Walking with Andrew McCarthy

 

Happy Launch Day to Andrew McCarthy and WALKING WITH SAM

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An intimate, funny, and poignant travel memoir following New York Times bestselling author and actor Andrew McCarthy as he walks the Camino de Santiago with his son Sam.

Enjoy our interview:

Lisa Niver:

Hello. I’m so excited and honored to be here today with author and actor and incredible travel writer, Andrew McCarthy. Hi, Andrew.

Andrew McCarthy:

Thanks very much.

Lisa Niver:

I so enjoyed being at the travel show with you and listening to you talk about your new book. Congratulations.

Andrew McCarthy:

Thanks very much. Thank you.

Lisa Niver:

Tell us a little bit about your brand-new book because if I’m right, this is book number four?

Andrew McCarthy:

It is book number four. It’s called Walking With Sam: A Father, A Son, and Five Hundred Miles Across Spain. It’s a walk I took across the old Camino de Santiago in northern Spain, and it was a walk I’d done first 25 years earlier and a real life-changing experience for me when I did that. I had a moment, a white light experience in the middle of a field of wheat, a sobbing break down where I realized how much fear had dominated my life. I never knew fear was even a factor in my life until that moment of its first absence, and there was suddenly space and I felt like myself.

My wife is Irish, she has all these good Irish sayings, and one of them is, I felt like myself from the toes up, and in that field of wheat I felt like myself from the toes up in a very real way and a way I hadn’t before, and that changed my life. It started me traveling the world, it’s what led to me becoming a travel writer.

That first journey was a real life changer for me and the Camino was something I’d always wanted to do again. And my son was 19 and beginning his own life out in the world, and I didn’t want our relationship to end. When I was 17 I left home and my relationship in essence ended with my dad and that was one of the larger regrets of my life, and I didn’t want that to happen.

So, it was a journey by trying to rewrite how our relationship is cast as opposed to parent/child into sort of adults, seeing each other for who we really are as opposed to seeing the dynamic that exists between parent and child. It was a profound experience. I knew the first time it was so profound, I thought something might happen the second time as well, and we weren’t let down. The Camino has a way of doing that. The Camino, if you just keep walking has a way of sort of teaching you what needs to be taught.

Lisa Niver:

The Camino is a pilgrimage route. How did it get started? And why do people do these walking journeys?

Andrew McCarthy:

Why do people walk is a whole other conversation and a good one, but the Camino started in the eighth century. The Catholic Church said that the bones of the Apostle St James had been discovered in the farther western-most reach of the Iberian Peninsula and anybody who marched there would get half their time in purgatory knocked off. But really what it might have been more about was real estate because Islam had taken over Spain and the Catholic Church wanted it back and so, they said, while you’re walking across Spain to get your almighty soul purged and cleaned, kick out those damn Moors.

It was about the Christian reconquest of Spain and that’s what the beginning of the crusades and the Knights of Templar and all that good, bloody, gory history. And it’s still a religious pilgrimage, although most people now don’t walk it for that particular reason, and even the Catholic Church has walked back entirely that the bones of St James are there or that James was ever even in Spain, they’ve kind of fessed up to that.

So, it’s a pilgrimage route that people have walked since then, and millions and millions of people have walked it over the centuries. It fell out of favor after the reconquest. During the renaissance and all that, very few people made the walk. But early in the 20th century or mid-20th century it started to gain popularity again because…there were just a couple priests, actually, along the way that tried to reintroduce the route and they succeeded.

It’s an amazing journey, and walking really has a profound effect on people. Particularly in our culture now where we walk so little and don’t spend the time. Because when you’re walking the Camino, all you’re doing is walking. You’re spending seven, eight hours a day walking and you’re finding food and finding shelter, which is not difficult to do on the Camino. It’s not like you’re on the Appalachian Trail where you put your whole world in your pack and you have to really learn how to survive. The Camino, you’re just walking, and there’s something to that.

And there’s something about flowing into the current of millions of people who over centuries have done the same.

