Two Million Steps: Band-Aids, Cocktails, and Finding Peace Along Spain's Camino de Santiago

Life is good for Patrick DeVaney. He has a loving family, a successful career, and good friends. He is fortunate in many ways, and he knows it. But Pat also knows one other thing. Negativity had seized him; his life’s glass always seemed half empty.

Despite the blessings of a prosperous life, Pat lives with a sense of dissatisfaction. He’s haunted by a feeling of purposelessness for which he cannot seem to find a solution. When a fateful phone call puts Pat on the proverbial edge, he knows he needs answers even if he doesn’t know the questions.

Pat recalls hearing of the Camino de Santiago—the five-hundred-mile spiritual path through France and Spain that ends at the traditional burial site of James the Apostle. In his state of unrest and longing, Pat makes the bold decision to embark upon the ancient pilgrimage on foot.

Two Million Steps captures Pat’s incredible journey of self-discovery along his trek through Europe and the places, people, and events he encounters along the way. For Pat, physical pain becomes a badge of honor, and every step he takes leads him closer to healing his soul and to becoming a new person.

Patrick DeVaney is a native of Ticonderoga, New York, and has spent much of his life in Albany, where he presently works in the residential real estate industry. He and his wife, Judy, have two sons.

Since undertaking the Camino de Santiago reflected in Two Million Steps, DeVaney has completed four Caminos, walking more than two thousand miles.