A reflective essay examining the gap between ultralight packing advice and emotional reality, exploring the small objects pilgrims carry that serve no practical
Every packing list I've ever written has been a lie. Not because the gear recommendations were wrong—my suggestions for base layers and blister kits remain sound—but because they never account for the stone from my grandmother's garden sitting at the bottom of my pack, adding absolutely nothing to my physical preparedness and approximately 47 grams to my load.
I've walked the Camino Francés six times now. The Via Podiensis twice, once continuing all the way to Santiago. The Norte. Both the coastal and inland Portuguese routes, starting from Lisbon. And Finisterre five times, because apparently I can't stop walking toward the edge of the world. Across all those kilometers, through all those evolving packing strategies and ultralight conversions, one truth has become undeniable: the things that matter most are often the things that matter least.
At least by any rational measure.
I sent home a book my father had given me before I left—a pocket-sized collection of Mary Oliver poems with his handwriting in the margins. It weighed maybe 120 grams. I could justify a headlamp, two pairs of socks, a rain jacket with a questionable smell by week two. But poetry? Poetry had no function.
I regretted it by Roncesvalles.
There's something particularly cruel about ultralight culture when applied to pilgrimage. Backpacking through the wilderness is one thing—you're optimizing for survival and mobility. But the Camino isn't really about survival. It's about transformation. And transformation, as it turns out, often requires objects that can't be justified on a spreadsheet.
A German engineer named Klaus showed me a deflated football. Not a regulation ball, but one of those cheap ones you buy at rest stops, the kind that barely survived his daughter's fourth birthday party. She'd asked him to carry it "to the end of the world" and then bring it back. He'd walked from Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port with this crumpled bit of plastic in his pack, and he wasn't about to explain to a four-year-old why her father failed at such a simple request.
A woman from São Paulo carried her late husband's watch. It didn't work—hadn't for years—and she had no intention of fixing it. But she couldn't imagine reaching the cathedral without him, without some part of him, making the journey too.
An Irish lad with sunburned shoulders and an impressive collection of blisters showed me a small wooden carving of a dog. Not his dog. A dog that had belonged to his neighbor, an elderly man who'd wanted to walk the Camino and never did. The neighbor gave him the carving. "Take Biscuit for me," he'd said. And so there was Biscuit, making his way across Spain in a ziplock bag.
None of these items could be defended in a packing forum. All of them made perfect sense.
On my second walk along the Via Podiensis, somewhere between Conques and Cahors, I picked up a small piece of red glass from beside the path. It might have been from a broken taillight, or a wine bottle, or something older and more mysterious. In the afternoon light, it glowed like a captured sunset. I slipped it into my pocket and carried it to Santiago—then to Finisterre, where I should have thrown it into the sea with appropriate ceremony. Instead, I kept it. It sits on my desk now, connecting me to a random French afternoon when the light was perfect and I needed nothing more than my own footsteps.
On the Norte, that gorgeous brutal route along the Cantabrian coast, a hospitalera in Santillana del Mar gave me a small scallop shell pendant. Not the typical pilgrim shell—this was barely bigger than a thumbnail, delicate and slightly chipped. She said it had belonged to her mother, who had wanted to walk the Camino but had passed away before she could. "Maybe you can take her with you," she said. I did. I still do.
Walking the Portuguese Coastal route from Porto, I found a perfectly round stone on the beach near Viana do Castelo. It was the exact color of my daughter's eyes. I'm not a superstitious person, and I don't believe rocks carry souls or energy or any mystical properties. But I believe in connection, in the way objects can hold meaning we choose to give them. That stone has been to Finisterre twice since then.
I've become fairly minimalist with my physical gear over the years. A simple 40-liter pack instead of the 65-liter monster I lugged on my first walk. One pair of trail runners rather than the hiking boots and sandals combo. Merino wool everything because it genuinely doesn't smell after a week (mostly). I can justify these choices. They make rational sense.
