Arrivo

I am in Rome. But it is going to take a little while to write this next post. Have patience. Give me a few days. 

Due giorni più a Roma

Two more days to Rome. I am sitting at the table in a room in Compagnano di Roma, an apartment really, facing a bricked terrace and a garden, sipping a cup of Verbena tea.

My pace has slowed considerably, not my walking speed, but the speed of my movements when not walking, and my thinking speed. On the other hand, the last week has been a flash. The days seem to have rushed by. I've run into a number of other pilgrims – some I've already mentioned to you, others not – but in the roughly forty hours I've spent on the road since I last posted, I would be surprised if I've spent more than two hours walking and talking with others. I have been walking alone. I have been staying alone. 

During this trip, I've occasionally stayed in spedali, the pilgrim hostels. No longer. The various guidebooks and lodging directories I have access to, in English, German and Italian, those I am carrying on my phone, and those other pilgrims have shared with me, paint a distressing picture. It doesn't bother me that many of the hostels do not have beds, just mats on the floor. I stayed in a number of those during my three walks to Compostela. I met Patrick in one of those. I had one of my most significant coincidental experiences in one such hostel just off the Camino Frances, an event that must have an incredibly low probability of occurrence, that a person of faith might take as a sign. It was so improbable, I still shake my head at it. People I tell it to react with pelle d'oca, goosebumps. 

No, it is that the guidebooks describe the hostelers as gruff, unpleasant, and the hostels themselves as less than attractive, dark, dirty. The pilgrims that have stayed in them confirm those assessments. The wonderful hostel in Formello is an exception, but that's not one of my stopping points. So I've opted for leased bedrooms, monasteries, and B&B's. Sometimes the latter means cello-wrapped cakes and zwieback for your breakfast, with the fixings to make your own coffee. Sometimes it means it big buffet breakfasts. But other times it means gracious hospitality, a well crafted omelet and a real attempt at friendship. Thinking of the latter brings a warm smile to my face.

I've had reasonably good luck staying at monasteries and convents. One should certainly not expect any measure of extravagance, but the generally tiny or shabby or somewhat in disrepair rooms and public areas are often balanced by quiet spaces, a chance to shed the fatigue of the day, places to relax and think. Sometimes they offer more. 

A few nights ago, I stayed at the Regina Pacis monastery outside of Vetralla. It's not an old, medieval structure as some of them are. It looks like it might have been built sometime in the last century, but it could be a bit older than that. Only thirteen nuns are in residence. There's nothing really remarkable about it all, except for sorella Mary Bernadette. 

The sisters at Regina Pacis are cloistered in silence from the outside world but, as in other monasteries that take guests, there is usually one sister who interfaces with them and may, as necessary, speak with them when she brings dinner and breakfast, or when she stamps the pilgrim's credential, or takes payment for the stay. Mary Bernadette is, as she says, from "the Congo." Her glistening deep cocoa skin is luxuriant, reminding me of that rich dark cup of hot chocolate one gets at Angelina's in Paris, the oils collecting and shimmering along the surface, almost hypnotizing you. She must be in her late twenties but it is hard to tell in the wimple and the almost floor length black and white habit. Thirteen years in Italy, away from her home, she is quiet, proper, stiffly functional as she wheels the rumbling food cart into the dining room. But that reserved demeanor cracks, her face turns into a wide grin, and she bubbles when she hears the language of her youth as I tell her in French that though I speak a little of her language, I will not because it would utterly confuse my already poor Italian. She begins to talk in rapid French, effervescent, and then, understanding what I had said, in Italian, and she is no longer that reserved young woman but a happy, almost jumping young girl.

