Andata e ritorno di nuovo

Returning home is an integral part of a certain kind of pilgrimage, a journey to a place, an arrival and a temporary sojourn, with the hope, perhaps the expectation, that some important benefit, some improved understanding will derive. Returning home is the final leg. Andata e ritorno di nuovo. There and back again!*

It is only in modern times that the journey back is of a categorically different nature than the journey there. In the past, if you walked there, you walked back. You would have met returning pilgrims on your way there and going pilgrims on your way back. Most of today's pilgrims who travel the Via Francigena and the various routes to Compostela arrive in some way to the beginning of their walk, they spend days, weeks or a month trekking to their destination, and they return home some way other than by retracing their steps. Some stalwarts do, indeed, walk back the way they came. Most do not.

The journey home is a critical part of this type of pilgrimage. You are not exactly who you were when you left. You are not yet fully formed as the different person you will be on your arrival home, The difference may only be the memories you've accumulated, but perhaps something else about you has changed.

But there is another definition of pilgrimage, a wandering of extended duration without a specific destination.

Each year, I engage in both of these pilgrimages, the journey to a specific place, or at least progress to it, in recent years, Rome, and the wandering journey which encompases the more mindful aspects of my walks. I try to bring those wanderings home with me, the thoughts remembered and facts reconsidered, the hazy constructs not yet taken full form and remaining unresolved, the insights gained and, sometimes, the lessons learned. During the journey home and in the period between arriving there and leaving for my next walk, if personal history is any guide, the thoughts I had during my journey will resurface, intentionally recalled or arisen unbidden. They will become part of me.

Between the end of my walk and arrival home, I had some other small adventures. Parick and I took an evening and a morning to visit Portovenere and La Spezia on the Golfo dei Poeti, The Gulf of Poets, named in remembrance of the drowning there of Percy Bysshe Shelley. I headed to Milan where artist/friend Colleen showed me her favorite sites. I was floored by the frescoes at the Chiesa de San Maurizio al Monastero Maggiore. She, her husband Matteo and I filled up during aperitivi, dined at a Neopolitan pizzeria where I had a five-toed pocket pizza overstuffed with mussels (don't ask; you had to be there), and took a giretto, a stroll, through the busy summer evening streets of the Navigli, the canal district.

And, in a sign that there is some balance in the world, at least in trivial matters, my disaster of an under three hour direct train voyage cum seven hour train-bus-train pergatory to Zurich was compensated for by a surprise at-the-gate upgrade to an almost empty first class cabin on Swissair.

I bring home with me the memories of a really great time. I would say "despite the hard work of walking," but if not for the walking it never would have been as great a time. The adventures would have been different, I'd never have made new friends of Claudio, Mirella, Giuseppi, Cristina and Marco, or met interesting people, like Massimo and the tenor Francesco Pavesi, or ever had the opportunity for Patrick and I to build on our friendship. And I'd never have had that less-than-a-conversation with the almost spectre of a woman who asked, "What is the passion?", an exchange that carried tomes. I think that woman and that question will be with me always.

Well, I am home. Back with mia carina. Glad of it.

So there I was, and back I am.

[*You may, perhaps, recognize that phrase as the subtitle of Tokien's The Hobbit. It isn't a literal translation. What's more, the Italian edition has an entirely different subtitle with an entirely different meaning: Un viaggio inaspettato; An unexpected journey. Well, I think that applies as well. The larger journey is often comprised of shorter, unexpected ones, whatever happens to you on any particular day when you set out the door of where you stayed the night before.]

Sono arrivato nella Toscana

Made it. No drama. Three days after I set out from Sivizzano to cross the Apennines, the major mountain chain wholly within Italy, I arrived in Tuscany, the town of Pontremoli, in the foothills on the other side of the mountains. Tuscany is pretty hilly in its own right, so there are more ups and downs to come. But that is an issue for next year. This year's hike is over. I had no fixed stopping point in mind, just the number of days I planned to walk. In that sense, the walk does not feel as complete as arriving in Compostela or at the top of the Saint Bernard pass. The recompense is that I really had a great time. I met some wonderful people with whom I spent days walking. With very few exceptions, everyone I met along the route was friendly and willing to help out, many even when I did not ask. My Italian lessons paid off. Despite forgetting probably 80% of the vocabulary my lessons covered, some of which I knew would not be of particular use on the walk anyway, what I did retain was enough to get a place to stay, a meal, and to engage people in conversation. Most satisfying, I was able to handle the physical and mental challenges these walks always entail.

It will take a few days to reflect on the more mindful aspects of this year's hike, but I do want to get out a post on the experience of the last several days. I heard from some of you asking how I am doing. Fine!  Achy knees and a whole load of blisters aside, really fine. 