But rationality only takes you so far. And when you're walking 800 kilometers—or 1,500 if you're starting from Le Puy—you need more than rational justification to get you through the meseta, through the rain days, through the morning when your body simply refuses to cooperate and you can't remember why you thought this was a good idea.
Those useless objects become talismans. Not in a magical sense—I'm not suggesting Klaus's deflated football protected him from blisters or that my red glass fragment summoned good weather. But in the psychological sense, in the sense that matters: they reminded us why we were walking, who we were walking for, what we were carrying beyond the physical weight on our backs.
On my fourth Francés, I walked after my mother's death. I didn't bring anything of hers—no jewelry, no photographs, no physical memento. I told myself I was being practical. Ultralight. Emotionally efficient.
Instead, I carried her in every conversation, every silence, every sunset I couldn't share with her. I carried her in the way I noticed the flowers she would have named, the birds she would have identified, the local wines she would have insisted on sampling. I carried her in the absence of carrying her.
It was a rookie mistake, thinking I could leave grief behind by leaving objects behind. You can ship a book home. You cannot ship sorrow.
By the time I reached the Cruz de Ferro—that famous iron cross where pilgrims leave stones—I had nothing to put down. Everyone around me was pulling rocks from their packs, some the size of fists, some small as marbles, each representing something they wanted to release. I stood there empty-handed, surrounded by thousands of stones left by pilgrims across centuries, and realized my mother wasn't a burden I wanted to set down.
She wasn't weight. She was ballast.
The photograph. The letter. The shell your grandmother found on a beach fifty years ago. The ridiculous stuffed animal your kid insisted would protect you from bad dreams. The medal, the stone, the ticket stub, the dried flower that will probably disintegrate by Pamplona but somehow needs to make the journey.
Bring it even if it makes no sense. Especially if it makes no sense.
Go in knowing that some weight serves purpose beyond the physical. That pilgrimage is as much about what you carry as where you're going. That ultralight ideology, whilst useful for your sleeping pad and rain gear, has no business dictating what your heart needs for 800 kilometers.
My Sea to Summit compression sack holds my merino layers with ruthless efficiency. But at the bottom, beneath the technical fabrics and the carefully curated minimalism, there's always something else. The red glass. The tiny shell. A new stone for someone who needs to travel.
If you're uncertain about what to bring or what to leave, you can always plan your Camino and talk through the specifics. And if you're struggling with what I've struggled with—the gap between practical preparation and emotional reality—you can ask about carrying grief on the Camino.
I think about that a lot. The things that weigh on us—loss, uncertainty, the question of what our life means—those arrive unbidden. But what we carry, physically and symbolically, that's a choice. A deliberate act of saying: this matters enough to walk with.
When I see pilgrims pull impractical, ridiculous, beautiful objects from their packs, I no longer think they've failed at ultralight optimization. I think they've understood something essential: that pilgrimage isn't about the lightest possible load. It's about the most meaningful possible journey.
And meaning, as it turns out, has weight.
My grandmother's garden stone is in my pack right now, as I prepare for my seventh Francés. 47 grams of pure geological pointlessness. The most essential thing I own.
---
Try asking My Camino Guide:
- What personal items do pilgrims typically bring that aren't on packing lists?
- How do I decide what to pack for an emotional or memorial Camino?
- What happens at the Cruz de Ferro and do I need to bring a stone?
I've walked the Camino Francés six times now. The Via Podiensis twice, once continuing all the way to Santiago. The Norte. Both the coastal and inland Portuguese routes, starting from Lisbon. And Finisterre five times, because apparently I can't stop walking toward the edge of the world. Across all those kilometers, through all those evolving packing strategies and ultralight conversions, one truth has become undeniable: the things that matter most are often the things that matter least.
At least by any rational measure.
