I tossed it

I wrote a new post. And then I tossed it. I felt I owed you something because I left you on the old Roman road, the hot and dusty Via Agrippa, a road that Archbishop Sigeric must certainly have travelled in the mid-900's on his way to Rome. The only consolation I gave you was the hospitality of people like the Sognys, who open their homes with no expectations of recompense. That was many days and many miles ago.

I was going to tell you about the days just before Besançon, when I walked through rolling hills of pasture, meadows and woodland, climbed to several small hill towns, and traversed many farming villages, some with just a few houses and crofts. The hiking was easy and the landscapes gentle.

These were days when I never started out particularly early in the morning, but was usually enroute while the day was still quiet and young. I walked in near silence on wooded paths with white butterflies dancing around my ankles and through fields of high grasses that left dew tracks on my knees, only the sound of birdsong to break the morning stillness. 

And I was going to tell you about the days after Besançon, when I hiked in the Jura Mountains. I made the long climb out of Besançon to heights opposite and above its famed Citadel, walked the plateau, and then descended into the valley of the Loue, below granite cliffs and wooded valley walls, to Ornans, home of painter Gustave Coulbert. I walked upstream along that now gentle river for a day and a half, passing old villages with houses built backing onto the water, remnants of water wheels and mill races scattered along the way, and measuring gauges showing that the river had, at times, turned into a devastating deluge. 

I was planning to describe how I climbed the gorge carved by that river, sixteen hundred feet, about the height of a 150 story building, as the path followed the ever thinning but increasingly wild flow, churning pools and thundering cataracts in dappled sunlight. The trail was narrow at times, with a precipitous drop hidden by trees or ferns or bushes. Footholds were sometimes tricky, tree roots frequently obstructed the passage, scree from the canyon walls littered the trail, and occasional seasonal tributaries formed rocky pools which had to be navigated stone by stone, careful of their water slicked faces. 

I was going to relate how, at one point, intently focused on avoiding a tree root jutting from the difficult path, I failed to notice a tree limb, about three inches in diameter, severed from its tree and obstructIng a third of the the trail. It clubbed me in the collarbone, the force bringing me to a half seated, half kneeling position, a loud "oof" escaping me at the surprise and power of the impact, a large purple contusion remaining as a souvenir.

But I never intended to write a travelogue. So I tossed it. I am too focused on other things. 

I've walked more than seven hundred miles since leaving Winchester. A few days ago, I crossed into Switzerland north of Laussane and exited the Jura. It is hot and has been for a number of days. And I've been walking past my limit. Well, I guess not, I am still walking, but definitely past my preferred maximum distance of about eighteen miles. There have been too many twenty plus days and too many just shy of twenty five. 

Crossing the plateau from the foot of the Jura to Le Mont and then down to the lake at Lausanne was one of those long days, done in 90°F heat. And following that, the walk from Montreaux to Villeneuve and then along the upper Rhone to St. Maurice was another, but it was hotter, 37°C, 99°F. 

Patrick and I found one restaurant accessible from the trail. I greeted the owner with a plea, in halting but perfect French, according to Patrick, though I doubt it, to allow two obviously baked and withered pilgrims to eat their packed sandwiches in his establishment. We purchased cold drinks and asked that our empty water bladders be filled with cold water from the tap, to which the waitress added several scoops of ice cubes, and whispered to every customer in the dining room that these two were headed for Rome. We did not bother to mention that it would be a two year adventure.

After 44 days of walking, I am tired. Just two more days but the two biggest challenges of this trip are directly in front of me, the first psychological, the second, physical. 

Tomorrow, I am supposed to walk a section of trail people have called dangerous. Between Martgny and Orsières, the trail exits the woods. At that point, it is narrow, not much wider than the width of a man's shoulders and it hugs the valley wall, on one side rock, on the other, nothing. I've done a reasonable amount of walking in the Alps. In the four years I lived in Zurich, I was often on trails with nothing but air on one side. I don't mind being high up so long as I have ground on all sides of me, enough to lay flat and hug that terra firma. So if the path is as wide as I am tall, I can deal with it by hugging the uphill. But I know what will happen as soon as I exit the safety of the trees on a path as narrow as this one is advertised to be. It will be like looking one of the Gorgons square in the face. I will freeze. I mean absolutely.

I've been here a few times before. Not here physically, but in similar circumstances. I only managed to defrost and make it across once. It was the first time and may have been the event that triggered my fear of heights. 

It was a snow covered ridge line, only about twenty yards long, nothing on either side but air. It was late in the day and if I went back I'd still be on the mountain after nightfall. Not an option. The valley on either side of the ridge was socked in, puffy cloud tops somewhere above me. I was walled in with cloud so I couldn't actually see all that nothing. The only way I could move was slowly, in small steps, eyes on my feet, peripheral vision voluntarily shut down. I had to sing marching songs from my Army advanced infantry training to keep my mind off the predicament:

"My girl's got big eyes

Just like two pizza pies

Gee, Mom, I wanna go ho-o-ome. 

My girl's got big hips

Just like two battle ships

Gee, Mom, I wanna go ho-o-ome."

My cousin Mike will understand both the predicament and the solution. He, too, has a fear of heights, and he, too, did his AIT at Fort Polk, Louisiana, not quite affectionately called "Tigerland," in the days they were shipping treasure off to be lost in the jungles of Southeast Asia. And while the lyrics I sang on that snowy ridge and in Lousiana are PI (politically incorrect, for my European friends), they and worse are exactly what we nineteen- and twenty-year-olds sang as we marched in formation that summer of 1970, and we sang them louder when we marched passed the WAC barracks. Why they would help me get across a snowy mountain ridge, I have no idea.

Just for the record, Carol was with me on that bridge of snow. She made it across without a second thought.

You can lay odds on me if you wish, but the fix is in. This trip is about knowing myself. With regard to this phobia, I do. I know it would be foolish to try this path as tired as I am, carrying many kilos on my back, in this heat, especially when there are other safer trails to get me to Orsières. It has, though, taken me weeks to come to this conclusion. I count it a victory of a mature mind. 

The second challenge, the last day of my walk, is the 5,180 foot climb from Orsières to the Hospice at the Col du Grand St. Bernard, where the Roman road, the Alpis Poenina, crossed between what is now Italy and Switzerland. I've done climbs of three thousand feet before when I was living in Zurich. The last time I hiked one of those was probably seven years ago, not at age 65, which I will be in a week. And I've never done one of this magnitude. 

So I am wary of the climb. I question whether it is too much for me. Things go wrong in the mountains. Small errors multiply: a bad foothold, a sudden unexpected change in weather, not drinking enough water, just plain fatigue.  

It will be a long hike with few opportunities to bail out. My GPS track indicates it is a 13.5 mile walk. It will be longer. The distance is measured as straight lines between waypoints. Since the path is hardly ever straight, the actual distance is longer than the routing indicates. The problem is compounded in the mountains where sinuous paths and switchbacks add far more actual distance. There is one small village directly on the path during the first half of the walk. It has no services. There is a larger community about halfway but it is a half hour off the trail. There is nothing on the second half, though a mile or so before the end of the hike, the road leading over the Saint Bernard pass crosses the path once. 

OK. So there it is. I am actually excited about the climb, but I am concerned.

That's what I have been thinking about these last few day. That's why I tossed the post. Too trivial. Writing it was really just an exercise to try and think about something else. It didn't work.