Each year before I begin my walk, I think about the physical and mental challenges to come. Mia Carina says that I invent problems just so I have something to worry about. True to type, therefore, I always have some angst over whether I will have enough stamina, whether my legs can sustain the punishment of so many miles, especially the climbs, whether my lungs have the capacity to allow me to walk inclines for hours at a steady, deliberate but slow pace over sections of trail where there are few level sections to give respite. In short, these walks represent the most physically demanding thing I have ever done. Others may not find it so, though I think many do. When I ask people why they do these walks, they often give several answers. A very frequent response is "to prove to myself I can do it." To be sure, this response also refers to the mental challenge involved. I don't know if this is the most mentally challenging thing I have ever done, but it ranks right up there.

I thought about not reporting the gory details but I do want to give you a sense of what this section of the hike was like. In three days you go over a series of hilltops, gaining and then losing altitude, but in something of a stair-step fashion, so that although you finally reach an elevation of about 1,200 meters, something more than 3,600 feet, it is really like walking up a staircase about 1.5 miles high, counting all the ups you have to walk over again because of the down sections where you lose what you just climbed. These successive tops have a name: i salti del diavolo, the leaps of the devil. 

It took me a day-and-a-half to reach the top above the Passo della Cisa and the same amount of time to get down to Pontremoli. On the first two mornings, I started the hike early, at six, to avoid climbing in the worst heat of the afternoon. The first morning was the most difficult, the most punishing. The morning had a touch of cool but you could already feel the heat lurking behind it, promising another day around 90F, 32C. The sun was constant except when walking through woods, or hugging the shadows of the few buildings along the route, or, when on a farm track or country road, repeatedly crossing to take advantage of a few meters of shade thrown from a tree. For the most part, the trail was a continuous rocky upslope, sometimes shallow but mostly tough.

I play these games with myself: glancing up ahead to see if I can spy a local top, a leveling, where I can catch my breath while continuing to move. Then I drop my gaze and try not to look up until my feet sense the shallowing of the path. Didn't work. The up sections were almost continuous. After a bit, without any signs from my feet, I would glance up again to find that the upslope just kept going on and on. When I did find a local top, it was often only a few meters of level walking. I really do not like to stop moving if I can help it. To do so is a small chink in the armor of resolve. Too many and you start thinking of bailing out at the next road you pass.

The most effective strategy for conquering these sections is a plodding pace that you can keep up over long periods, using the naturally occurring steps that rocks and tree roots make, sipping water from your hydration bladder every time the thought occurs to you. You can't wait until you are thirsty. By then, you are already dehydrating. When I feel fatigued, I pull out a bag of peanuts, raisins and dried figs I keep in a tummy pack, or stop just long enough to get a banana out of the backpack. I usually don't have to stop to eliminate water (TMI). I sweat it out instead, a signal that I am not drinking enough. But no matter how much I drink, I just do not have to stop for that reason.

The first night I stayed in Berceto, at a huge old seminary in a musty state of minimal use.

The second day's climb was nowhere near as difficult though it did add 430 meters, about a fourth of a mile in altitude. The air was fresh throughout the early morning walk. The top occurred early, around 9 AM, and the surroundings were a field of mountain grass and flowers reminding me of the famous scene in The Sound of Music. To protect my knees from the recurrence of problems I experienced early in the trip, I followed the advice of friends and took the road down from Passo della Cisa, after descending to it using the path from the elevation high point. The trail from there on is described as rocky and steep, and I thought it would be slick. Though I hadn't experienced more than a raindrop or two from the time I started at the Saint Bernard pass, there had been afternoon storms over the mountains. On my way up I passed over a number of slippery sections where water was draining across the trail.

Though the walk down the road was long, boring, hot and hard on my knees, it was still better than the alternative. Walking the road does not require me to make big strides to get down to the next rock "step" the way the trail requires. My meniscus did not have to support my body the way it had to on the first few days of the walk. 

You can never know for sure what a path you do not walk is like, but I am pretty sure I would have run a serious risk to my knees if I had taken the trail. When I arrived at the Eremo Gioioso, the Glorious Hermitage, a wonderful B&B in the five building hamlet of Previde, Cristina had just arrived from hiking down the trail. She was exhausted. Cristina guides pilgrimage groups on walking tours of the Via Francigena through Tuscany. In her spare time, what does she do? She walks. One year she put on 8,000 KM, about 5,000 miles. She averages about four or five thousand km a year. She is also the president of a volunteer group that is constantly walking the Via Francigena from the Italian border to Rome, photographing every trail marker, commenting on difficult divergences where the trail marking is missing or can lead to confusion, and reporting on other trail problems to the group that is responsible for promoting it and making certain it is maintained. So when you see Cristina exhausted and she tells you the trail was difficult, it was!