Lisa Niver:

I agree. I haven’t walked that yet although I’d like to, but I did a couple of eight-day treks in Nepal and there is something about being so focused on walking from one place to the next.

Andrew McCarthy:

You don’t even have to focus, you just have to just keep going. You have some big agendas for things that are going to happen and you’re going to have these big experiences, and the walk’s just going to do what it’s going to do to you. A lot of people walk just the last week or so of the Camino and I always say, that’s fine, that’s great, that’s all you can get off from work or if that’s all you want to do, that’s fine, but the gold is in the attrition that happens over a long period of time, over four or five weeks of walking and my experience is that the magic is in the exhaustion.

Lisa Niver:

You referenced that the walking is its own conversation. So, you recently had an amazing piece in The New York Times about the walking as the worst-kept secret.

Andrew McCarthy:

The Camino, the first time I did it, it really made me realize that I always looked at walking as sort of the slowest way to get anywhere, and over time I’ve come to realize that walking may actually be the event itself. There’s much documentation of many more intelligent people than me about how profound walking is. All that sort of hamster wheel stuff that goes on in our brains all the time just gets burned off and we drop home to ourselves, and it’s well documented that they fuel creativity. You could be home at your computer all morning pounding away and you go out for a walk and suddenly oh, that’s the answer, you know?

And that doesn’t happen by accident, and that happy accident happens over and over and over when you walk. We were born to walk, we were born to move at a walking pace. The sense of rhythm that happens in step after step I think is appropriate to the mind and the mind wants that and craves that, and the emotions want that and crave that.

So, I find walking often highly undervalued.

Lisa Niver:

During this time of the COVID coaster, you reference that people have had a lot of fears come back and a lot of alienation, and you mentioned that specifically in your talk in New York that it’s been a really hard time for people. I took a meditation class at UCLA and they kept talking about walking meditation. There is something very innate in the walking.

Andrew McCarthy:

Just going out for a good walk for a half hour changes the way you feel. Who’s famous line, if you’re in a bad mood go for a walk. If you’re still in a bad mood go for another walk. think it’s certainly better than going to sit and have a cup of coffee.

Lisa Niver:

There’s also something about repairing, or evolving your relationship with your son to an adult relationship. Early on in your book he talks about he’s not going to be on TikTok any more, and there’s other issues about finding food and learning to speak Spanish. Can you talk more about what it does for families to have this time to connect?

Andrew McCarthy:

One of the greatest luxuries, probably the greatest luxury you can have with an adult child is time. My relationship at home is –hey, Sammy, you want to go get some sushi? Okay, see you later. And so, to just have that time not feeling the need to problem solve, advise, all those boring parent things that kids don’t really want from us, to just walk beside and listen, and to just be able to say at times I don’t know.

The second day of the walk Sam said to me, what’s the point of this F-ing walk, and he didn’t say F-ing. And on the last day he said, Dad, that’s the only 10 out of 10 thing I’ve ever done in my life. I just had to keep him walking.

On the third or fourth day he said, is there an airport in Pamplona? But once he settled, I knew he would have a big experience, and I didn’t have to curate it, all I had to do was walk beside him. That’s one of the things we think we need to do as parents is curate our children’s experience in such a degree, and I trusted the walk enough having done it and having known its profound effects on me that I just kept walking beside him. My son was processing a lot of stuff in his life at the time and if you sit him down for a chat you’re not going to get very far, but you get him moving, eventually it all comes out.

We’d start the day walking and I would always tell myself, don’t speak, just walk. And whether it took 5 minutes or 45 minutes eventually it took.

It’s a real privilege as a parent to be able to receive our kids. At the end of the walk when he came marching up in Finisterre, I just stood there. I took a taxi to the end to receive him and what a beautiful thing that he let me receive him. People have to allow you to receive them and that’s a beautiful thing.

Lisa Niver:

It is a beautiful thing and I wonder if there’s a piece of that that comes from also your acting background, about stepping into different roles. Having been an actor for so many decades and being able to see things from different perspectives. Do you think that informs any of that? I loved all your movies and you’ve done so many interesting roles.

