Part of preparing for a pilgrimage is readying the mind and spirit. Everyone who plans this trip must wrestle with the prospect of not completing it. I have a vague notion that thirty years ago, when I was at my physically fittest and sliding down glaciers in the Rocky Mountains, I could set off to do strenuous activity without any kind of physical conditioning. Now I follow a conditioning schedule and worry that it’s not challenging enough.

I don’t know what to expect. It never really occurred to me that I had to work at fitness until I did have to work at it following heart surgery last summer. I had not experienced significant physical incapacity until I couldn’t lie down in bed without its hurting and napped most afternoons for six weeks. Am I fortunate to be that healthy? Lucky I never broke a bone and managed to avoid surgery for decades? Rehab gave my strength back to me, as well as a sense of what I took for granted.

What lessons will the Camino teach me about what I can or can’t do, what will require more effort or less? I was talking with an older woman yesterday who is physically frail now that she is in her 90s. She seemed frustrated; she told me how much she used to walk when she worked in the city and how active a gardener she had been. I thought I would be stronger, she said.

That’s kind of what I’m expecting, or hoping, for the Camino: that I can manage the physical demands.But traveling light means not packing too many expectations and leaving room for ultra-lite plans B and C.

Limits are not roadblocks, however. They are not stop signs but they are givens. I will walk slower than pilgrims who are 20 years younger. I cannot anticipate limits but I will discover them just as I discover other things on the road.

There’s also this, from The Soul of a Pilgrim by Christine Valters Paintner: “A pilgrimage is an intentional journey into this experience of unknowing and discomfort for the sake of stripping away preconceived expectations.”