The Weight of Worthlessness
My first Camino, I was ruthless. I'd read every forum post, watched every YouTube video, absorbed the collective wisdom of a thousand ultralight evangelists. Cut the handle off your toothbrush. Ship your sleeping bag home. If it doesn't serve a purpose, it doesn't deserve passage.I sent home a book my father had given me before I left—a pocket-sized collection of Mary Oliver poems with his handwriting in the margins. It weighed maybe 120 grams. I could justify a headlamp, two pairs of socks, a rain jacket with a questionable smell by week two. But poetry? Poetry had no function.
I regretted it by Roncesvalles.
There's something particularly cruel about ultralight culture when applied to pilgrimage. Backpacking through the wilderness is one thing—you're optimizing for survival and mobility. But the Camino isn't really about survival. It's about transformation. And transformation, as it turns out, often requires objects that can't be justified on a spreadsheet.
What Pilgrims Actually Carry
In the municipal albergue in Burgos on my third Francés—the one where the snoring reached architectural proportions around 2 AM—I started asking. Just casually, over instant coffee and stale magdalenas. What did people bring that they knew they shouldn't? What dead weight couldn't they leave behind?A German engineer named Klaus showed me a deflated football. Not a regulation ball, but one of those cheap ones you buy at rest stops, the kind that barely survived his daughter's fourth birthday party. She'd asked him to carry it "to the end of the world" and then bring it back. He'd walked from Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port with this crumpled bit of plastic in his pack, and he wasn't about to explain to a four-year-old why her father failed at such a simple request.
A woman from São Paulo carried her late husband's watch. It didn't work—hadn't for years—and she had no intention of fixing it. But she couldn't imagine reaching the cathedral without him, without some part of him, making the journey too.
An Irish lad with sunburned shoulders and an impressive collection of blisters showed me a small wooden carving of a dog. Not his dog. A dog that had belonged to his neighbor, an elderly man who'd wanted to walk the Camino and never did. The neighbor gave him the carving. "Take Biscuit for me," he'd said. And so there was Biscuit, making his way across Spain in a ziplock bag.
None of these items could be defended in a packing forum. All of them made perfect sense.
The Objects That Found Me
I didn't set out to become a collector of sacred junk. It happened gradually, the way most meaningful things do.On my second walk along the Via Podiensis, somewhere between Conques and Cahors, I picked up a small piece of red glass from beside the path. It might have been from a broken taillight, or a wine bottle, or something older and more mysterious. In the afternoon light, it glowed like a captured sunset. I slipped it into my pocket and carried it to Santiago—then to Finisterre, where I should have thrown it into the sea with appropriate ceremony. Instead, I kept it. It sits on my desk now, connecting me to a random French afternoon when the light was perfect and I needed nothing more than my own footsteps.
On the Norte, that gorgeous brutal route along the Cantabrian coast, a hospitalera in Santillana del Mar gave me a small scallop shell pendant. Not the typical pilgrim shell—this was barely bigger than a thumbnail, delicate and slightly chipped. She said it had belonged to her mother, who had wanted to walk the Camino but had passed away before she could. "Maybe you can take her with you," she said. I did. I still do.
Walking the Portuguese Coastal route from Porto, I found a perfectly round stone on the beach near Viana do Castelo. It was the exact color of my daughter's eyes. I'm not a superstitious person, and I don't believe rocks carry souls or energy or any mystical properties. But I believe in connection, in the way objects can hold meaning we choose to give them. That stone has been to Finisterre twice since then.
The Ultralight Myth We Tell Ourselves
Here's what the packing lists never mention: pilgrimage isn't really about efficiency. It's about carrying what needs to be carried—and sometimes that's grief, sometimes it's hope, sometimes it's a deflated football for your four-year-old.I've become fairly minimalist with my physical gear over the years. A simple 40-liter pack instead of the 65-liter monster I lugged on my first walk. One pair of trail runners rather than the hiking boots and sandals combo. Merino wool everything because it genuinely doesn't smell after a week (mostly). I can justify these choices. They make rational sense.