The second night's stay was tremendously refreshing and luxe. Eremo Gioioso is what I can only describe as a luxury B&B, a well hidden gem. It has been open for two years after a reconstruction taking three years from a ruin of a property that was little more than a broken down wall with half of an arched doorway. Run by the extraordinarily friendly and kind Marco and Marzia, the inn deserves almost as much blog space as the walk. Here's what I got: lunch of local cheeses including the silkiest ricotta I've ever tasted, and an assortment of local salami's and crudo's; single room (a luxury for me); private garden where I was invited to eat cherries directly from the tree; an offer by Marco to take me to a local lake for a swim; laundry, machine washed, hung dry and folded by Marzia (an even greater luxury); an aperitif before dinner (a Crodino) with sides of olives, focaccia, and chips; dinner of farinata (not really a pasta but cut squares of a farina pancake with olive oil and parmigiana cheese) for primi piatti followed by a secondi piatti of rendered pork fat (from Carrara that is aged with herbs for several months in marble vaults) on home made bread and an even larger selection of local cheeses, meats and a spinach torte, a local wine of Merlot and another grape I've never heard of before, and a very light honey tarta for desert; and a full breakfast including blood orange OJ, eggs, bread, jams, honey, more cheese, more ricotta, and that Italian state secret, COFFEE!!!!, all for the amazingly low price of fifty-five euro. It was appropriate for the last stay of my hike. How could I walk much further after that. And if pilgrimage is supposed to get you to heaven I had a foretaste of it there.

It was about seven miles to Pontremoli and involved another climb of a few hundred meters and then a descent. Needless to say, I moved pretty slowly on knees and a stomach that had seen too much action. We arrived in time for Patrick to go to mass. I accompanied him as I sometimes do, for the opportunity to meditate and to think. Then coffee and some fruit juice in the Piazza della Repubblica and a short walk to the train.

So there it is. Another year, another hike, three-quarters of the way to Rome.

I owe you one more post. It will be a few days before I get to it.

 

Qual è la passione?

A buzz of questions swarmed around her but only one was for me. The rest were her own. She needn't ask where I was going. Rome was surely the answer. Nor need she ask from where I had come. It was likely a distance beyond which she had ever traveled. 

Her more than seventy years worn like a shroud, she stood respectfully in a sun bleached hazy air. It seemed there was an aura of uncertainty about her. I first spied her from a distance of no more than twenty meters. It was near the end of the small village, perhaps three streets wide. I was walking the main street, a street unworthy of that description except that it passed the church and civic offices. She stood at the end of a road intersecting from the right, at a rounded corner, a meter or two street-side of the grey-painted wrought iron fence on her left. The path I was walking would curve in the opposite direction, taking me away from her.

She noticed I had seen her and took a step forward. If not then, her one chance would be lost. How many of us had she seen in her life there, no day different than another except for a death that the entire town would mourn or a marriage it would celebrate? Why me and not the many others that had passed? Why was now the right time, the only time?

"Buongiorno," I said invitingly as I passed. Another step forward halted me. "Mi permetta. Vorei fare una domanda?" May I ask a question? she said quietly. No need to disturb other people with her inquiry. Likely as not, she would prefer no one else hear. But no one else was near, or in sight, let alone in ear shot. This was to be a private conversation.

"Certo!" Certainly! The question that was burning in her since the moment she saw me, or for years, or for decades: "Qual è la passione?" What is the passion? I always need time to parse an Italian conversation, the words I understand, the words I do not. But this time I understood immediately. Maybe I understood her before she even finished speaking. She wanted to know what drove me, and the many others she had wondered at, to cover such distance, on foot. It was a simple "Why?"

If she had been a person of faith, she never would have asked. She would have assumed it was a religious pilgrimage and known the reasons, to give thanks, to seek intercession, to fulfill a vow. But she could not have been, and so she asked. Had she had that faith once and lost it? Had it never reached out and touched her? Did she believe in a god? Did she wish she could?

It was such a powerful question. I felt inadequate to answer. I could not tell her about God, about faith. But she asked, she wanted to know, and the only Truth I could give her was the truth as I felt it. 

"Per meditazione. A pensare." For meditation. To think.

She consumed each word. I could not tell if it was a satisfying answer. She herself might not know for years, or ever. But it was an answer she considered weighty, honest. One could see that from the slightest nodding of her slightly bowed head. No smile crossed her face, but there was a thank you on it. I would have loved a photograph of her but I felt it profane to ask. I continued my walk, curving away from her. Did she stand there to watch until I faded from her view? Did she retreat but then steal a glance over her shoulder as a lover might, or as one knowing she never could but longing to join? I don't know.

It's taken me a while to write about this incident. It happened well over a week ago. I've been trying to digest it myself just as she likely has been trying to digest my answer. 

Today I began to cross the Apennines, the foothills, tomorrow one of two big climbs. Two to three more days depending on temperature (low 90's F) and how my knee holds up. 

