Nature Doesn’t Solve Our Problems. It Changes Our Perspective.

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CrossRoads Conversations

When I first started hosting Camino de Santiago walking retreats in rural Gascony, the French Tuscany, I assumed I would be the one doing most of the teaching.

I couldn’t have been more wrong.

Over the years, dozens of people have arrived at my farmhouse carrying backpacks, walking boots, and lives that had gradually become much too heavy. Some were still working. Some had retired. Some were rebuilding after loss, illness or divorce. Others simply couldn’t explain why they felt so restless.

They thought they had come to walk a couple of sections of the Camino.

In the end, they became MY teachers. The CrossRoads Conversations blog post series explores what my guests have taught me over the last twenty-odd years.

It would make wonderful marketing if I could tell you that spending two days walking the Camino de Santiago will solve all your problems.

Unfortunately, it won’t.

You may still have a difficult boss, a challenging marriage, an uncertain retirement, grown-up children who insist on making their own questionable decisions, and a tax return waiting for you when you get home. The Camino, for all its many gifts, has yet to develop a talent for dealing with bureaucracy.

What it does, however, is something rather more subtle.

It changes how we see our problems.

Over the years, I’ve hosted dozens of people at my little farmhouse in southwest France. They come from all walks of life, although many have one thing in common: they have reached a point where life feels heavier than it used to. Some are standing at a crossroads. Others have recently lost someone they love, are adjusting to retirement, recovering from illness, or simply wondering when life became so relentlessly complicated.

And then they spend two or three days walking sections of the Camino de Santiago along the historic Le Puy route.

Alone.

People are often surprised when I tell them that I don’t walk with my guests. Surely, they ask, wouldn’t it be more supportive if I accompanied them?

Perhaps.

But over the years, I’ve discovered that people don’t usually need someone beside them telling them where to put their feet.

The red-and-white arrows do a perfectly good job of that.

What people often need is the freedom to notice their thoughts.

One of the unexpected things I’ve learned is that nature has an extraordinary way of restoring perspective.

Not because it whispers the answers.

Not because trees possess secret therapeutic powers.

And certainly not because vineyards spend their evenings discussing existential philosophy.

It happens because nature gently reminds us that we are part of something much bigger than the small, noisy world we’ve built around ourselves.

On the Camino, life becomes beautifully simple.

You walk.

You breathe.

You notice.

The warm scent of pine drifts through the air. Swallows skim low over fields of ripening wheat. Cicadas provide the soundtrack on hot summer afternoons. In autumn, the vineyards glow gold and crimson beneath impossibly wide Gascon skies. Even the silence has texture.

Without really trying, your attention shifts.

Yesterday, you were replaying an awkward conversation for the seventeenth time.

Today, you’re wondering how many people have walked this same path before you.

Yesterday your inbox felt like a national emergency.

Today, you’re watching a line of ants carrying crumbs many times their own size and thinking they seem remarkably organised.

Nature has an amusing way of exposing our exaggerated sense of urgency.

It quietly reminds us that the seasons continue regardless of whether we’ve answered every email.

The vines don’t panic because it’s already Tuesday.

The oak trees don’t compare themselves to the walnut trees.

The sunflowers don’t spend their mornings worrying whether they’re blooming too early in the season.

Only we humans seem to have perfected the art of exhausting ourselves by measuring our worth according to how busy we are.

I’ve noticed something else over the years.

Guests rarely return from a day’s walking announcing that they’ve solved every problem in their lives.

What they do say is remarkably consistent.

“I can see things more clearly.”

“I think I know what I need to do.”

“It doesn’t feel quite so overwhelming anymore.”

The problems haven’t disappeared.

Their perspective has changed.

And changing your perspective is a remarkably empowering activity.

It offers enough distance from everyday life for us to see patterns that were invisible when we were caught up in them.

Perhaps that’s why I never promise my guests that the Camino will change their lives.

Instead, I tell them something much simpler.

Walk.

Pay attention.

See what happens.

Because while nature may not solve our problems for us, it has an extraordinary gift for helping us remember that we are usually stronger, wiser and more resourceful than we believed when we first laced up our walking boots.

And sometimes, that change in perspective is all we need.

Could you do with seeing life from a different perspective?

If you think you—or someone you care about—might benefit from stepping away from the noise of everyday life and spending a few days walking the Camino de Santiago through the peaceful countryside of southwest France, I’d love to tell you more about my small-group Camino de Santiago walking retreats.

Sometimes the greatest change begins not with finding new answers, but with looking at old questions from a different perspective.

You can email me at MargarethaMontagu@gmail.com.