He was genuinely friendly but stern when it came to the news. He could instinctively spot an opinion or an intrusive adjective with a mere glance over the page. He liked hard news . . . in the days when true news was defined as a man biting a dog.

When life was moving along smoothly in San Diego County — and before Richard Nixon got into trouble — Clive said to me, “It’s a slow news day.”

Then, to teach the young intern, he said, “On slow news days, we can always write about two things: war and the weather.”

Today, his words came back to haunt me.

On this Labor Day weekend, we climbed into a tiny Honda Fit and headed to Antietam, a wide field of death, where the blood of Americans watered corn fields. This Civil War battle in Maryland saw more than 23,000 casualties in one day, September 17, 1862. It was, in fact, the most gruesome battle of the Civil War by way of statistics. That was 156 years ago, but the stench is still imaginable.

A national park, Antietam is a reminder of horrid death — blood everywhere. For a time, men from both North and South were falling at one per second, the historians told us.

And the artifacts on display just made the horror so much more ghoulish. Eighteen-inch bayonets were designed to impale the enemy and extend far enough to come out a man’s back. After the battle, when the dead needed to be cleared, the bayonets would be curled into hooks — crude tools to drag bodies into trenches.

I saw cannon balls and projectiles — six pounds, twelve pounds, and twenty pounds — filled with bullets and shrapnel. I walked past cannons proudly aligned on the crest of a lawn, wondering how many men these weapons must have killed and maimed. Canons still exist; the men do not.

Leaving the display I noted the flag furled at half staff to honor a United States senator — another symbol of death. Today was his funeral.

Then I walked across the lawn and understood afterward I was walking on the spot where Confederate soldiers lay for days unburied, the subject of one of the most famous Civil War photographs that spooked mothers for years to come.

Studying for our trip on the Camino de Santiago, I discovered the Puente la Reina in dozens of photographs, adorning book covers, brochures, and websites. But it was built as a bridge of peace and hospitality.

The name of the six-arch bridge in Spain translates to the “Bridge of the Queen,” built more than 1,000 years ago so that pilgrims like us could more easily cross the river Arga on the way to Santiago. We will cross on that bridge in the days to come, but only having previously passed through other valleys of death and the relics of Spanish wars along the way.

War and death. Death and war. It precedes us. It never ends.

I have found documentation for no less than 277 wars involving Spain, including the famed Eighty Years War, the war against the United States, multiple crusades for the Holy Land, and the Moor’s conquest of territory in the Iberian Peninsula.

What’s more, the name of Santiago himself has been associated with war. One of the legends in Spain, depicted in art, is that St. James made an appearance to help slay the Moors.

Even in modern days, the Spanish have faced their own bloody civil war, joined in the Coalition for the Gulf War, and have engaged ISIS in battle. Only last year did Basque separatists agree to lay down their arms.

Nevertheless, the Camino de Santiago has a reputation for hospitality, a path where people from all tribes and nations meet and walk together. Here travelers are looking for a peace that surpasses all understanding. I can imagine singing, “We’re gonna study war no more,” and hearing other hikers join in.