Sua voce era un bisbiglio

Patrick declared a new record yesterday afternoon as he returned from a hectic tour of Pavia: eight churches, one cathedral, and three masses. We have very different ways of experiencing a city.

The must-sees of a city aren't necessarily must-sees for me. I prefer to walk the gardens, the back alleys and the leafy boulevards. I'll ask directions even if I know I am close or ask what interesting sights there may be to see even if I already have an inkling, just to interact with the people, to find the rhythms of the place. At the University of Pavia, one of the oldest in Europe. I walked through ancient cloisters, entered empty classrooms. I chatted with students about what was special there. 

I strolled down rounded-stone cobbled streets under spreading boughs, making eye contact with people walking their dogs, experiencing the city's hospitality. One man, seeing my backpack and the map I was holding, guessing correctly that I was a pilgrim, asked if he could help. I told him I was looking for San Pietro in Ciel d'Oro where the relics of Bothius lay and Saint Augustine is buried, the church mentioned in Dante's Divine Comedy, Canto X. I knew I was close. I didn't really need his help. But he insisted and left his car running to walk me along the street to the church's entrance. This is the way I love to see a city. 

At San Michele Maggiore, a docent, one of two, approached me. Again it was evident I was a pilgrim. I'd like to show you something," she said. Sua voce era un bisbiglio. Her voice was a whisper, her movements a meditation, and there was no better picture of tranquility than she. Valerie spoke to me in a fluent but accented English, stopping only occasionally to ask how this or that might be phrased better than she thought herself able. I asked if she was Italian. She said she had lived here twenty years, but she was born in Germany and lived in Africa. An unspoken "it is complicated" seemed left dangling in the air. 

She walked to the high alter and unlatched a gate. I followed. We climbed up a few stairs to where Barbarossa has been coronated and Lombard kings acclaimed. The pattern on the floor was interrupted by a roughly five by three meter tessellated rectangle which had laid hidden beneath the alter until it was uncovered when the alter was moved toward the rear of the apse. "It is from eleven twenty, or would you say eleven hundred and twenty in English?" I replied that either would be fine. 

In each of eleven squares a human figure was engaged in the activities associated with the month written in Latin, from February to November, plowing, sowing, reaping, and the central figure, the king of all the others, ANNUS on his throne. January and December were missing, destroyed when the floor decoration was relaid with a regular, repeating, non-pagan motif, except for this remaining section, the part protected by and lying hidden beneath the alter for centuries. Below the representations of the months, there was a chord segment that depicted the upper fourth of a spiral labyrinth, a circular pilgrimage.

In the two triangular corners with arced hypotenuses abutting the round labyrinth on left and right, partial figures represented earth and water. In the corresponding lower sections would have been air and a dragon representing fire. A document in the Vatican library describes the complete design.

"There is something older I would like to show you." I followed Valerie as she floated down the stairs. She let me pass, latched the gate and guided me to her left. A golden Christ I guess to be six feet in height but not otherwise of human proportions spread across a gilded wooden cross. A long thin face, spaghetti hair in parallel strands and spindly-thin and stretched looked vaguely like a work by Giacometti gave the figure a modern look. "It is more than a millenium old, from about the year 900," Valerie added. As an objet d'art it was wondrous. Others are better suited to comment on it as a object of devotion.

I would have enjoyed another day in Pavia, sitting in cafes that shared centuries old church courtyards, wandering through ancient buildings repurposed for trade but retaining medieval architectural elements, watching and interacting. Extra days seem somehow hard to manage. We had checked out of our room, our packs were on our back, and we had a day's walk ahead of us. We left Pavia for the small town of Belgioioso where we enjoyed the hospitality of Signora Mara Baldini, a kind and giving woman, who made her lovely maisonette, complete with courtyard, garden, and fully stocked kitchen available to us on a pay-what-you-can-afford basis. 

Two days later we crossed the Po the traditional way, by small boat from ferry landings that connect the old Roman road, loaded with pilgrims –Claudio and Mirella, who we caught up with the day before, Marco, who we met and have been walking with for a few days, Patrick and me – our packs, and a boatman who for years has been registering the names of pilgrims he has carried and stamped their credentials. Tonight I rest in Piacenza, the first of Rome's military colonies and tomorrow I start making my way to the hills and mountains that eventually lead to the Toscano.

Comments welcome here or at garyontheway@gmail.com

Tutti cappelli.

A quick post to thank my friends who expressed concern and offered advice regarding my knee. I heard from the Wife of Bath and a friend who is a doctor. The sagest, most pragmatic advice came from a good friend of thirty years who wrote: "Don't make your knee any worse if there's any risk! You can contemplate your soul with a healthy knee." Tutti cappelli." Hats off!

il problema con mio ginocchio

Can you strain your meniscus without tearing it? I don't know but something whacky is going on inside my right knee. For two days it was hard to put weight on it. Every time I had a downslope to navigate, I had to step with my right leg and bring my left even with it, taking baby steps, or old man steps as Patrick with his sometimes sharp wit commented. Upslopes and flats were fine, no problem, but anything more than the slightest downslope, anything requiring an angle between my right lower leg and the upper was more than modestly painful. I felt that the knee would not support my body weight.