I had a terrible night's sleep at the Regina Pacis. As soon as I lay down in bed my back started itching and then my entire body. At first I thought it was insects of one sort or another and I applied an ultra strong tropical repellent that I purchased a number of years ago in Switzerland. The itching continued to worsen. I then thought it might be hives or some other allergic reaction to some cherry tomato-sized plums that were served at dinner. Thinking the insect repellent might be aggravating the situation I towelled myself off with cold water from the sink in the bedroom. No help. For hours I dozed briefly and then woke, tossing and looking for a more comfortable position. Finally, I concluded that it must be the bed linens themselves and I pulled my silk sleep sack from my backpack, sunk down deep into it so that not an inch of skin was touching anything other than silk. In the deep dark of the night, I was able to put a few hours of sleep together. The next morning I mentioned it to another of the pilgrims who was staying at the monastery. He too had experienced that hairshirt of a penitent's bed.

As I made my way from Bolsena to Viterbo to Vetralla to Compagnano di Roma, the paths taken since I last wrote have included another section of the Via Cassia Consolare, well more than a mile of it. I am convinced that whatever modern man may do to this planet, that road will remain as it did 2,200 years ago and still be functional, if there are any of us around to make use of it. Every pilgrim I've spoken with who has walked it is in awe of its age, condition and beauty. I've walked through acres upon acres of hazelnut orchards, past Etruscan tombs, medieval towers hidden among the trees, through forests alongside brooks that make the sweetest music as they tumble from rock to pool, and throw diamonds as they move from shadow to sunlight. I've smelled and seen sulfur springs as they bubble up naturally in this region of terme. I've been surprised when I turned a bend, exited a forest and found a Roman amphitheater, not built, but cut into tufa and just next to it an Etruscan necropolis and next to that a two-thousand year old Mithraeum, no external feature indicating its presence, but inside the classical architectural elements remaining, three naves, long benches cut from tufa, and a pit in the floor to collect the blood sacrifice. And on the ceiling, crystal salts sparkled from a still recognizable painted St. Michael, his oval face jutting out from the otherwise smoothed, arched ceiling dating from when that pagan temple to Mithras was taken over and consecrated to the Christian faith. 

But I've also walked on a lot of asphalt, only a couple of miles of it on busy thoroughfares. On occasion the trees on either side reach across and shadow the walker from the intense sun, but far more often I glance ahead and see long stretches of sunlight between the momentary umbral relief cast by two lonely trees. Much of the day I am walking on near-white rock, pulverized to the consistency of cinder, that reflects the sunlight and radiates the heat up into what would otherwise be the cooling shadow of my wide brimmed Tilley. At the end of each day I am obligated to make a long climb, steepening as I progress, to a hilltop village, or town, or city, Etruscan or Roman in origin, repurposed in the Medieval.

There I find my place for the night, another day closer to Rome. 

Da solo, l'ultima mattina in Toscana

Alone, the last morning in Tuscany. Patrick caught the bus from Radicofani to Chiusi yesterday afternoon, continuing by train to Rome. We had known from the start of this year's walk that we would not be finishing our journey together. Though the "dream" to walk the VF was mine, I invited Patrick to join me. Thus the "dream" became his as well. 

That the dreams might not be identical became evident in the accommodations we each needed to make. Patrick accommodated me in many ways, probably more than I realize. I accommodated him as well, in ways I am certain he does not realize. Through almost ninety days and nights we had only one "discussion."

My dream was to walk the VF. I'm pretty sure I will make it to Rome, but I will not have walked the entire way, as those who have been following along since the beginning might recall. I gave up that dream early in the walk, several days before Canterbury, when I made the really big accommodation to Patrick. One day we skipped a leg and took the train instead. The why's and wherefores aren't important now. It's history. I did it for friendship, though it hurt me deeply. But it's a slippery slope, and once you skip a leg there are many imagined good reasons to skip another. As I recall, we skipped three in total that first year, certainly less than fifty miles in a total of more than 1,500 from Winchester to Rome. 

When Patrick suggested skipping a leg this year, I demurred. "Why?" Patrick asked. "We've done it before." I told him " Not since we left the St. Bernard pass and entered Italy" – actually not since Besançon a couple of hundred kilometers earlier. A small victory for a dream reconfigured. 

