Before the omicron variant of the coronavirus made headlines as possibly the most contagious virus in history, but after the bedlam of March 2020 with its shutdowns and fears of the unknown, the summer of 2021 felt freeing.

We were vaccinated. We were desperate for travel and adventure. We spent that summer hiking the Camino de Santiago, an ancient pilgrimage that stretches from the western edge of France to a cathedral on the west coast of Spain. For the first time in over a year, we could breathe air without a mask, meet people without a Zoom call, and travel without the fear of spreading Covid-19. We wanted to reacquaint ourselves with nature. It was nature, after all, that seemed to want to kill us by producing a virus.

On the first day of our 33-day hike, my friend and I took our first steps into a thick fog that wrapped around the Pyrenees mountains we would be crossing. After eating sour grapes straight from a tree and wandering off the trail to buy local goat cheese, we came across a high school history teacher from Texas and two young Italian women who all seemed to be on the Camino for the same reasons that we were. We all felt, in one way or another, that the coronavirus pandemic had taken something essential from us, and that we could regain it in the real — not virtual — experience of the Camino.

That first day, we talked about how good it felt to be together with nothing between us except the fog and a gravelly trail. Who knew that we would feel a real sense of loss when, weeks later, we said goodbye to our new friends, realizing we would never see them again? Who knew that the pandemic that seemed to be ending would carry on interminably? Who knew how much freedom we would have that summer, and how little we would cherish it?

We certainly didn’t. It was the first day. We had our whole lives ahead of us.