<HTML><FONT FACE=arial,helvetica><FONT SIZE=2 FAMILY="SANSSERIF" FACE="Lucida Sans Unicode" LANG="0">A few people have asserted that one of the wonders of the Camino is its historical, and ongoing, function as a medium of human communication.<BR>
The last few messages posted indeed reaffirm this.<BR>
My youngest brother was a very troublesome and, surely, troubled, teenager with more energy than our parents, or his schools, knew how to channel effectively. In a fit of impulsive frustration he joined the U.S. Navy in our hometown of Savannah, Georgia, and was shortly sent to faraway places. We hardly saw him for years.<BR>
When his Navy service was over, he came home a very thoughtful and changed young man. He told us that the long hours of solitude, the forced companionship of his ship mates, and the freedom from common temptations and from peer and popular culture pressures, as well as the rigors of the unavoidable physical labors, had eventually led him to look into himself for the answers to the life questions and urges that had so tormented him.<BR>
That seems to me akin to a Camino experience.<BR>
My kid brother now practices medicine in poverty centers throughout Georgia and, fascinated by my endless recounting of my Camino pilgrimages, plans to bicycle the Camino next year with his bride.<BR>
Elizabeth Boylston-Morris<BR>
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