Whether from the beginning or emerging at some later date, Patrick's dream was to walk the last stages and arrive in Rome with several others he holds dear, Colette and two long time friends, in addition to myself. I had always intended to walk the VF alone. But when Patrick was suffering through some difficult family issues, I invited him to join me. Knowing he is a man of faith, I thought the project would excite him and help him, and a pilgrimage to Rome would be a devotion, an extended prayer for intercession, an act of faith. 

For me, though, a walking quintet could never be in the cards. I know and like the people he will walk with. I stayed at the home of one during a visit to Paris. They are good people. But I know myself. It is not the way I want to walk to Rome. I expressed this to Patrick last year when the possibility arose that some of the others might join us for part of that year's walk. Perhaps I was too politic. Perhaps I should have been more direct, more definitive. But this could never be my dream. 

So once Patrick committed to his dream and we set out this year, we knew that the day would come when we would embrace, kiss each other's cheeks, and wish each other a "Buon Cammino." We didn't know it would be Radicofani but we knew it would come. Patrick arrived in Rome Saturday night, forty-eight hours before his flight back to Paris. That gave him an opportunity to attend mass at the Vatican on Sunday, something he had long wanted to do. I hope he found great comfort in it. 

Since my down day in Siena, we had come another sixty five miles, walking through luscious Tuscan countryside. My spirits were much improved despite temperatures in the nineties and a few climbs made more difficult by the heat.

The morning after Patrick left, I started out with Giuseppe and Carole, friends I had made last year, who I knew would be finishing their walk to Rome this year but who I thought I would not get to see due to their different starting point and starting date. But after checking into the spedale in Radicofani, doing my chores, and returning from hanging up my laundry, who should I see but Giuseppe and Carole just getting settled in. So my first morning alone without Patrick, my last morning in Tuscany, I walked with them for about an hour. I walk at a pace that is natural for me, my passo naturale, and that pace is somewhat faster than theirs. So I did not see them the rest of that day. That is one of the differences between walking with someone and meeting someone, even someone you know. Groups form and breakup as the hours and days go by. Patrick's pace and mine are close but not identical. I'm a bit faster but he has the capacity to walk farther. Though we walk apart much of the time we always stop at some point to wait for the other. We always eat together. We always stay the night in the same place (with one exception not relevant to the discussion here). 

That morning was my last morning in Tuscany. As I entered Lazio, the province in which Rome is located, on my way to Acquapendente, I ran into a number of other pilgrims, a Japanese woman Patrick and I had been occasionally walking with and two Italian pilgrims from the Venezia I had met the night before. The next day, from Acquapendente to Bolsena, I ran into Giuseppe and Carole again and a few other walkers.

It was not until today, from Bolsena to Montefiascone, that I walked entirely alone. 

I started out late. I did not see another pilgrim all day. I occasionally ran into someone out for a bit of exercise, a man walking his dog, a farmer tending to his crops, but I did not walk with anyone. I spent the day in woods, in vineyards or walking through agricultural estates, on country roads and even an impressive stretch of the ancient Roman road, the Via Cassia Consolare, Roman basoli paving beneath my feet, more than two thousand years old, weathered but otherwise the Roman road of antiquity. There were wonderful views on and off of Lake Bolsena, a volcanic caldera, below me. For most of the day the only sounds I heard were sounds of nature, not a single car for hours on end. 

But most of the day was spent in walking meditation, deep in my own thoughts, occasionally coming out of my reverie to check whether or not I was still on the path, and then, moments later, I was back in thought again. Many of the thoughts I had in prior years came back to me. The fact that I am nearing the end of the journey prompted other thoughts. I began to get clarity on the meditation I referred to in an earlier post, the one that occurred to me on my way to San Gimignano, and which I hope to expand on in a future post. I walked in near silence, gravel crunching beneath my boots. My mind was calm. Tranquillo. 

