How a 500-mile walk in northern Spain changed this local man’s life

Bart Larsen walked more than 400 miles in the last few weeks.

He looked at the Spanish countryside, rolling hills and overgrown green ferns that poured from the mountainsides. He could feel the power of those who walked before him. He could almost hear the stories speak from the path below his feet.

But he could hear something else as well. Children laughing – well, more like complaining.

Larsen was completing the 500-mile walking journey from the edge of France to the edge of Spain, better known as the Camino de Santiago, or The Way of St. James in English. It is a spiritual pilgrimage meant for intense introspection, fervent prayer and personal growth. About 300,000 people walk the path each year.

His 15-pound backpack felt weightless after carrying it for weeks on end. The blisters between his toes and shredded running shoes weren’t distracting him from his goal. But what was distracting him were the children that showed up.

Schools in the area often bring students on a four- or five-day field trip to complete the last 100 kilometers of the Camino. It is meant as an immersive history lesson, but Larsen couldn’t help but see it as a persistent distraction.

Students poured out of school buses and onto the path that Larsen had poured his literal blood, sweat and tears on. This was merely a school assignment for them. They drove down the road from their own Spanish village to walk a path they had heard about over and over their entire lives. Larsen traveled thousands of miles from Idaho Falls to dedicate an entire month to the path he learned about just last year.

His focus shifted, to say the least.

But then, a tour guide, or a teacher – they were the same to Larsen at the moment – walked up to him with a simple piece of advice.

“Stay focused,” the guide told Larsen, seeing the weeks of weariness bled into his clothes. “This is your Camino.”

Larsen did just that. He stayed focused and set to complete the final few days of his month-long quest. The children seemed to quiet. They seemed to almost disappear.

Larsen heard about the Camino de Santiago from his daughter Ashton. She had completed the pilgrimage a year before and begged her dad to follow in her footsteps. It wasn’t a long shot. Larsen had recently found the time outside of his Ammon office job to travel the world, from visiting Thailand to running a marathon in the streets of Rome earlier this year.

His quaint Eastern Idaho life, the quiet ambience of his corner office looking at Ammon Road, pushed him to see the world. There is so much to see, so much to do, so much to learn, Larsen said.

Completing the Camino was a step in the right direction for Larsen’s personal growth, he said.

He longed to complete the same path as his daughter, to walk in honor of his oldest who had passed away, and to pray for all four of his children and their life directions.

“I’ve always been spiritual,” Larsen said. “Not as much religious. Just spiritual.”

So when he learned that the Camino is a spiritual pilgrimage, one that involved just as much physical dedication, it was the perfect alignment of his goals. He walked the Camino from Aug. 19 until Sept. 13 this year, averaging more than 20 miles a day.

The journey requires dedication, a longing for growth and usually, a reason for prayer. But more than that, it requires you to carry a backpack with your belongings, speak with locals who may not understand your own language, to spend short, sleepless nights in hostel beds, and to repeat that every day for a month, he said.

Needless to say, Larsen thought he would see those like himself on the path, maybe some people that reminded him of his daughter Ashton. And yes, he did see some people on the Camino that he thought fit the mold he had created in his mind. But it shocked him to see how many people were so far outside the mold, he wondered how they had taken each step he had.

Hundreds of miles into the walk, Larsen met a 77-year-old Australian named Zach. Zach had almost two decades on Larsen. And yet, here they were, taking the exact same steps through the Spanish countryside.

Zach dedicated his Camino to his wife of 39 years who had recently passed away, Larsen said. Zach told Larsen that his wife had erased his unbelief, his faithless past and led him to God. Walking 500 miles was the least he could do for her.

But Zach wasn’t even the most surprising, or even inspiring, stranger he met in September.

Larsen pulled a tattered brown notebook from his Ammon office desk. A smile crept onto his face as he flipped through journal pages. Toward the end of the journal, he stopped on an entry that had a photo pasted next to it.

“I wrote this entry and left a space for the picture,” Larsen said. “I knew I had to remember them.”

In the photo was a mother walking uphill. She was surrounded by three children, the oldest of whom was 9 years old.

The family flew from Taiwan to complete the pilgrimage. The three children had been learning about Catholicism and the apostles. They learned of the Camino and decided to make the walk, all 500 miles. The three children all started from the same French village as Larsen. They walked the same path. They took the same steps.

Larsen flipped over his phone. A yellow sticker was pressed onto the middle of his blue phone case. It bore the Mandarin word for “power.”

“She was handing out these little things,” Larsen said pointing at the sticker. “This is the power to push.”

Larsen said he ran into the family multiple times and couldn’t believe they were keeping up with his 20-mile a day pace. The Taiwanese family were there to learn about the Camino and to pray for the mother’s dying father-in-law.

The Camino taught him “truthful accountability,” he said. It taught him the power of silence. It confirmed his wants and desires for his family.

And it’s easy to feel the power of the Camino when your feet are pounding into the ground that hundreds of thousands have walked before you. It’s harder to remember, to apply, that same power when your feet are tapping below an office desk.

But Larsen kept his journal, his certificate of completion, the remnants of his Camino around his office, as a reminder of his time across the Atlantic. Larsen is back in Idaho Falls with a story to tell with callouses of proof.

He heard the tour guide’s voice once more.

“Stay focused,” the voice said. “This is your Camino.”