I have it managed now, thanks to ice packs every evening, two ibuprofens each morning and several days of predominantly flat terrain, but the knee hasn't been retested. There are still a few days on the Piedmont and Lombardy flats, walking for hours on the mud dams separating rice paddies, soon-to-be-risotto all around me, for miles! I won't be on hills again for another week. When I was going through my second cut at packing before leaving California, winnowing down weight, a snakebite kit here, a mylar emergency blanket there, I held my knee brace in my hand and considered it. If I had not been experiencing sciatica, if I had not felt my body a bit vulnerable, I would have left the knee brace at home. But I took it. It was my savior for four days until the backside of my knee was rubbed so raw the chafing became more of a problem than my slowly improving knee.

But the day I left Aosta started out on a high note. I met Claudio. Patrick spotted two figures with backpacks across a traffic circle as we were leaving the center of Aosta. A large monument at its center, leafy sidewalks on both sides of all six spokes, the Italian participation sport of aggressive lane changing at high speed was in full swing. We managed our way across. When Claudio spotted us his face opened into a large welcoming grin, his grey ponytail sailing to the right as he swiveled his head left in our direction. Claudio is the kind of person who leans into you when you converse, not in a threatening way, but in anticipation, anxious to participate, eager to enjoin the conversation. He is not a very tall man, but he has a big stride, in his early-sixties but has a hidden energy that could come pouring forth at any moment if he fails to restrain it. Mirella, his wife, was with him, on her first long-distance walk. Claudio and I chatted along most of the morning in broken Italian and broken English, a mongrel tongue that anyone trying to listen in would have difficulty comprehending. We were doing just fine though. Mirella contributed where she could.

I started the conversation with the same expression I use in every language I know a smattering of, "Non parlo multo Italiano ma provo." It works wonders when you tell someone in their own country that you don't know much of their language but you are going to try. If the conversation turns immediately to introductions and the introductions include where you are from, they are doubly astounded to find out you are American. It is just not what they expect and you've broken the ice in a very big way. If you are lucky enough to live in a place they have a positive image of, like San Francisco, a place that is on almost everyone's bucket list, you get eyebrows lifted, a big smile and a "Ahh, San Francisco." Once you confirm you are all pellegrini, there's a good chance you have a walking companion for at least a few hours, maybe days. The conversation turns quickly to where you are headed, for the trip and for the day, whether and how many times you've walked to Compostela, which routes you've taken, where you started this pilgrimage and when. Those are the preliminaries. It's the secret handshake. We are a brother/sisterhood, a community. It does not matter the nationality, the faith, the social class, the political outlook, the line of work, the age.

Sigerac the Serious, the Bishop of Canterbury who documented the Via Francigena in the last century of the first millennium, followed a route that is in some dispute. I believe that the only thing that is know for certain are the places he stopped each day of his return journey from Rome. If I had to guess, after reaching Aosta, Sigerac would have taken the Roman road which followed the river near the base of the valley, high enough to stay passible in times of flood. The Roman road I walked on last year had been covered over with gravel. This one was the original, the same stones Roman legions marched over and Roman suppy wagons cut ruts into.

Today, the base of the valley is traversed not only by the river, but also by the modern version of the road to Gaul, the superstrada, the highway whisking auto and truck traffic from the Val d'Aosta to the Piemonte and beyond, and by roads that permit access to the towns that line the base of the valley and the lower reaches of those towns that are built on the hills that slope up from it. Today's Via Francigena connects the places that are documented by Sigerac's scribe, but the route between those sites are not known exactly. Where there are extant portions of the old Roman road, you can be pretty sure Sigerac traveled over it. 

The roads today's pilgrims walk are designed to keep them off busy thoroughfares, opting instead for country roads, dirt tracks through woods and fields, and cobbled paths that connect evocative hamlets and villages, especially if there are interesting churches, towers, or castles to be visited or viewed, any sites that pilgrims or hikers might be drawn to. In this region, in the foothills of the Alps and along the longest moraine in Europe, that means climbing and descending. 

On this particular day there was nothing to match the descent from the Col de Grand Saint Bernard we had just accomplished, but enough to make you work. It was not that the elevation changes were so great, only that they were steep, both up and down. In between three notable sections, there were many smaller ascents and descents so that by the time we got to the last climb of the day, I felt that I was in serious trouble.