Patrick and I have had some really great days walking the VF. Our reception and send off at Canterbury was memorable. Our hiking the alps and reaching the top of the San Bernard Pass together, ending our first year's walk in a triumphant embrace, was fantastic. We had several really glorious days this year walking in Tuscany. But I must tell you: today is right up there, one of the most satisfying days of the entire pilgrimage.

  

Mi sono svegliato in un veramente cattivo stato d'animo questa mattina

I woke up in a really foul mood this morning. It was a sort of Thomas Mann feeling, a slow-motion descent towards a silent lonely end.

It could have been the warm, sticky Siena night, uncooled in spite of the overhead fan that only succeeded in circulating the air within the stuffy room. The window facing the small rectangular courtyard three stories below provided no relief. It faced only on three other featureless brick walls.  

Or maybe that foul mood came from reading the news in the early morning dawn of mid-June in Europe when it is too early to wake yet only a glimmer of hope exists that it might be possible to coax another hour or two out of a restless sleep. So you find something to do that isn't stimulating and might actually bore you enough to drop off again. Didn't work. I read the news. I wish the media would strip the names of nations and politicians out of their stories so I can believe what I want about whatever place, rather than take the current reality-series world as it is. Or better yet, I should just divorce myself from what's happening out there and not let it intrude on the business of walking.

Or it could have been yesterday's visit to the Sinagoga di Siena, a tired sad place, full of history and a lot of pain, serving a community of only fifty, the remaining Jewish citizens of Siena. After passing so many churches over the past almost 1,400 miles, visiting a fair number with Patrick, finding wonderful art in some and real comfort and meditative space in others, I thought it would be uplifting to experience my own tradition's places of worship. It wasn't uplifting at all. No person of the Jewish faith was permitted to work on the synagogue's restoration so the design and its implementation show no sense of the spiritual at all. It looks more like my childhood memories of my grandparents' late nineteenth century-era apartment on Eastern Parkway in Brooklyn than a house of worship, a three dimensional plasterwork oval in the center of the ceiling, white on gray, a few plaster thunderbolts radiating across the ovoid's perimeter. The contrast between "church" and "synagogue" was way too stark, especially for one like me whose conception is that if there is a singular motivating force behind the infinite, He-She-It cannot possibly care in which tradition one honors it, whether it be a tradition of religion, the personally spiritual, or science. To be clear, in my conception, a science like cosmology is also a spiritual enterprise: dedicating one's life to the mysteries of the infinite, the secrets of creation.

Or the mood might have been for another reason. I know I was feeling the loneliness of waking on one's forty-sixth wedding anniversary, missing the one I should have been waking next to, cuddled in on a cooler, Northern California summer-is-winter morning where lingering against bare flesh brings a warmth that has nothing to do with physical temperature but everything to do with the only real meaningfulness of existence, the love of one whose life is symbiotically entwined with your own.

But I know that it was also the feeling I get every year approximately midway through these walks, when the thought arises of what a ridiculous conception it is for an almost sixty seven year old to trod hundreds or thousands of miles from some indistinct point A to another point B, no matter how celebrated, beautiful, and storied cities they may be. In the dead midway, there is no conception of Rome, only an objective to get there. I get this way every year at one point or another.

From Lucca to Altopascio to San Miniato Alto to Gambassi Terme to San Gimignano to Monteriggioni to Siena, the most recent steps of my journey, I've been suffering through temperatures in the high eighties and low nineties Fahrenheit. But I have also been thrilled by the actuality of the kind of Tuscan landscapes one readily imagines, the ochers, yellows, browns, and greens of dust filtered sunlight on hills, fields, and farmsteads. I've also engaged in meditations that come to mind unbidden, one in particular en route to San Gimignano that I need some time to unravel. Yet this morning in Siena I was in a foul mood. 

