hadn’t known I needed – a long, unplanned goodbye.
I returned home with a bittersweet understanding. The job I had once done – raising children – was largely complete. It was time to learn a new one. What I didn’t yet know was the walk would become a template for how to be a family now.
In the decade since my sons left home, we have kept walking together. At least twice a year, we choose a trail and step on to it as equals. We hiked the Larapinta trail with one son, the Three Capes track with the other, the K’gari Great Walk with both. Each journey is different, shaped by whoever is present, but the function is the same.
These walks give us unbroken, shared time in a world of fragmented attention. Phones drop out of service. Conversations unfold slowly. We learn who each other has become.
Walking together allows us to enter each other’s lives without intrusion. I don’t need to ask about work or relationships. Instead, I see them navigate a steep climb, linger to watch the light change. They see me struggle, adapt, persist. And thankfully, they now carry more weight than me.
These journeys hold an impermanence, an awareness that this time is finite. At the end, we will disperse to different cities and countries. Rather than resisting that truth, the walks contain it. They allow us to part well. We are four people who have walked a long way together and now mostly walk apart. But a few times a year, we shoulder our packs, step on to a trail and remember how to move forward in the same direction.
• Lisa Walker is the author of The Pact, available now through HarperCollins.