Andrew McCarthy:

I don’t know that it does, actually. It’d be a nice link-up to make, but I’m not sure that they really do. I think it’s just trying to be present and awake in your life, and being able to be observant to our loved ones and actually see them. See them, that’s all any of us want, right? See me, see me. But I don’t know that has anything to do with acting.

Lisa Niver:

One thing I did love, I have been watching The Resident, and I love your character on The Resident. I love that so many of the characters on The Resident have these very grand arcs, they’re very troubled and then they chang. But I loved when your character got to talk about instead of going to rehab that he was walking in Spain. I thought that was brilliant.

Andrew McCarthy:

That was a funny coincidence. IThey didn’t know I’d walked the Camino at all and that was just a total coincidence. I enjoyed doing that show. I hadn’t acted in about 15 years, I’d been directing and travel writing. That’s just something that came up and I really enjoyed doing it.

I started acting at 15 and it saved my life when I was a young guy. I really located myself in acting and so, to go back to it again was kind of like breathing to me in a very real way. It’s like that joke about the two fish swimming in the water and one swims by the other and says, morning, ain’t the water fine today? And the other one says, what water?

That’s what I felt when I was acting. I thought– oh, there I am. This is who I am and to a very real degree it is.

Lisa Niver:

I really, really enjoyed you in that show, just like I really enjoyed your talk at the Travel Show. Can you tell us about the Magic Road in Ireland and how your travels, and leaning into being present really changed your life. You went golfing and everything changed….

Andrew McCarthy:

In Ireland, they call it the Magic Road. It defies gravity, and that your car will roll uphill. I did an article for a magazine about Ireland and they said — we need some online content. Can you make a video? And I said sure, about what? And they said oh, just something Irish-y.

I became successful as a travel writer because of my acting experience, I knew to tell a story. Don’t sell a destination, tell a story, and that’s what’s important. And because you tell stories, people lean forward and they’re engaged and they’re interested.

So, when they wanted something Irish-y –I thought –Ireland is full of leprechauns and magic and all this Irish-y kind of stuff so, what’s a physical manifestation of that? That would be the Magic Road which is a story you can tell of searching for the Magic Road because quest stories, as you know, always work very well.

So, I went looking for the Magic Road and found it because it’s always good to find something if you’re questing in the story, and it was particularly Irish-y. We encountered a lot of Irish characters and asked everyone I met, have you heard of the Magic Road. It was a nice story to capture the theme of Irish-y-ness.

The Magic Road in Ireland

Andrew McCarthy – The Magic Road Intro from Goodman Speaker Management on Vimeo.

And Ireland’s great. I love Ireland. I have a home there and my wife’s Irish and we’ve been going for decades now so, I have a great affection for Ireland. It’s one of the few places in the world that’s exactly like what you think it’s going to be, and particularly when you get out in the country. The city does become quite sophisticated and quite liberal thinking, but the country is still just what you think it is in Ireland.

Lisa Niver:

I love Ireland. I’m just back from being in Ireland and I got to go to the north and I walked a hawk. There’s so many magical things about Ireland, and I agree with you, I’ve heard you say that we learn when we travel that people are just like us. Could you talk about how travel is our best hope for the world.

Andrew McCarthy:

I do feel that. Mark Twain said– travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness. My soap box is that I am proud to be American, I wouldn’t want to be anything but American, I love living in America, but I think America in many ways is a very, very fearful place and we make a lot of our decisions based in fear. Not all my fearful decisions have been bad but most of my bad decisions have been based in fear. I think that if Americans got out…how many of us have passports, what’s it, 38 percent, something like that, and half of us have used them? I mean, that’s an appalling number.