The day improved, lightened by a smiling, young, bright-spirited Chiara, the guide on a walking tour Patrick and I took this morning. We decided to spend an extra day in Siena and Chiara expertly maneuvered seven German tourists and two pellegrini-cum-tourists through the Duomo and gave us background on works by Michelangelo, Donatello, Bernini, and others, escorted us through the medieval heart of Siena, and let us in on particulars and secrets of the current day Palio.

I felt even better after getting a shave at the shop of one Giuseppe Castigleone and better still when during an evening passeggiata I discovered that one of the hole-in-the wall restaurants I had passed while searching for Giuseppe's place, a short narrow restaurant that earlier in the day seemed more appropriate for a donner/kebob shop or a take away pizza place, had set tables on the street and was in fact an absolutely authentic osteria serving food da casa, all home made. It is hard to escape tourists in Siena, and there certainly were some of those strolling along the street, but here the primary foot traffic was Sienese returning home from work or taking places at the numerous other shops that transformed themselves into local eating haunts in the early evening.

By dinner's end, I was in a reasonably good frame of mind, until I climbed the fifty-seven steps back to my airless room for another restless night's sleep.

 

 

Credi nei fantasmi? No, non ci credo . . . ma . . .

Dear friends: I am having problems posting pictures to my blog. If I can solve the problem I will update and republish this post. Thanks for understanding.

I've been thinking a lot about ghosts. 

For starters, my wonderfully emphatic and kind professor of Italian often asks whether we believe in them in order to illustrate the use of ci in place of ne with the verb credere. 

Well, I don't believe in the corporeal kind, except perhaps the one I saw on a United flight from somewhere to San Francisco almost thirty years ago. From what I know of his corporeal self, some sort of help was likely required to get him to his final destination and cruising at 35,000 feet or so certainly would have got him a good part of the way there.  On balance I think he made it.

The night I made it to Pontremoli in the northwest corner of la Toscana, the small city where I ended last year's walk and where I would begin this year's, I spent the night at the former monastery of the brothers capucine. After getting settled, meeting my friend Patrick at the station, and dining at Taverna all'Occa Bianca, I settled in for a restless sleep. Some time way before dawn I felt an impish little presence bouncing up and down on my knees. I told him to stop, which he did, and leave, which, at the time, I thought he had. Was it an old capucine or a jet-lagged stupor?  Don't know, but read on. 

Patrick and I headed out early for breakfast at the same taverna in which we had enjoyed a selection of regional specialities the night before. I had asked the padrone where we might get an early breakfast, and he said he'd open up for us by around seven. Over a cappuccino and a cornetto, I engaged him in a conversation about whether his family was from Pontremoli, how long he'd had the taverna, and other questions of the sort I like to engage those friendly or polite enough to suffer through my barely comprehensible Italian. Coloro che non provano, non imparano. Those who don't try, don't learn. 

Il padrone asked about our walk. We spoke about it at some length. When I asked to pay, he offered his hand in a friendly shake and said "Buon cammino." That's it: breakfast at the cost of a congenial conversation. Perhaps he thought acting kindly to a couple of pellegrini might bring on some future intercession for his own benefit. No telling what kind of ghosts he may have been trying to assuage. 

But there is that other kind of ghost, non-corporeal, neither friendly nor antagonistic, the felt presence of things past. All those who have visited Italy have likely sensed it. It is there in the presence of ruins, remains, refurbishments and repurposing like the mixed martial arts class held in the piazza fronting the church and monastery of San Francesco the other night in Lucca, or in the traditions like the evening passeggiata updated with incessant texting iPhones and youngsters in tow twirling fidget spinners, or in Nonna's traditional cooking adapted with Quinoa or with a special note on the menu to sufferers of celiac disease as to which dishes migh be most suitable to their condition.

