Late November, late afternoon sun reaches obliquely through the trees and guilds a smile already gold. Coffee, bread, crossing the river, walking in step -- easily filled days short and cold. Gazing at portraits, neck outstretched, dark almond eyes, her prostrate languor artfully told. Wishing it was longer, wanting time to hold.
For about 500 miles, yellow arrows mark the way between towns, through mountains, across the plains, and eventually to a big cathedral that may or may not contain the mouldering remains of St. James. There are official mileposts with tile arrows, arrows painted on buildings and sidewalks, tags among overpass graffiti and stones, and, not infrequently, tattooed on the limbs of fellow walkers. And if these markings are inadequate, as long as you head west, you're roughly on course.
Conversely, I thought often of the opening lines of Dante's "Commedia." It begins something like, "In the middle of the journey of life, I found myself in a dark forest -- the pathway had been lost." The forest is not a literal one; the "journey" in the original Italian is "cammin," walking. As I talked with more people along the way, most were at a personal junction: changing jobs, getting engaged, getting divorced, kids gone to college, retirement, a significant birthday, organizing ideas for a book, or more simply allowing ideas to organize themselves. Without knowing the direction they would take upon returning home, at least for a few weeks they could wake up each morning, go outside, and know which way to walk.
I ended up walking with a group for the second half (my French friends plus two other women). It rained almost unrelentingly, and we hunched our shoulders as ponchos flapped wildly in the wind and hail pelted our faces. We ate a lot of soup, and collected chestnuts to roast. We piled our laundry together, pooled our cheese and bread for picnic lunches, walked in varying pairs and as a unit. Sometimes all the socializing drove me crazy and felt like managing the whims of high-strung children, but overall I was glad both to share the sights -- yellow and red vineyards, broad rainbows, thatch-roofed cottages -- and also to later remark upon things enjoyed in solitude. And we can continue to talk about the path.
Please enjoy these sentences from my daily notes. Sorry I seem to have a pee fixation.
- [In a mediocre dorm:] Gross, close, warm room, snoring and coughing, I would douse you all in gasoline and torch you if I could.
- [In my first private room, with my own bathroom:] I took a long hot shower that did not involve smelling anyone else's pee.
- Up a big hill with grand view of meseta and exhausted sunflower fields; had to pee off to the side in gale-force wind and some puddled on my shoe.
- [In a dormitory run by friendly nuns, all 80+ years old:] The nuns are the fucking best -- real butter at breakfast -- I ate about half a stick with bread.
- I washed my pants(!) and started reading "Brideshead Revisited."
- Woke up from a dream that I was dating an incredibly charming Ian McKellen.
- Fruit salad and a mediocre donut; off in the dark, crisp morning; lovely pink sunrise; looks like Iowa.
- [Departing the city of Leon:] Smiling irrepressibly, caring naught for the rain and shitty urban landscape, chatting away as semi-trucks roar past on the highway.
- Never seen anyone eat an enormous ice cream-filled crepe with tequila chaser.
The trees are disappearing. The landscape is flattening, and I am on the cusp of the meseta, at least a week's walking across tableland for which I'm struggling to muster enthusiasm. Luckily, a couple French friends and a streak of good communal dinners are spurring me on.
After two weeks, I'm seasoned enough to identify an inverse relationship between meal price and taste: the cheapest places have the best food. The two-euro egg sandwich is always better than one that costs three. A couple nights ago I dined with tablecloth and multiple courses, and it was fine. Far better was the "innkeeper" lady who insisted we eat first and then donate as we thought appropriate (she made a soul-pleasing paella). Even the beer was handed out to passersby with a brief mention of the donativo box. At another place, seven euros got me more salad and excellent bacon-y spaghetti carbonara than I could eat. At yet another, a sort of self-appointed priest served deliciously garlicky lentil-chorizo stew in inch-thick hand-carved bowls.
Some hostels are old homes converted to the purpose. 300-year-old staircases constructed with stone or plaster and thick wooden beams, crooked doors, sloping floors, walls built thick to protect against the blazing sun and retain warmth at night. Our charging cell phones and high-tech rain gear contrast oddly with the aesthetic. But drenching bread in olive oil and drinking wine with friendly strangers is timeless.
Chaucer begins "The Canterbury Tales" with a treacly description of springtime in the English countryside. The gentle warm breezes playing over the freshly-plowed fields and gamboling newborn farm animals entice pilgrims -- eager for the novelty of a journey -- to travel. This is the frame story around a wide variety of fart jokes, satirizing of authority figures, creative cuckolding, and perhaps the most vivid description of acne ever penned.
It's only Day 6 of the Camino de Santiago (Frances route) for me, so there's plenty of time to meet colorful characters. Unlike Chaucer's band of pilgrims, most of us are traveling alone, and may keep company for a few days but likely will drift and flow according to different paces and rest days. There's plenty of camaraderie and conversation if that's what you seek. One can also maintain a retiring demeanor, abjure the made-for-Instagram photo ops, and find less popular rocks behind which to pee.
