Sons of Thunder

Sons of Thunder is the first of two books based on one summer's 2000 mile trek across southern Europe. It celebrates the adventure of walking medieval pilgrim trails from Andalusian Seville to the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela in the northwestern Spanish province of Galicia, and brings the reader along the journey in a first-hand way by weaving emails, journal extracts and walking poems. The broad agricultural expanses of the Spanish countryside form the backdrop for reflections on what it's like to pare life down to food, water, will and ambulation while exploring the little villages dotting rural Spain. And from such sparsity, to walk into monumental cities... Mérida, Cáceres, Salamanca; cities thriving modernly around Roman ruins, Moorish palaces, Gothic and Renaissance cathedrals; cities of-fering music, regional cuisine, stunning architecture and art in the heady awe of human history... Then, to walk out again through tranquil forests and plains. But more than a travelogue, these physical experiences are part of a spiritual journey, a journey which on one level culminates en masse with hundreds of other pilgrims celebrating in an incensor swung and organ boomed baroque Cathedral, the shrine of St. James, and that on another deeply individual level ends with an intro-spective three-day walk to face the finality of the sea, the true end of the road, and cast an intention-rich scallop shell into the cliff-crashing tide as a symbol of all that continues beyond physical boundaries.