By Lian Bunny
Co-Photo Editor
Bob Kunzinger, a freelance author and ’83 St. Bonaventure graduate, came back to his alma mater on Wednesday, Sept. 28 to talk about his Camino de Santiago pilgrimage he traveled in the summer of 2014.
He made the 500-mile pilgrimage with his son Michael Kunzinger, 21, starting in southern France and ending on the northern coast of Spain. Saint Francis of Assisi walked the same path more than 800 years ago.
Michael’s photos from the trip will be on display in the Regina A. Quick Center for the Arts through Nov. 22. Bob wrote the text accompanying the photos.
Bob said it took them about five weeks, traveling about 10 to 15 miles a day. He said he had callouses, bloody toenails and lost about 15 pounds. But he didn’t feel any pain.
“If it did [hurt], I don’t remember,” he said at the talk. “When you walk for five weeks, you really forget how to tell time. Then you forget why you wondered about the time or distance to begin with.”
He said it was one of the safest journeys he’s ever taken. People looked out for each other and their belongings.
Amanda Naujoks, associate director of university ministries, said she also traveled the Camino. She said she could relate to Bob’s talk.
“He was able to put into words what’s really hard to capture I think,” she said. “So he did a great job of describing the practicalities and even the spirituality of the journey.”
Naujoks said she chose to make the journey because she wanted to be around seekers, people questioning things and searching for something more out of life. It challenged her to grow as a person.
The Camino is a metaphor for life, Bob said. On the trail, there are no deadlines. There is an end goal but no specific timeline.
However, for Bob, his symbolic pilgrimage started during his freshman year at St. Bonaventure.
“When I walked [to Bona’s] earlier from the hotel, I looked up in [Devereux Hall] and relived freshman year,” he said. “And for a moment I thought I could see myself there. I wanted to say to him, ‘Ignore what everyone says to you.’”
Fast forward to the present, Bob, 54, said he would encourage college students to not doubt themselves. They can’t follow someone else’s journey.
“It occurred to me that I spent my youth rushing everywhere,” he said. “I’m not going slow because I’m getting old. I’m going slow because I don’t want to miss anything. I hope that if you ever get the chance to go that you do. You don’t need guide books. You just need to be there.”
Bob said he and his son plan to walk the Camino again this summer.
David Kassnoff, a lecturer of journalism and mass communication, said this shows Bob’s unique perspective on life.
“He made this experience sound like this is an extension of the pilgrimage that began in [Devereux] when he was a freshman,” said Kassnoff, a Bonaventure graduate. “And it sounds like that pilgrimage is going to go on when he goes back in a few months to do the Camino again. I think his concept of pilgrimage is probably different than a lot of folks who thinks there’s a beginning and an end. His seems never ending.”
Leigh Simone, a Spanish professor, said she attended to talk because she’s traveled throughout Spain but never participated in the Camino.
Simone, a Bonaventure graduate, said it’s great to see how Bonaventure factors into fellow alumni’s lives.
“[Bonaventure] never really leaves us,” she said. “It really becomes part of the fabric of who you really are.”
bunnyla13@bonaventure.edu