Traveling by foot at three miles an hour, though, provides different kinds of opportunities to ponder these ghosts. From Pontremoli to Aulla to Sarzana to Massa to Camaiore to Lucca, the starting and end points of my first five days of walking, and all the small cities, villages, clumps of houses, hill towns and farmsteads in between, the interplay between old and new is everywhere. Many of the ospedali that welcomed and cared for pilgrims as long ago as five hundred, a thousand or fifteen hundred years ago are gone except for their stone outlines on the ground or are standing in some state of ruin. Others, though, are still welcoming pilgrims, providing a friendly reception, a hot shower, a clean bed (bring your own sleep sack, of course, no linens provided) and a meal – breakfast and/or dinner. 

Some are in the same structures that welcomed pilgrims long ago and others in repurposed church annexes or monasteries, or old palazzi left to the governance of civic authorities. Today, many still open their doors only to credentialed pilgrims, but others take vacationers as well. WIFI is almost everywhere and if it is not, the pilgrim frequently will opt for another ospedale, even another town to stop in. How else to do FaceTime with one's better half left at home?

In the countryside one gets to talk with people, simple and unaffected, in the kindest meanings of those words. A wave and a step forward initiates a conversation. I see that wave and cross the road to be greeted with a tooth-gapped smile and a glimmer of gold as the smile broadens further. The padrone of a small house and plot of land, can of wasp spray in his shirt pocket as he exits his croft, is so anxious to converse. He proudly places his fists on his hips, arms akimbo, when I call him by that title. He asks the usual questions. I ask him about the frequency of pilgrims: many, though for him that might be one or two a day. We spoke about his place and his work. I offered my name, first and last, and a handshake. In return he offers me his hand and his name: Sergio, Sergio Lucchese. A Lucchese, in the region of Lucca? Not a surprise but what does it say? His name is not a vocation as many names are. Somewhere, there was a break in official lineage, the father unknown or unwilling to give his name, so the name of the predominant regional power was taken. Another ghost story, standing right in front of me and offering to share a beer. Grazie, no. Devo andare dieci kilometri piú. Ten more KM to walk. So he insisted on giving me a 1.5 liter bottler of water and I could do nothing more than accept and carry the additional 3.3 pounds with me, though I already had plenty of water to see me to Lucca.

By about noon on our first day of walking, I was really feeling the effects of the jet-lag and my disturbed sleep the night before. I needed a nap. We spotted a restaurant on the outskirts of Filetto, across from a glade of chestnut trees. Outside the eatery was a sign for a pranzo lavoro, a working man's lunch, usually a sign for a hearty meal at a good price. We entered but both opted for a wonderfully fresh insalata mista for which the chef came out to ask if we might want some radicchio in our salad, his hands full of just picked and washed leaves still dripping wet, some garden dirt stubbornly clinging to them. After lunch, I crossed into the woods where a few picnic tables had been placed. Stretching out on a bench, I dozed for half an hour in that selva oscura, the same dark woods that are said to have been the inspiration for the opening of Dante's "Divine Comedy," until that little imp once again bounced me awake. It's the last I saw of that little ghost, but I continue to enjoy those other fantasmi  I encounter every day of my walk.

Ricomincierò a Roma il 1º giugno

Pontremoli

It’s been almost exactly a year since I returned from Italy and the second part of my walk to Rome. Just over a thousand miles completed; just around four hundred more to go.

I begin again on June 1st from Pontremoli in the northwest corner of Tuscany where last year’s walk ended. My good friend Patrick will meet me there the evening before and we will spend the night at a former monastery of the Order of Friars Minor Capuchin. Just to set the mood!

I am looking forward to the walk through Tuscany to Lucca, San Gimignano, Siena, and the impressively walled Monteriggioni before continuing south into the province of Lazio and Rome.

As always, my posts may be frequent or rare, voluminous or spare, transcendent or trite as mood and ability permit.

I hope you will have time to drop in on occasion and join me. Leave comments as you wish; they are always welcome.

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Allora ci vediamo. So, see you soon.

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