Because I like structure, I'm honing my own version of liturgical hours. As it still gets pretty hot, like 80F in the afternoon, I start walking early (6:30am) in the cool dark. This is one of my favorite times of day, as it's been clear and there are moon shadows. The sky lightens, blending oranges and pinks and dissolving them into day. At 9:30am, I have First Lunch (apple + cheese + nuts). The back of my shirt is sweat-soaked but it's cool enough yet to trade out for a sweater while sitting still. I walk until sometime in the early afternoon, then stumble gratefully into the oasis of a hostel. After casting off the burden of my backpack, I perform my ablutions/emerge from the shower, and change into my Evening Wear (aka the clean set of clothes).
At some point I consume Second Lunch, often also Afternoon Chocolate. I nap, write notes, read the news, look at where I'm going tomorrow, and eventually go get tapas or perhaps a jar of fancy tuna in olive oil. This is also the time of Evening Cucumber, my guaranteed daily vegetable intake. Maybe I stop to look at the massive gold-painted wood carvings inside a church; maybe I chat with an old British man about our respective careers. By 9pm it's time to pass out listening to a podcast about infrastructure design, or Hercules, or debt restructuring, which helps block out the snoring from the bunk above.
Mt. Etna rises an improbable 11,000+ feet, just about next to the sea. I trundled partway up to gaze at some of its craters. In places the trail and scree consistency reminded me strongly of a favorite path in Antarctica. Our guide gleefully led the way down, jog-skipping, kicking up clouds of dust, relieved to leave behind the Arctic gusts of 70F air that had buffeted us, necessitating a wool cap and two jackets.
A couple days later, I took a ferry to Vulcano, a small island north of Sicily. A great diversity of rocks and minerals crowded together there, with a black sand beach across the way from a sulfurous hot spring next to the bubbling sea. Here, too, was a magnificent crater to climb up to, seething above the idyllic beaches.
Unfortunately, I somehow caught a cold. There was a lot of lazing around my Airbnb, alternately reading the Victorian literary classic "Vanity Fair" and listening to the comedy podcast classic "My Dad Wrote a Porno." I willed myself the energy to kayak along the cliff-y coast and explore some caves with my wonderful guide Eugenio. He was affable, informative, fun; he shared stories about the island's geologic history, its role in Italian film scandal history, and his personal history rescuing goats stranded at the base of ravines. He equipped and encouraged me to swim through some small underwater caves, which was somewhat terrifying and pretty cool.
I took another ferry to Stromboli, which is in fact a volcanic island and not a pastry. The village of Ginostra boasts a population of 40, with a couple cafes and tiny shops, a beautiful and savage beach, and a view of the almost constantly active volcano. There is no better place to recover from a cold, cook in a semi-outdoor kitchen, and let the warm wind and wild waves and window-rattling seismic activity realign one's sense of perspective.
One night when several of us watched glowing rocks spew into the air, an old guy struck up conversation. He happened to be a French volcanologist, there to place sensors across the mountainside. He explained some of his research and enjoyed the colossal blasts with unjaded wonder. He also shared with me some favorite patisseries in Paris, which intel I'll follow up on in a few weeks.
scampering down Etna
I'm pleased to report that 20 years later a non-negligible amount of Italian remains lodged in my brain, even after two overnight flights on the heels of Cottonwood partying and fraught Anchorage life re-assessing. When I finally arrived, weary and bedraggled, at my Airbnb, I chatted ungrammatically but coherently with host Claudio about working in Alaska and the logistics of my friends' wedding in Sicily. No one has been too thrown off by me saying the Spanish "es" instead of "è" or "bueno" instead of "buono" that has crept in courtesy of my early-summer Duolingo practice. I even understood an explanation about sorting various recycling.
The vibe is pretty beach-relaxed down here, but still I feel self-conscious in my increasingly grimy two shirts. The hot bright sun, the gut-bomb fried rice balls (arancini), my bone-deep fatigue -- it's taken a minute to adjust to leaving Alaska. (Is week-long jet lag a product of too many miles, or middle-aged mileage?) Luckily, a handful of Coldfooters was here to ease my transition, and provide camaraderie for dancing. Actually, compliments to Cleo and Ronny's friends and family, who ALL danced for hours, from wedding DJ favorites like "Mambo #5" and "Celebration" to the salsa and cumbia that had the Venezuelan guests and the catering staff joyously flaunting their moves. Those of us departing *early* left at 2am, after late-night spaghetti was served to fortify those dancing 'til dawn.
And now I'm into freeform vacation mode, treading city streets footsore and antsy-me, reading six-month-old NY Review of Books, cooking pasta and transporting olive oil around with me. Sometimes it feels like seeking some kind of transcendence through some kind of groundedness. Instead of eat-pray-love, it's walk-read-eat.
The sun is cast over the page I write on like a stage light. It's vying with a sky full of clouds to angle down through the screen door of the Bacon Barn, our staff living room. There's a hexagonal coffee table topped with a chess board, bins stuffed with costumes, rough shelves full of disparate books, and a creek flowing nearby. The wind has been blowing hard for several days -- I can't kayak, but it has been fun bobbing around in the chop at afternoon swim club.
I'm reluctant to plunge forward in any particular direction as I try to squeeze everything from the final week here, and my last page of this notebook. The next one is waiting in my bag, ready for Sicily and Spain and scribblings barely legible.
Tonight we host our friends from the main lodge for a big party. I've calculated that a flour sack's worth of pizza will be made in a couple hours. It's my last professional cooking for a few months at least, if doing so in an old prom dress with gin in hand can still be considered so.