My knee started hurting on the first descent. We had attacked the upslope with aplomb, making good time, winded but strong. A flat sectioned followed and Claudio and Mirella stopped for something to eat from a plastic bag Claudio had been carrying since we met him in Aosta. Patrick and I continued along. When we started down, I was very surprised that my knee was hurting. I had no prior indication that there was anything amiss. The damage likely had been done on the two days of long descents from St. Bernard to Aosta. This first significant downslope of the day did not do the damage. It just made it evident. 

We decided to stop for lunch and headed down off trail into to find a restaurant. After we finished, we needed to regain the height we had lost. Again we attacked, taking the full elevation change without slowing and without a rest. We found Claudio and Mirella again, they were sitting in the shade outside a church. Mirella had blisters and her feet were hurting.

Walking together for the remainder of the day, we passed by the home of a Romanian gentleman, eighty years old, mind sharp, body giving no indication of slowing down. He had worked for sixty years in the US and when it came time to return to Europe, the only place he was going to go was Italy. He showed us his woodcarvings – they adorned the side of his home abutting the trail. We spoke for about ten minutes. He asked us in for coffee but we declined.

The longish stop was a bad idea. My knee had stiffened and every step was painful. Claudio asked what was wrong and when I told him he asked if I wanted to stop. I said no and he gave me a "bravo!" There really was no choice, no way to bail off the trail. Where would I go? Patrick suggested I take the lead to set a pace comfortable for me.

Some people walk with head erect, surveying the landscape. I generally walk with my head somewhat bowed, glancing ahead at the trail a few feet in front of me. I think it is because I am often deep in thought. So it is not totally surprising if I miss a turn or a trail marker now and then. I think I do it more than most. When we found ourselves ascending between two old abandoned stone houses, roof shales and stone blocks that had been walls scattered and covering what we thought was the trail, cantilevered so that stepping on one side lifted the other and your boot sank, brushing against discarded shale stones, we knew we had lost the trail.

Patrick suggested retracing our steps, but by that time I was not going to go down when I could go up. The pain was too great. So I volunteered to forge ahead and retake the Via Francigena, which my GPS indicated was twenty or so meters above us. Once I cleared the stones, I pushed through deep ground cover, bushes, and high grasses. Finally, I saw a clear trail above me. Calling to the others, I forged ahead. We did eventually have to head down into the town at which we would be staying that night, Chatillon. I was in bad shape and asked the man who greeted us at the restaurant/albergo for a bag of ice.

As I spelled out in the opening to this post, I am now a number of days past. Some of those days included lesser climbs and descents, but anything past a minimal downslope was difficult for me. The first of those next days were very problematic, but as we hit the flats, and there are days and days of them past and yet to come, my knee, helped by two ibuprofens in the morning and icing in the evening, settled down. The first really significant climb and descent will not be for another week. I'll try to baby my knee until then.

Cinquanta sfumature di grigio

I'm stuck. I've written and rewritten this post a half dozen times. I just can't get it out the way I want. I know why. There are recent events on my mind, way too personal to share. Yet they keep intruding into the post I want to write. If I do not get it out, I won't be able to move on to the rest of my journey and the problem that almost derailed it just three days in, an issue that remains on day eight, something I have to carefully manage. The only solution is to just get something on paper (an old cliché), not the event that is bothering me, but some reflection of it, some generalization. I ask your indulgence (a very appropriate concept for pilgrimage) if this post lacks the coherence and cogency I usually strive for.

I was inspired by the stark picture of the snow and ice covered Alps included with my last post to photograph this journey in black and white. On prior walks, I have photographed in color and then post processed some of the images to B&W. A few of those are among my favorites. But photographing directly to B&W is different – you have to see in black and white. Though you expose for the blacks, your real interest is in the expansion of those luscious mid-tones, the grays that give B&W photos their compelling aura, that sense of near but not perfect reality, the essence of those pictures that make dwell over them, far longer than you might with a color photo. Cinquanta sfumature di grigio? Fifty shades of gray? Far more. 

A B&W photo takes work. A field of white and yellow wildflowers will all go to the white unless you consciously expand the range of grays between them and allow the grass on which they sit to go black. I am not saying that the photos included here are great photos, only that the process of photographing in B&W requires a special discipline that reminds me of the thought processes I engage in while taking these long walks. 

As I began my second day's walk, from Echevennoz to Aosta, I thought about the similarities between my journeys and photographing in this way. From the trattoria in which I stayed, a small climb brought me to a relatively flat track that followed an irrigation channel dating from the 12th to 15th centuries. There have been modern improvements of course, metal conduits, PVC pipe, rubber hose, but mostly, over the course of dozens of miles it is a hand dug channel lined by flagstone or just earth, losing only a few meters in elevation over its length, delivering runoff, stream and river waters to fields all through the Val d'Aosta. 

