Welcome aboard, 2025 Pilgrim Paths Tour Hosts!

Beebe Bahrami

Camino de Santiago, Via Podiensis: Le Puy-en-Velay to Conques, June 17-27, 2025

Colorado native Beebe Bahrami is a writer and anthropologist with a lifetime passion for walking, exploring, immersing in cultures and landscapes, and gathering and sharing their stories. Fascinated by what makes us human at our deepest levels, she trained in languages, biology, anthropology, archaeology, history, art history, folklore, myth, and ritual. A pivotal moment in her life was learning about the Camino de Santiago as a college student in Spain and taking her first initiatory treks and explorations across Spain, France, and Portugal. During her doctoral studies she specialized in the anthropology of religion and conducted fieldwork in Iberia and Morocco. During that time she became immersed in the universal power of pilgrimage as a deeply transformative rite of passage. Before becoming a fulltime writer, book author, and independent scholar, Beebe was a university professor, an archaeology magazine editor, an ethnographic consultant, and a researcher for a medieval European tapestry art dealer. Her books include The Way of the Wild Goose, Café Oc, Café Neandertal, Moon Camino de Santiago, and The Spiritual Traveler Spain, all based on her research and life on and near the trails of the Camino. Her work also appears in BBC Travel, the Pennsylvania Gazette, Wine Enthusiast, The Best Women’s Travel Writing, Archaeology, The Bark, Bon Vivant, Michelin Green Guides and National Geographic books. She is also a Smithsonian Journeys Expert on some trips to France and Spain. 

Beebe’s primary focus is pilgrimage and unearthing the many layers of a place and people, especially in France, Spain, and Portugal, but also in Morocco, England, Cornwall, and Germany. Her homebase when in Europe is southwestern France from where she is often on a pilgrimage trail, walking, exploring, talking with locals, and gathering stories, lore, folktales, and insights. Beebe speaks Spanish and French and some Farsi, and is working on Occitan, Gallego, Portuguese, and Euskara. She loves discovering hidden secrets in Romanesque and Gothic churches, unearthing folktales with deep mythic elements of a culture and geography, learning from locals, and attuning to and learning from the wild world as much as from the cultured. As a Pilgrim Paths host, she is profoundly excited to share all this and more.

Gillian Price

Based in glorious Venice for well over 40 years, Gillian Price is the leading English-language expert on outdoor Italy. She has made it her mission to explore Italy on foot kilometre by kilometre, coast by coast, cheese by cheese, wine by wine, dialect by dialect…. to describe it all in words and photos with her contagious enthusiasm for visitors to enjoy and wonder at. Starting with the magical Dolomite mountains, Gillian has published dozens of walking guidebooks with leading UK publisher Cicerone and actively encourages visitors to travel by public transport (nb she doesn’t have a car and doesn’t drive). Check her out at www.gillianprice.eu

Laura Harris

Laura Harris is a counselor and traveller who fell in love with group outdoor adventure in her twenties leading wilderness expeditions for The Voyageur Outward Bound School. Her passion for personal growth and understanding led to three decades of psychological/spiritual studies and retreats in the US, Europe and Asia. She became enthused about pilgrimage twelve years ago after a life changing month on the Camino de Santiago. She now dedicates a portion of every year to walking pilgrim routes which have included the Camino Frances and Portugues, the St. Kevin/Wicklow Way, the Via di Francesco, the Via Francigena, the Via Podiensis and the California Mission Trail. She is honored to share these transformative experiences with friends, family and now Pilgrim Paths participants. She describes herself as a modern contemplative with a private counseling practice, a beloved husband, two creative sons, and a home base in the mountains of Montana.

Luke Brown

Via Francigena: Across the Great St Bernard Pass from Lausanne to Aosta, August 2-11, 2025

Musician, photographer, and philosopher, Luke Brown first walked the Camino de Santiago in 2009. In 2011 he brought his guitar along and shared his songs with pilgrims and locals along the way. He is a graduate of the University of Washington in Philosophy, a sign of his desire to see the deeper meaning of life. Luke brings sincerity, humour, and a keen eye for beauty to everything he does.

Mark Goodman

Way of St Francis: from Rieti to Assisi, April 26-May 9, 2025

Mark Goodman was once refused admittance to a doctoral program, because he was “interested in too many things.”  Examples include history of science, amateur astronomy, the intersection of science and faith, spelunking, opera, hiking, and cooking. He received his Bachelor of Science in Botany from the University of Oklahoma, his Master of Science in Botany from the University of Iowa, and his Master of Divinity from the General Theological Seminary. Mark is a retired priest in the Episcopal Church, having last served as Dean of St. John’s Cathedral in Albuquerque, New Mexico (2007-2017).  He has a keen interest in pilgrimage, the spiritual aspects in particular.  With his wife, Dawn, he walked the Via di Francesco in 2017. They also walked the very first stages (Canterbury to Reims) of the Via Francigena in June, 2024. Mark has a special affinity to St. Francis, as he and Dawn were engaged in Assisi, and their wedding took place on the Feast of St. Clare.  A native of Oklahoma, Mark has found a home in the many places he’s lived. He and Dawn currently live in Albuquerque, where they enjoy the high desert and hiking in the Sandia Mountains.  He looks forward to sharing the mysteries of pilgrimage with you.

Patrick Mowrer

A native of Arizona, a son of a professor at ASU and a mother from France, Patrick Mowrer and his family never spent a summer in Phoenix. It was just too hot.  So, traveling has always been a part of my life and being outdoors has been my “Holy” place. Whether rim to rim at the Grand Canyon, trails in the mountains of North West USA, the Camino Portuguese to Santiago, or simply the foot trails around the city of Flagstaff where I now reside, walking on my two feet frees my soul to be present to creation and creation present to me.  Professed in the Order of Secular Franciscans,my new love is the Camino di Francesco. To experience places that St Francis walked, slept, ate and preached some 800 years ago has a profound affect on my own journey.  Sharing stories about the life of this saint has become a passion as well. On these trips, one finds that Francis is not just the statue in the neighbor’s garden with animals at his side, but a collection of stories of a great saint and his example to engage life to the fullest. Now retired, I find more time to be amidst this gift of creation and treasure earth’s gifts that she offers.

Sandy Brown

Sandy Brown is one of the world’s most prolific and trusted pilgrimage guidebook authors. A long-distance walker and ordained minister from Seattle, Washington, Sandy planned his 2008 trek on the Camino de Santiago and since then has walked or biked over 18,000 kilometers on pilgrim trails in Europe and the US. In 2016 Sandy founded Pilgrim Paths and is part owner with his sister, Rocky Brown-Nieblas.

He earned his undergraduate degree in medieval history at the University of Washington in Seattle, his MDiv at Garrett Theological Seminary, which honored him in 2005 as Distinguished Alumnus, and his doctorate from Princeton Theological Seminary in gender, sexuality and spirituality. He was executive director of the Church Council of Greater Seattle and served as senior pastor of Seattle’s historic First United Methodist Church.

Since 2018 Sandy has been dealing with the progressive motor neurone disease Primary Lateral Sclerosis, which is gradually taking away his ability to communicate verbally. He maintains a very limited public speaking schedule while continuing to write, explore, lead walking groups, and write.

Sandy and his wife, Theresa Elliott, share time between their homes in Italy and the U.S.