- don't breath in too deeply
- steam and exhaust don't rise or evaporate away
- put Vaseline under your eyes
- wear more than one hat
- potatoes freeze on the bottom shelf
- bacon fat congeals even on the shelf over the stove
- soup is revered
- the diesel pumps break
- the water pump fails
- the ravens are fine
- we look out for each other
- -30 feels pretty nice
Once again, some twists and turns have found me nestled in a 70s wood-paneled former construction trailer, flipping eggs and skiing in the Arctic. While I had been looking forward to living on my own for the first time in a while, dipping back into city life, reading physical copies of newspapers, swimming at a pool, meeting more than eight people every six months, a good reason to delay came along.
Instead of moving to Anchorage, I visited just long enough to haphazardly dig my car out from three feet of snow and sell it, then packed my things, and fled north to wait out the 60 days until I can legally return to France. The country has long exerted a pull on me -- wine, over 1,000 kinds of cheese, myriad buttery sauces, Romantic classical piano, chivalric legend, the Norman invasion, tongue kissing -- and now one of its fine citizens has invited me to live there. Ah, mais oui.
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.
