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They say friends come and go, but enemies accumulate like unread emails. As a journalist, I know this better than most. If you report the news honestly, you are going to be about as universally loved as an IRS tax audit.

While I get along great with most of the politicians and everyday folks I cover, there are a few who probably wish I’d take a long walk on a short, shark-infested pier.

Well, if you are one of those people, today is your lucky day. I’m taking the hint.

The long walk

As an imperfect Christian prone to asking, on occasion, “What Would Jesus Do?” I’ve decided to go the extra mile. Actually, I’m going about 525 extra miles. I am officially taking that hike – in Spain, of all places.

For the spiritually uninitiated, the Camino de Santiago (The Way of St. James) is a medieval pilgrimage network that converges in northwestern Spain at the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela, where tradition has it the bones of the apostle James are buried. Those who undertake this journey are known as pilgrims.

For more than a millennium, pilgrims from all over the world have walked these endless trails for spiritual growth, personal reflection or because they apparently love getting blisters. This week, I’m trading my desk chair for hiking poles to walk the Camino across Spain.

Naturally, I’m skipping the popular, crowded Camino Francés for the Camino del Norte, which is more rugged, more scenic and more likely to make me cry in public. It hugs Spain’s dramatic northern coastline for 430 miles before cutting inland to the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela.

This route is a brutal rollercoaster that involves huffing and puffing up mountains, traversing eucalyptus forests and plunging down steep inclines to reach beaches. According to Salt Lake City residents Dean and Tracy Pierose, who hiked the route last year, the elevation changes on the del Norte are the equivalent of climbing and descending Africa’s Mount Kilimanjaro.

As I walk the Northern Way, I’ll be staying in public albergues. These are budget-friendly hostels that are akin to Army-style barracks. I will be armed with a sleep mask and industrial-strength earplugs to blithely ignore the nightly, cacophonous symphony of snoring fellow pilgrims — a chorus that I presume sounds like a chainsaw convention.

Adding to the Del Norte’s romantic allure are the inevitable blisters, full-body aches, searing sun, torrential rain and the rumor of occasional bedbug infestations. I figure if I can survive a tiny army of blood-sucking hitchhikers in my mattress and a room full of competitive nocturnal snorers, the rest of the trek should be a breeze. Just between us, though, I plan on springing for a hotel room or two when the symphony gets too loud and a budget-friendly hotel beckons.

Michelin stars vs. pilgrim fare

Northern Spain is world-renowned for its cuisine. To put it in perspective, Utah just celebrated its very first Michelin-starred restaurant, the Monte in South Salt Lake. By comparison, the city of San Sebastian alone has eight.

Will I be dining there? Absolutely not.

I will be fueling my journey with café con leche (equal parts espresso and hot steamed milk), and high-calorie, heavy-starch “Pilgrim meals” at modest local bars that function like cafes or fast-food outlets. It won’t be fancy, but it is easy on the wallet, and grub is grub when you are enlisted in the ranks of marching masochists.

So, why am I doing this? If I am being completely honest, I don’t fully know.

Part of it might be a need to unplug from the 24/7 political news cycle. Putting one foot in front of the other sounds incredibly peaceful by comparison.

There also could be a strong element of childhood nostalgia at play. Back in the mid-1960s, I lived in Spain for three years as a boy when my father was stationed as a pilot at Torrejón Air Force Base. Returning to the Spanish landscape feels like a callback to those idyllic formative years, even if my childhood self would probably look at my 525-mile adult itinerary and think I was cruising for a bruising.

Combined with that nostalgia is the spiritual pull of the pilgrimage, even if the odds of the apostle James actually being buried in that cathedral are roughly on par with finding a working McDonald’s ice cream machine. After all, he was executed in Jerusalem, and the Camino legend says his body traveled to Spain in a crewless stone boat.

But more than anything, I feel called to walk the Camino. Maybe I’ll find out why when I finish the walk. Or maybe I’ll just be more clueless, significantly lighter in the wallet – and very sore and sweaty.

Either way, I need to finish packing. It is time to quit toeing the journalistic line. The Camino del Norte is afoot, and I have a million steps ahead of me.

It turns out my critics were right: I really do need to take a long walk. I’m just trading the short pier for the Spanish coast.

Wish me luck, and Buen Camino!

P.S. I’ll send a few Camino photos your way for future newsletters.