The Island Walk, or the Camino de la Isla, was conceived by Bryson Guptill. He came up with the idea after he and his partner walked the 800-kilometre Camino de Santiago pilgrimage route in Spain in 2016 and Portugal’s Rota Vicentina three years later. Guptill helped develop the 150-kilometre-long International Appalachian Trail in P.E.I. and walked it as preparation for his Camino de Santiago trek. With help from other members of the Prince Edward Island Trails organization, he researched, designed, mapped and walked every step of P.E.I.’s camino.

Santiago de Compostela is the capital of Galicia in northern Spain, where it’s said the remains of the apostle Saint James are buried at the cathedral. P.E.I.’s Island Walk has no religious significance, but the brochure created to promote it promises to “transport you to an uncomplicated time. To escape the mayhem of modern life. To discover a humbling place — its wildlife, its culture and its people. To come back different.”

As practical as he is philosophical, Guptill wrote a guidebook to the walk in which he claims the loop design is an advantage. Walkers can begin and end anywhere along the route, and they don’t have to transport all their belongings to an end point.

I selected segments 15-16 and 16-17 for a two-day mini-Camino, thinking they would be a good sample of what a walker might expect if they took on the full circuit. These segments are in the middle of the province. The first passes through popular tourist areas known for, among other things, several Anne of Green Gables sites. In contrast, the second segment heads to the coast along the quiet hiking trails and beaches of Prince Edward Island National Park.

Half an hour out of Kensington, and some friendly Islanders confirm my growing suspicion — I’m walking in the wrong direction. By the time I return to Kensington, I’ve already walked six kilometres and I’m feeling it, both physically and emotionally. I curse my incompetence. The day is practically a write-off. I come to think of Guptill’s promises of escape as unattainable. What is walking, after all, but a way to get somewhere too slowly?

On the right road at last, settle into a rhythm. Cars and giant farm machinery pass, but traffic is light. Walking between fields of late summer crops — corn, wheat, soybeans — I begin to notice details. Crickets chirp. Caterpillars undulate over gravel. A crow perched on a wire follows my progress. I say hello, but it neither responds nor flies away. I pause to pluck a stock of wheat and weave it into my straw hat.

Before I know it, I’ve covered a lot of ground. At a crossroads, I choose a shortcut to make up for the extra kilometres I walked at the day’s outset. It leads down one of those iconic P.E.I. red dirt roads. In the distance, a blue inlet pushes into green fields. Many P.E.I. roads are surprisingly straight, and I find myself looking far ahead, knowing that these hilltops and intersections in the distance are places I will eventually be.

On Route 6, I see a chance for another detour onto a quiet gravel road. At the intersection, I stop at a house where a woman is working in her garden to ask if the road loops back to Route 6. With typical Island friendliness, Ruth Henderson introduces herself and asks what I’m up to. It turns out she walked half the Camino de Santiago in 2018, using another of Bryson Guptill’s guidebooks.

“I met Bryson a couple of years back,” she says. “When he and his crew went on the pre-walk, I joined them on two occasions. I think it’s an amazing thing to have on P.E.I. You’re the first person I’ve met who’s walking it.” She confirms that the detour is, indeed, a nice, scenic loop.

It’s along this quiet road that I begin to pay attention to my body, noticing human needs and physical sensations like tiring legs and aching joints. Hunger and thirst are easily subdued with snacks and drinks, but pains and fatigue grow more acute. Over all of this, I begin to feel the rhythm of my breath. I  have a sense of myself as a living, breathing animal, conscious of moving through the world. My background in literature has me thinking how, from the quest of Homer’s Odyssey to the pilgrimage of Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, physical journeys have long stood in for life journeys.

Back on Route 6, the traffic is heavy and fast. I haven’t escaped modern life. Quite the opposite. Part of the teaching today is that I live with so many other people, all of us hurrying through a world dominated by noisy machines. But somehow, without trying, walking has brought me the time for reflection and peace that Guptill anticipated. Even as I notice the way my thoughts are effortlessly stringing into narratives, I suddenly become aware that my feet are still moving. The self-doubt and frustrations I suffered earlier have disappeared.

The next morning, Bryson Guptill joins me to walk the next segment, which includes the paved, coastal trail through Prince Edward Island National Park. Guptill is in his 70s and carries the smallest of backpacks. Even as the day becomes uncomfortably hot, he walks at a steady pace and drinks little water.

We fall into conversation about the Spanish Camino. Nearly 350,000 people walked it in 2019, including about 5,300 Canadians. “About 10 per cent are real pilgrims,” Guptill estimates. “Others are interested in the spiritual aspect of walking and contemplating. But most are doing it because something changed in their life. Maybe they retired or broke up with their partner. What I find remarkable about the Camino is that people do it a number of times. It becomes an obsession.”

Guptill sees practical links between the Spanish and P.E.I. walks. The Spanish Camino has an active group in Canada called the Canadian Company of Pilgrims that supports Canadians interested in the pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela, Spain. Membership is at 2,100, with chapters in most provinces. “I’ve given Zoom talks to five chapters. They’re mostly focused on the Camino de Santiago, but this would be a good training run.”

On the Island Walk Facebook page, I discovered a group of seven walkers from Ottawa, some from the local chapter of the Canadian Company of Pilgrims. Paul Hughes formed the group in the winter of 2020-21. Most are in their 60s. All are retired. Of the five women and two men, most have walked the Spanish Camino, some several times. One has walked the Portuguese Camino five times. Hughes himself has walked pilgrimages in Spain, Portugal, France and England. “We’d be in Europe, but we’re looking at the COVID numbers,” Hughes told me.

On September 5, 2021, they set out from Charlottetown with the intention of completing the entire circuit by mid-October. When I asked about motivations, he said, “There was an interest in P.E.I. as a recognized tourist area. There’s that sense of achievement in completing this. I don’t think there’s anybody in the group with a religious motivation.”