#53: Traveling for Research: A Field Report

Hello friends,

Late last night, I returned to Phoenix after a month of researching and hiking and researching-while-hiking in Europe, a trip that ended in a two-day travel experience that included a transatlantic flight that turned back to London halfway across the ocean due to engine trouble. (My backpack is still in the UK… somewhere.) But all’s well that ends well, and I’m happy to be home and sitting at my own desk, writing to you again.

In June, I wrote a newsletter on the research methods I’ve accrued over the years, and this month I thought I’d follow that up with some reflections on what worked for me on this trip. For context, I’ve been working for a little more than a year on a novel based partly on medieval practices of pilgrimage and penance (among other things), which led to me deciding to walk the Primitivo route of the Camino de Santiago across Spain, starting in Oviedo and ending about 200 miles away in Santiago de Compostela. (My novel isn’t about this particular pilgrimage, but its context has some useful-to-me analogues that made it a good choice for my research.) I walked the pilgrimage solo, then met my girlfriend in the Alps to walk the Tour du Mont Blanc route through France, Italy, and Switzerland, which covered another 115 miles or so of much tougher terrain. I carried a 25-pound backpack every day, wore the same two or three outfits nonstop for a month, and slept primarily in alburgue dorms (on the Camino) and in various refuges, refugios, and hostels (in the Alps), with occasional private rooms sprinkled in as a break from communal living.

Both treks were fantastic experiences, each better than I expected but in different ways, and I’ve returned home with a new outline for my novel, tons of new details to fuel scenes and dialogues, in addition to my personal experience of pilgrimage and long-distance travel on foot. I have no doubt that I’ll write a better book for having taking this trip, and I can’t wait to get back to work on it. (Tomorrow!) Here’s some of what I learned during my month of research-driven travel:

Do Advance Research So It Pays Off in the Field

I’ve been researching various topics related to my novel-in-progress