I put something on the calendar that scares me a little

I’m walking the Portuguese Coastal Camino next spring. And I have a question about your bucket list.

Hi friends,

I’ve been thinking a lot about the things we say we’re going to do someday. The trips we keep bookmarked. The places we imagine ourselves standing. The experiences that live quietly on a bucket list while we wait for the right time, more money, fewer responsibilities, a different season of life, or some future version of ourselves who will somehow be more ready… Are we ever really ready?

I have one of those things. And I finally put it on the calendar.

Next spring, I’m going to walk the Portuguese Coastal Camino, from Porto, Portugal, to Santiago de Compostela in Spain. It’s roughly 170 miles along the coast of Portugal and into Galicia, and I’m giving myself almost four weeks to do it. I’ll spend a few days in Porto before I begin, then walk most days, take rest days when I need them, stay in small hotels and inns along the way, and have my luggage moved ahead while I carry only what I need for the day.

I’m not doing this because I suddenly decided I need to prove I can walk 170 miles. Quite the opposite.

May 2, 2027, will mark two years since my body collapsed and my life changed in ways I never anticipated. For a long time now, I've focused on what was directly in front of me: my health, my nervous system, my work, my family, and learning what my body could and couldn’t do. I've done a lot of listening. A lot of recalibrating. A lot of letting go of the idea that progress has to look a certain way.

Somewhere in all of that, I started thinking about the Camino.

Not as a finish line. Not as some dramatic declaration that everything is behind me. Life doesn’t work like that. I simply kept imagining myself walking beside the Atlantic, one town at a time, with nowhere I needed to be except the next place. Eventually I realized that if I kept waiting until I felt completely certain I could do it, I might never go. My husband thinks I’m nuts; I think… He plans trips very differently.

I booked the time in my life before I booked the trip.

I’m intentionally making the Camino longer than most itineraries. I don’t want to race across Portugal and Spain just to say I completed it. I want time to stop for coffee, notice where I am, talk to people, sit by the ocean, eat something wonderful, get lost occasionally, rest when I need to, and wake up the next morning and walk again. Most days will be somewhere around eight to eleven miles. On May 2, I want to be somewhere along the Portuguese coast doing exactly that: walking.

And strangely, planning this has made me think less about my bucket list and more about everyone else’s.

What’s still on yours?

Not the sensible thing. Not what you think you should want to do. What is the thing you keep thinking about? Maybe it’s walking the Camino. Maybe it’s learning Italian, seeing the Northern Lights, taking your mother somewhere she has always wanted to go, writing the book, swimming in the Mediterranean, going to Japan, learning to surf at 60, taking a month off, or finally going somewhere alone.

And then there’s the harder question: What are you waiting for? I’m genuinely asking.

Tell me one thing that is on your bucket list—the thing you keep saying you’ll do “one day.” I want to hear it. And if you’ve already done something that once felt impossibly big, tell me about that too. I have a feeling incredible stories are sitting in this little community.

I’ll share more as I plan this—the route, the training, what I’m learning, what I’m nervous about, and eventually what happens when my feet actually hit the Camino.

For now, I’ve done the most important part.

I gave someday a date.

With gratitude.

Lane

Have you planned your trip to SAN FRANCISCO?