Photographing in B&W takes time. You can't just pick up the camera, frame and snap. You have to think about which of those gray tones you want to bring out. You begin to think about pulling the scene apart, which textures you want to emphasize, which you want to push to the background. If you place too much white next to a texture you want your viewer to focus on, their eyes will be pulled away to the lighter sections of the photo. And so it is with much of my thinking during these walks. I am often pulling apart events recent and long past, trying to see the gray tones, recognizing that the images I retain of those events may not be all that there is to them. I begin to see the texture within the picture, the contributing factors, how my own actions may have motivated others and thus created the events I am considering. The picture I come away with is often different than the one I held in my memory. It is an image of the same thing, but it has more to it, more tones, more subtleties. And when one is thinking about the interaction among people, the expansion of the mid-tones can give the entire event new meaning.

I left the course of the irrigation channel and descended towards Aosta. Entering Gignod, Patrick and I came across a lovely anziana who was convalescing in the parish house across from the church. She invited us in for a look at the garden, and a view down the Val d'Aosta. As my walking continued, so did my thoughts. I found myself thinking about forgiveness forgiveness, a concept I frankly have difficulty with. I've been able to push things to the background, not forgotten, but to a place where they no longer cause the pain they once did. Have I forgiven? I've discussed the concept with my friend Marc, a man of strong faith. He, too, has some difficulty. He thinks of it much in the way I do. My good friend Dinesh says I should not worry so much about the past: It is unchangeable. He urges me to focus on the future, that which I can affect. It is advice I would like to be able to follow.

Every once in a while, despite the neat little places I've tucked some remembrances, those understandings that include the mid-tones, the textures I've been able to tease out of the background, another event occurs that bring them back to the surface. I guess I still have a way to go.

Patrick and I continued on to Aosta, a pretty little city, nestled at the foot of the mountains, at the high end of the valley. By the time we arrived, we had lost about seventy percent of the elevation from the point at which we started. Again, I felt the burn in my quads, and this contributed to the problem I will tell you about in the next post. Patrick had a look around town and we met up in the main piazza for a coffee and a gelato. We had a good discussion on issues important only to the two of us and a nice dinner at a craft brewery before dodging raindrops back to the hotel.

While this day had been a day of mid-tones, the next day would be about extremes, the white and the black.

Comments welcome here or by email to garyontheway@gmail.com

Cominciare

I am five days into my walk and it is time to bring you all up to date, or as far as I can get in one sitting. Since this is not really a touristy blog, I do not feel obligated to give you a day by day, blow by blow description. But I've already travelled some seventy miles (about 125 km) into Italy and descended some 6,000 feet (2,000 meters). I do feel obliged to give you something. I did, after all, invite you along.

When I arrived at the Hospice Saint Bernard in Switzerland, about 100 meters from the Italian border, it might have been late winter instead of late spring. The pass had just been cleared of snow, a few days later than usual. The mountain-scape white. I recalled the photo from last year's final post, me atop the pyramid marking the highest elevation of the pass, blue sky, mountains dotted with snow, the lake reflecting it all. There was no sign of the pyramid this year. It is still there, just buried under ten feet of snow.

Though the pass had been cleared for vehicular traffic, the mountain path descending down to Aosta, 20 miles distant, was not passable at the highest elevations. Brother Frederic, the chief hostelier, recommended we descend on the road for a mile or so, until we passed an Enoteca. There, he said, the footpath would be clear enough for us to use. So Sunday morning, the fifth of June, Patrick and I bundled up with as much warm weather gear as we had, which was none, and braved the mid-thirties temperatures, about 3C, and blustery wind, and set about the start of this year's journey. I was in a polyester T, hiking sweater, and summer weight hiking pants. It is Italy in June, after all, and carrying additional weight for just a few hours of comfort didn't make much sense as I sat at home in California packing.

So I brrrr-ed my way down to the Enoteca, stuck my head in to ask whether the path was clear below, more to test whether the money for a few Italian lessons had been well spent than for any other reason, and took my first steps onto the mountain. We, Patrick, my friend with whom I walked last year, and Paul, an architectural photographer from London, traversed two narrow snow fields, and greeted late spring with pleasure.

In one of those coincidences common on these ancient pilgrimage trails, we had met Paul just more than half way into last year's walk. He is doing the Via Francigena (VF) as he can and was walking more lengthy days than Patrick and I. So our paths crossed for just one night. He ended a few stages before we did, and started this year's hike a few days before. As Patrick and I were having a coffee and hot chocolate in the Albergo across from the hospice the night before we started, Paul came up to the table and asked, "Don't I know you two from last year?" Yes, indeed!

So the three of us descended a quad-burning 1,000 meters together, Patrick and I planning to take two days to Aosta to accommodate my jet lag from the flight I had taken just the day before, Paul heading all the way to Aosta. The path did not waste much effort wandering across the mountain. It was mostly straight down. Brown turned to fields of wildflowers and then to grass and scattered woods as we made the tree line. Water that was ice just hours before tumbled across the trail. It got pretty hot. We shed sweaters and lost all thought of the gloves and other gear which, just an hour before, we had been wondering why we did not bring.

