Writing to the Challenge by Barbara Lehtiniemi

I’m reading Pam Grout’s book Art & Soul Reloaded:  A yearlong apprenticeship for summoning the muses and reclaiming your bold, audacious, creative side.  I am only on page 70 (of 345), but I knew right from the introduction that I was going to love this book.

“Well, in this book, you get a guide named Pam, but I reckon between the two of us, the muses, and our prancing, creative spirits, we can do most anything.” – Pam Grout, Art & Soul Reloaded

The book is organized with one chapter for each week.  Each week/chapter has one major exercise.  I know Pam Grout doesn’t know if I do the exercises or not.  But I can hear her voice, her delightful husky twang, over my shoulder.

I imagine Pam as an angel on my shoulder.  A twangy-voiced, butt-kicking angel who says, “Yes, you can do this.  Just try.  Just start and see.”

Week six’s exercise was to start a blog.  It took me almost a week to come up with an idea for a blog post.  I decided I’d blog about books and I named my blog “Barb’s Bookshelf”.  I wrote the blog post, a book review, and I posted it.  There!  I did it.  

Then I re-read the exercise.  Write a blog post each day for a week.  Ugh.  Can I do that?

Butt-kicking angel told me, “Yes, you can do this.  Just try.  Just start and see.”

You can visit my blog at https://barbsbookshelf.wordpress.com/ to see how I fared with writing to the challenge.  Below is my first blog post, from March 22, 2023:

Book Review:

Women of the Way: Embracing the Camino

I’m drawn to books about walking the Camino de Santiago in Spain.  I suppose it’s the hiker in me. While I’ve never walked the Camino, nor any other major walking/hiking route outside of Canada, I devour books written by folks who have.

Since I keep a log of books I’ve read (yes, really) I can tell you I’ve read Camino books by Sonia Choquette (Walking Home), Jane Christmas (What the Psychic Told the Pilgrim), Paulo Coelho (The Pilgrimage), Keith Foskett (The Journey in Between), Hape Kerkeling (I’m Off Then), Shirley MacLaine (The Camino), Michael Thornton (27 Days a Pilgrim on the Camino de Santiago), Robert Ward (All the Good Pilgrims), and probably more.

In each of these books, excepting perhaps Coelho’s, the journey is inward as well as outward.  The author writes of their experience walking the pilgrimage route, most often the Camino Francés or “French Way”, from Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port in France to Santiago de Compostela in Galicia, Spain, a distance of about 769 kilometres.  The writer records their inner journey to some sort of self-realization, as well as recording the physical experience of their walk.  I find value in reading both of their inner and outer journeys.

I recently read Jane V Blanchard’s 2012 book, Women of the Way: Embracing the Camino.  I came across the book while searching for Camino books that were available through my Kobo Plus ebook subscription (of which more in a future post.)

Blanchard’s book took a different approach to the Camino journey.  While Blanchard describes the physical aspect of the walk she and her husband, Dennis, took along the Camino (on the popular “French Way”), she also explores the experiences of other women she meets along the way.  Her book is sprinkled with photos of these women—whether they be fellow walkers or workers in the albergues (hostels)—along with Blanchard’s interviews with them, both during their walk, and afterwards.

I found this approach refreshingly interesting.  Not only did Blanchard record and share the experiences of other women walkers—who presumably will not go on to share their experiences with the world by publishing books of their own—but she included the experiences of women who work and volunteer along the trail, an aspect I had not seen given consideration before.

Blanchard’s book stands out because of its outward-focus, engaging in conversations with women she meets along the way, rather than being the usual (albeit worthy) introspective walker’s journey.  In this book, I feel I’ve been introduced to an unexplored facet of The Way.

I’m now checking out one of Blanchard’s follow-up books on the Camino:  A Peek at the Remarkable Camino de Santiago: A Photo Journey.  I plan to also read Blanchard’s Camino Tips: How to Get the Most Out of “The Way” (she may convince me to walk the Camino yet!)  Blanchard has also written books on walking along Hadrian’s Wall in England, and along the Vermont Long Trail in the U.S.  

I first discovered her in ebook version through Kobo at www.kobo.com/ca/en/ebook/women-of-the-way-embracing-the-camino.  She has a website for the book at womenoftheway2011.com.  

Share your creative activities! Send JPG image(s) to cagac.ca@gmail.com with up to 100 words per image describing some or all of what moved you to spend time thinking about and producing . . . something! Share how/if creativity affects (controls?) your life. Please include size (height by width), title & media for each image.

Writers – we want to hear from you! Send poetry, lyrics, an excerpt. Try to include an image of some sort because that’s the media world we live in. 

Everyone, share informative, inspiring Show & Tell demonstrating the creative mind.