Meat

When I walked the Camino de Santiago, I survived on a steady diet of ham sandwiches and beer.

I subjected my body to a pack that weighed more than was healthy for my frame, moved my feet over miles of terrain, felt my muscles fatigue and my flesh blister and bleed.

Every day, somewhere along the trail, I’d join other pilgrims for lunch. I’d order slices of the flesh of some other animal between bread, slobbered with mayonnaise. Between gulps of beer, I’d chew. But I never felt satisfied. I was constantly famished from the exertion of the pilgrimage, from the challenge of bringing my body closer to a holy place.

[This is the beginning of an essay I wrote for Good Letters- The Image Journal blog. Continue reading here.]