David Wymore's wife was logging thousands of steps in an effort to relieve pain from a herniated disc. He jokingly suggested that they put those steps to good use. That joke turned into a pilgrimage across Spain and lessons in healing.

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It started as a husband trying to lighten his wife's pain.

Leisl Buechler was experiencing such excruciating pain from a herniated disc that the only thing that brought relief was walking. And walk she did, averaging as many as 35,000 steps a day.

Her husband David Wymore, a physician assistant at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, joked that they should find a way to put all those steps to good use – such as hiking the Camino de Santiago, a 500-mile trek across Spain.

Wymore shares how the joke turned to a real pilgrimage across Spain — inspired in part by the spiritual pilgrimages offered through the Mayo Clinic Values Council — and the lessons they learned during the trek.

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My wife's back pain was so encompassing that the only relief she had, however temporary, was while walking. Pain while sitting had been present since July or August 2021. But in September, it hurt while lying down, too — so much so that her sleep was interrupted nightly. It seemed that our time spent off work was wholly spent walking. Pacing through the living room, around the kitchen, into the dining room and then back into the living room — at noon, 4 p.m., 10 p.m., and even at 3 a.m.

By mid-September, my wife's Fitbit was logging around 35,000 steps a day. We would joke about putting all this walking to good use. During one of these conversations, I mentioned the Camino. 

In college, as a good Religious Studies major, I had taken a class called "Pilgrimage Narratives." The class required readings on the Haj, Varanasi, Graceland and the Camino de Santiago.

The Camino de Santiago is a pilgrimage dating back to the 900s Common Era, which brought Christian pilgrims from all over Europe to the traditional resting place of James the Greater, apostle of Jesus. This resting place is in the cathedral of Santiago de Compostela in northwestern Spain. When I told my wife that the most common route, the French Way, was a 500-mile trek from the French Pyrenees across northern Spain, she, like all sane people, scoffed. But as September turned to October and November neared, the idea of using all this pacing — which, by this time, had turned to hikes during the day — seemed more and more reasonable.

My wife's successful microdiscectomy in November to treat her herniated disc, along with rest and healing over the winter, made my ludicrous proposal a possibility. 

Through the spring and summer of 2022, we trained. Buying packs and trekking poles, adding weight and miles on a weekly basis, saw us losing weight and gaining muscle, and most importantly, gaining a belief that we could accomplish our planned pilgrimage.

By Sept. 12, when we left for five weeks in Spain, we felt as ready as we could be. But how ready would we need to be? 

The total trip would take 37 days, one day before the pilgrimage to get from Paris to St. Jean Pied de Port in the French Pyrenees; 32 days of walking, averaging 15.6 miles per day; a rest day in each of Logroño, Burgos and León along the way; and two days after finishing before flying back. The hardest day, everyone said, would be the first day over the Pyrenees, what would turn out to be a 10 1/2-hour, 16-mile, 43,000-step day, with a total elevation gain of more than 4,800 feet. If we could finish that day, we could do it all, right? But what then?

Get up and do it again. And again. And again.

As I write this, I realize how little effect my words have to communicate the totality that was the Camino de Santiago for us. We finished as planned. We avoided any major issues and even most minor ones. We met several pilgrims with facial contusions from falling flat. Fellow walkers were laid up for days with tendonitis, sprains and numerous blisters. We passed, on a daily basis, memorials to pilgrims in past years who had died on the route, the youngest a 16-year-old from England doing the Camino by bike with a school group in 2016.

We met amazing people. Four women from Indiana — the oldest of whom was 76 — were a joy to walk with day after day. A woman who came by herself from Australia showed us a strength and self-reliance that was inspirational. A couple from Minneapolis, who we met on the last mountain we climbed crossing the Pyrenees on Day 1, and will remain friends with for the rest of our lives.

As any one of my colleagues from work would be able to tell you after asking me about the trip, it is very hard to encapsulate our experience in a few words or sentences, and impossible to answer when someone asks, "What was your favorite part?"

But I can say some things.

Like St. Francis, who it is said completed the Camino de Santiago in the 13th century, and like the Sisters of St. Francis, who helped make Mayo Clinic what it is today, I learned how to love my fellow pilgrim for the rich ties that bind us all. And what are we to each other, whether on a medieval pilgrimage or just as fellow travelers through life, but pilgrims trying to walk from birth to death without stumbling too badly or too often? 

I learned to respect my fellow walkers who came from across the globe with different needs and goals. I learned to have compassion for those for whom the Camino was not proceeding as smoothly as they had hoped. I learned the healing of a fellow pilgrim's spiritual need by giving my rosary beads, which my daughters had just bought at the Vatican two months earlier, to her to pray for her deceased mother because she had forgotten hers in Australia. I learned to be even more of a teammate to my wife who was my daily companion on this indescribable journey and through life. And I learned to value my privilege of working at Mayo, a privilege that gave me the time and resources to leave home for more than five weeks and make a year's worth of planning and toil a reality.

Even now it seems ridiculous that such a journey could be inspired through injury and pain, but it is something I think about when ministering to my patient's needs after heart surgery or transplant. Could they or their families now complete their own pilgrimages with the new time and health given them? I hope so. I believe so. And I will continue to work to make it so.

More information

Visit the Camino de Santiago pilgrimage website to learn more.

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