After four years in New York, a Brooklyn photographer decided to go bare bones.
For the past two summers, Michael George has left his friends, his family, and his Prospect Park apartment to walk over 1,000 miles on the Camino de Santiago, a Christian pilgrimage route that wanders through southern France and northern Spain.
The urbanite-turned-pilgrim took with him a 14-pound backpack filled with just the essentials—two pairs of everything he needed to wear, a bar of Dr. Browner’s soap, a single utensil that could serve as knife, fork, and spoon. He also took his camera.
“I think I was just trying to sort out my career, and see if New York was the right place for me,” the Fort Myers, Fla. transplant and NYU grad told The News. “I also wanted to see where I was spiritually in my life. I had never really explored religion properly.”
Most of the people he met along the ancient path were in transition, too.
His fellow pilgrims were divorcees, or people who were fired from their jobs. Some had recently lost a loved one or gotten restless at home. People from all walks of life and from many different nations converged on the Camino as they made their way towards the final destination—the tomb of the apostle St. James in the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela in northwest Spain.
Pilgrimages were an important religious rite for medieval Europeans who sought to do penance for their sins. But they have recently been gaining in popularity. Over 200,000 pilgrims receieved certificates of completion from the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela in 2013.
At first, the miles of walking took a toll on George’s ankles and Achilles tendon. Eventually, he started averaging about 15 miles per day, passing through through old villages that haven’t changed for hundreds of years.
He wasn’t brought up in a very religious home, but he was searching for something bigger.
“I was always dismissive of the spiritual side of myself,” George said.“I was wary of organized religions when I was growing up, because I was gay—how I could support an institution that’s against something that’s inherent to me?”
But no one asked to see his religious qualifications on the Camino. Along the way he would participate in pilgrim’s masses. At the end of the route, he took communion in the Cathedral, along with hundreds of other pilgrims.
“I had never experienced a community like that,” George said. “So I didn’t realize how much of a spiritual person I am. Whenever you feel that energy, that spirit of humanity coming together, you feel closer to God or the greater spirit or the world.”
The first trip in 2012 was for himself, but George started a Kickstarter fund to go back in 2013 and properly document the journey. “Portrait of a Pilgrim” is a compilation of his photos and essays.
After two months of living out of a backpack, George said he came back to his apartment, stared at his room, and wondered how he could have ever needed a room full of things.
One of the priests he met along the Camino, Father Pius, summed it up best:
“Often it is the steady moving, foot-by-foot, that stamps up hidden wounds left behind by heavy blows in the past–bringing them into clear awareness, and the pilgrim understands that he/she has to let go.”
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