But rationality only takes you so far. And when you're walking 800 kilometers—or 1,500 if you're starting from Le Puy—you need more than rational justification to get you through the meseta, through the rain days, through the morning when your body simply refuses to cooperate and you can't remember why you thought this was a good idea.
Those useless objects become talismans. Not in a magical sense—I'm not suggesting Klaus's deflated football protected him from blisters or that my red glass fragment summoned good weather. But in the psychological sense, in the sense that matters: they reminded us why we were walking, who we were walking for, what we were carrying beyond the physical weight on our backs.
The Things That Don't Fit in Your Pack
The heaviest thing I've ever carried on the Camino weighed nothing at all.On my fourth Francés, I walked after my mother's death. I didn't bring anything of hers—no jewelry, no photographs, no physical memento. I told myself I was being practical. Ultralight. Emotionally efficient.
Instead, I carried her in every conversation, every silence, every sunset I couldn't share with her. I carried her in the way I noticed the flowers she would have named, the birds she would have identified, the local wines she would have insisted on sampling. I carried her in the absence of carrying her.
It was a rookie mistake, thinking I could leave grief behind by leaving objects behind. You can ship a book home. You cannot ship sorrow.
By the time I reached the Cruz de Ferro—that famous iron cross where pilgrims leave stones—I had nothing to put down. Everyone around me was pulling rocks from their packs, some the size of fists, some small as marbles, each representing something they wanted to release. I stood there empty-handed, surrounded by thousands of stones left by pilgrims across centuries, and realized my mother wasn't a burden I wanted to set down.
She wasn't weight. She was ballast.
What I Would Highly Suggest
If you're preparing for your own Camino, reading through packing lists and weighing your gear on a kitchen scale (I've done it, don't judge), here's my honest advice: bring the thing.The photograph. The letter. The shell your grandmother found on a beach fifty years ago. The ridiculous stuffed animal your kid insisted would protect you from bad dreams. The medal, the stone, the ticket stub, the dried flower that will probably disintegrate by Pamplona but somehow needs to make the journey.
Bring it even if it makes no sense. Especially if it makes no sense.
Go in knowing that some weight serves purpose beyond the physical. That pilgrimage is as much about what you carry as where you're going. That ultralight ideology, whilst useful for your sleeping pad and rain gear, has no business dictating what your heart needs for 800 kilometers.
My Sea to Summit compression sack holds my merino layers with ruthless efficiency. But at the bottom, beneath the technical fabrics and the carefully curated minimalism, there's always something else. The red glass. The tiny shell. A new stone for someone who needs to travel.
If you're uncertain about what to bring or what to leave, you can always plan your Camino and talk through the specifics. And if you're struggling with what I've struggled with—the gap between practical preparation and emotional reality—you can ask about carrying grief on the Camino.
The Weight We Choose
There's a phrase I heard once in a café in Estella, from an Italian woman on her seventh Camino: "We don't choose what weighs on us, but we choose what we carry."I think about that a lot. The things that weigh on us—loss, uncertainty, the question of what our life means—those arrive unbidden. But what we carry, physically and symbolically, that's a choice. A deliberate act of saying: this matters enough to walk with.
When I see pilgrims pull impractical, ridiculous, beautiful objects from their packs, I no longer think they've failed at ultralight optimization. I think they've understood something essential: that pilgrimage isn't about the lightest possible load. It's about the most meaningful possible journey.
And meaning, as it turns out, has weight.
My grandmother's garden stone is in my pack right now, as I prepare for my seventh Francés. 47 grams of pure geological pointlessness. The most essential thing I own.
---
Try asking My Camino Guide:
- What personal items do pilgrims typically bring that aren't on packing lists?
- How do I decide what to pack for an emotional or memorial Camino?
- What happens at the Cruz de Ferro and do I need to bring a stone?