I think if Americans got out into the world they would realize that the world is a place that embraces us and people love Americans in the world and the world is a much safer place than we’ve been led to believe. Because of political agendas here we’ve been led to demonize people, and that just isn’t the case. You go out in the world and you really see, so many people who are able to separate our government from the people which we don’t seem to be able to do as Americans very well. People often say, I don’t really like your government but Americans are wonderful. They’re kind, they’re open hearted, they tip well, they’re polite, and people receive Americans in a wonderful way.

There’s nothing better than traveling with children because traveling with children basically says you’re making yourself very vulnerable and you’re saying, receive me, receive me.

The most important thing we can do is ask for help, on the road and at home, because it makes us right sized. When you go somewhere and you ask for help, nothing more powerful than that. Being vulnerable is a strength, not a weakness. If Americans went out and saw the world they’d come back and say, it’s not what I thought, and they tell two people and they tell two people and they tell two people, and we change.

We’re not going to change the world by governments and things like that, but by personal experience of going out there, and I do, I like to say that I’m going to change the world one travel story at a time because if they write a story and someone gets up off their couch and goes when they hadn’t been going before and that inspires them to do that, then I’ve got a good day’s work.

Lisa Niver:

I think that’s really beautiful and really important that we do all need to remember to ask for help, and to lean into the people around us. It’s so beautiful that you were able to take this 500-mile journey with your 19 year old son. And your younger son had a comment about how the book could have been better…

Andrew McCarthy:

When the books arrived, my young son picked it up and started reading it, and closed it and said, would have been better if it was about me. So, another critic has spoken.

Lisa Niver:

Do you think that it’s something you might do with your other children some day?

Andrew McCarthy:

If they wanted to, I’d love to. Like we said, traveling with kids is creating citizens of the world, the best gift we can give them.

Lisa Niver:

That’s so beautiful, and before you go, tell people how can they find you. Are you more an Instagram-er, or where can people look you up?

Andrew McCarthy:

I’m andrewmccarthy.com so, I’m on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook and at andrewtmccarthy.

Lisa Niver:

Tell people where your book is available, how they can get their own copy, and feel like they are walking with you and your son.

Andrew McCarthy:

Hopefully that is the feeling that’s created, that you’rewalking step for step right along across the country with us without breaking a sweat.

Lisa Niver:

Walking With Sam is available online and in bookstores. Tell us about your speaking tour around the country. People can come out and see you and get their book signed.

Andrew McCarthy:

I’m looking forward to going out on tour and getting across America.

Lisa Niver:

I really, really appreciate you spending this time with me. I hope your book has tremendous success. I loved reading it, and I look forward to seeing you at the travel show next season.

Andrew McCarthy:

Thank you, I really enjoyed it. Thanks a lot.

The Magic Road in Ireland

Andrew McCarthy – The Magic Road Intro from Goodman Speaker Management on Vimeo.

More Andrew McCarthy: his website, his Instagram, his Twitter and his Facebook

book

Lisa Niver and Andrew McCarthy at the New York Travel and Adventure Show Jan 28, 2023

Lisa Niver, Andrew McCarthy, Rudy Maxa at the Dallas Travel and Adventure Show April 1, 2023

Lisa Ellen Niver

Lisa Niver is an award-winning travel expert who has explored 102 countries on six continents. This University of Pennsylvania graduate sailed across the seas for seven years with Princess Cruises, Royal Caribbean, and Renaissance Cruises and spent three years backpacking across Asia. Discover her articles in publications from AARP: The Magazine and AAA Explorer to WIRED and Wharton Magazine, as well as her site WeSaidGoTravel. On her award nominated global podcast, Make Your Own Map, Niver has interviewed Deepak Chopra, Olympic medalists, and numerous bestselling authors, and as a journalist has been invited to both the Oscars and the United Nations. For her print and digital stories as well as her television segments, she has been awarded three Southern California Journalism Awards and two National Arts and Entertainment Journalism Awards and been a finalist twenty-two times. Named a #3 travel influencer for 2023, Niver talks travel on broadcast television at KTLA TV Los Angeles, her YouTube channel with over 2 million views, and in her memoir, Brave-ish, One Breakup, Six Continents and Feeling Fearless After Fifty.

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