Sigma Alpha Iota

12 Summer 2023 • sai-national.org SAI Philanries, Inc. By Megan Combs G raduating from college during a global pandemic was a whirlwind. Struggling to find a job in my industry that was still reeling from the effects of a shutdown, with Broadway theaters still locked tightly shut, I was le wondering what were the right steps to take when everything looked completely different than the textbooks and lectures I had attended at school. e world, my industry, and my dream city were all foreign to me and navigating it was exhausting. I got a summer job in Cape Cod with the College Light Opera Company, moved to New York City in the fall to work in the classical music industry, and prepared myself for the next big adventure. Dr. Jeffrey Francom had announced in 2020 that he was taking a group of Crane School of Music students to hike the Camino de Santiago in Spain, 500 miles from the end of the Pyrenees Mountains in France across the northern part of Spain. With multiple postponements, this adventure of a lifetime was finally cleared for summer of 2022. I quit my job, packed my Osprey backpack, put on my Altra Lone Peak sneakers, and set out for a spiritual, life-altering journey through music. One would think you would train for something this big: six weeks spent traversing through differing terrain, such as mountains, deserts, loose rock and stone, and when you were lucky, flat land or pavement. Some days we only walked about eight miles and others were closer to seventeen. Carrying everything on our back, we walked for four plus hours to get to our next destination, with day one being the true test of how well I prepared for the journey aer a long, cold, wet, ten hour day. I truly questioned what I had gotten myself into. We got to the Albergue de Peregrinos in Roncesvalles and my feet HURT. I was in pain, I was soaked through from the amount of precipitation we endured all day, I was cold, and all I wanted was a nice warm meal and a warm bed to fall asleep in. Aer taking our shoes off at the entrance of this albergue (hostel), we had to set them on shoe racks to dry and walk across the cobblestone floor to the stairs that would bring us to the open room with all of the bunk beds. To say the cobblestone floor killed my already aching feet would be an understatement, and getting into my sleeping sac and still feeling freezing le me sitting there wondering how I would ever survive the next 38 days of the journey. e next morning showed me just what I needed to survive. e following morning, we woke up bright and early to start our trek to Zubiri, an almost 14 mile day. I took note of the sign that said "Santiago de Compostela: 790" and thought about how I felt when we arrived at the albergue the night before. I had to push the thought out of my mind, knowing that no amount of worry would help me keep my feet going. Before heading towards the sign, we stopped to sing in the Iglesia de Santiago, built in the 13th century. is would be the first of many impromptu performances our group of 19 would take part in over the next month. We were all exhausted, in pain, worried for the day ahead of us, and had barely practiced our music together as a group. is performance was the first of many outlets for us, as well as for other pilgrims, to feel that exhaustion, pain, and worry through the beautiful community we created and grew throughout our Camino A Musical Journey Through Spain

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