Spring finally arrived in France in the few days before I entered the champagne vineyards near Reims. It came in two incarnations. The weather turned sunny and warm, and the communitas that both Patrick and I had been missing became the focus of this portion of my adventure.
Anthropologists Victor and Edith Turner, in two works, one on ritual and the other on Christian pilgrimage, identified two characteristics that I experienced as key elements of my own walks, liminality and communitas. I won't do either concept justice here, but let me give you my definitions, the way I've internalized them. Liminality describes the sense that once you begin a ritual, a rite of passage, for example, or a pilgrimage, you are no longer the person you were before you began and you are not yet the person you will become when you have completed the ritual. If it is a rite of passage from boyhood to manhood, while the participants are engaged in the ritual they are no longer boys but are not yet men. In the kind of pilgrimage I engage in, the passage is more subtle and less predictable. But I can say with certainty that on every pilgrimage I have undertaken, I have learned things about myself that alter my self-perception and understanding. I return home different.
Communitas describes the community of those engaged in the ritual. In some tribal cultures, participants are removed from the family structure that was their support, and enter a community of those undertaking the ritual. In pilgrimage, people of different backgrounds, nationality, economic class, and even religion, form a community through the leveling process inherent in miles of hiking, sharing of hardships, sleeping in the most basic of accommodations, sharing food, and developing relationships that could not develop elsewhere. I have little doubt that all who have undertaken the Compostela pilgrimage will name community as the single most impactful factor of their pilgrimage experience.
So it is about people. And Patrick and I were heartened when we met our first fellow pilgrim, Wilma, a teacher from Lithuania. Our pilgrimages intersected for the briefest of times, one day, but knowing she was sharing the same road was warmth enough.
Wilma was sitting on her sleeping pad on the side of a quiet country road, tending her blistered feet. She saw a man with a backpack, me, and asked where I was from, where I started, and where I was going. "San Francisco, Winchester, Rome," I answered. "Vilnius, Canterbury, as far as I can get before my vacation is over," Wilma replied.
We would not of expected it of her, but Wilma put Patrick and me to shame. She was making 40 to 45 km a day, 24 to almost 30 miles, sometimes 1.5 times what we were aiming for, though we have had our share of 20+ mile days. She was a pretty slow walker but made her distance by walking from sunup to sundown before finding a place to lay her sleeping bag or pitch her tent.
Further along, a bit of communitas of a different sort. Along the road I passed an elderly but spry man looking forward to his 90th birthday later this year. He was standing in his driveway watching the world go by. He saw me coming. His eyes locked mine. There was no doubting I would stop and chat in my broken French. He asked if I was a pilgrim and where I was from. I told him that I was and that I was American. His face lit up. His eyes sparkled. It was 1944. The Liberation. His excitement could not be contained. I told him my father had been in France in '45. In a sure sign of friendship, he opened the big barred driveway gate and called to a young woman back in the house, 40-ish, a Belgian, his aide who looked after him. "Américain!" he called to her. It could not have meant much to her. She was friendly but her age told that she could not share the depth of emotion that was evident in her charge. Or in me. Remember when Americans were respected and appreciated? How far we have come.
And now to the main point. I made some really good friends on my six prior years of pilgrimage. We promised to keep in touch and we have, intermittently. But they all live in Europe and if I am ever to see them again, I have to take the initiative. So I took a break from my walk and set out to see some of the people with whom I've shared an incredible experience.
I've already told you about Beatrice and Paul and my detour to Dunkerque. Well, my wife, Carol, joined me for the last couple of weeks as we spent time with some of those people I've been telling her about. We spent several days with two really sweet people, Eva and Gösta, on their farm outside of Valberg, Sweden. And a few more days with my good friend Nicolas, with whom I must have walked and shared dormitory rooms for at least two weeks in 2011, and his wife Lulu, whom he met that same year and with whom I also walked. We stayed with them at Lulu's parent's vacation home on the Bretagne coast. Their two young children, Paul and Louis, and Lulu's parents were also there.
And then to Paris, where Carol and I were well looked after by Jean-Michel, who was Patrick's walking companion when I met him in 2012 and with whom I walked from Porto to Compostela last year, and by his wife Catherine, who is a lovely, kind woman, and who I met in Compostela when she joined Jean-Michel there after his walk. I caught up with Jean-Christophe, another Porto walking companion, and met his wife Areth at a dinner in Versailles hosted by Patrick and Colette.
And Carol and I had dinner with our long term good friends Barbara and Jean-Philippe, full of vitality as always. So really very good to see them.
So the cold I experienced as I walked through the battlefields of the Somme has been eclipsed by the warmth of friendships renewed and maintained.
I am ready to start walking again.
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