Trail signage was generally easy to follow. We only made one mistake and knew it when we ran into a skull and crossbones, a sure sign not to proceed. But we easily regained the VF and made it to Etroubles, just a few km before our day's destination, Echevennoz. Patrick and I stopped for lunch and Paul headed on to Aosta. He will be stopping in Lucca this year, we a few stages behind that. But it will come as no surprise if we run into him next year as we make our way to Rome.

The first day of walking is not really a thinking day. You are evaluating how your pack sits, how your boots feel, generally how the physical part of your preparations are playing out. Before heading out that morning, I had been quite concerned about the sciatica I had been experiencing before I left California and, of course, my feet. You who have followed me, either in my blogging last year, or in my stories from the prior six years of walking various trails to Compostela know that I have had really bad luck with blisters. My toes have not completely healed from last year's walk, lost nails not completely regrown. Though some blisters would pop up in the next few days, it was something else entirely that would assert itself and make my walk problematic. On this first day, though, other than the sore muscles from the steep descent, I felt fine.

Patrick and I stay in hostels, parish houses, monasteries, B&B's, hotels, restaurants with guest rooms, in dormitories or double rooms (letti separati, certo!), whatever works for our needs on the particular night and depending on availability. At the hospice, it was a 12 bed dormitory; in Echevennoz it was a double room in a bar/trattoria. 

The evening was one of good cheer as we dined with five French pilgrims, one man, Philippe, four women, two Genvieve's and two Isabel's, who were walking together for a week, and with Helen, from the Netherlands, who started in Belgium in May and expects to make Rome in August. We had met and dined with all six the evening before at the Hospice. This evening over spaghetti, veal in beef ragu, and red Val d'Aosta wine, there was that special 'Camino' ambiance as we got to know each other better, mostly in French and a bit of English, traded stories and asked really personal questions such as from one of the two Genevieve's at the table who was embarrassed to ask me whether men are like women and attach their not yet dry underwear to the outside of their packs so they dry in the next day's sun. Certamente!

I will leave it there for now. The next day was more of a thinking day and I'd rather start that as a new post.

Comments and hello's are welcome, here or by email to garyontheway@gmail.com

L'avventura a piedi continua

Yes, that is Italian. I've been preparing for this year's walk with, among other things, a short course in elementary Italian to make getting a bed, a meal, and other of the road's necessities, a little less difficult.  It will be far from perfect, perhaps only barely comprehensible, but hopefully good enough.

That is how I am feeling about a number of things this year. I always start off thinking that the portfolio of little aches and pains I've been accumulating will fade into the background as my body accustoms itself to the pack load and the miles of walking. Generally that's been true, but this year I will be starting off with some of last year's foot problems still unresolved, a returning case of medial epicondylitis (don't panic - just golfer's elbow), and a nagging sciatica. Well that's what another year will do to you. But hopefully, I'll hold together well enough.

Not solely because of these little complaints, the walk from Winchester, England to Rome will take a year longer than originally envisioned. Last year's approximately forty five days and 750 miles got me and my friend Patrick to the Col du Grand Saint Bernard, just about 100 meters from the Italian border. That walk was too long, too rushed, and too many miles per day. So, whereas the original plan was to do an equivalent hike this year ending in Rome, I've convinced Patrick that we should take an extra year, maintaining an average daily distance closer to my preferred eighteen miles (thirty kilometers). With no set endpoint other than the necessity of making my flight home, it doesn't really matter how far I make it along the Via Francigena this year in the three or so weeks I will be walking. I expect to get somewhere between Parma and La Spezia, about 400 miles from the Saint Bernard pass, but a little less will be just fine.

This is, after all, Italy. I hope there will be days where I prefer to linger than to walk. If there are, then faró niente, I'll do nothing but explore some little village, meet some interesting people, and meditate on "life, the universe, and everything." No, Douglas Adams is not on my iPhone, but Matsuo Basho, Joseph Conrad, and Belden Lane are.

As last year, if it can be arranged, I'd like to see some friends, Colleen, l'artista eccezionale, and her husband, now residing near Alba, and Giorgio, il pellegrino molto dedicato, whom Patrick and I met last year, the day before we arrived in Besançon, and who I've arranged to meet in Vercelli. Giorgio was one of the very few pilgrims we met last year and the only one we reconnected with on at least a few days. I expect and hope we will meet more walkers this year, the Italian section of the Via Francigena more established as a contemporary pilgrimage route than are the sections through France and Switzerland.


As Kathryn, a wonderfully knowledgeable professor at GTU in Berkeley reminds me, Chaucer wrote that April is the month in which folks' thoughts turn to pilgrimage. In my case, I've been thinking about this year's walk almost from the time I returned from last year's. Rumination turns to reality at the beginning of June, a week from Sunday.