Robert Ward

anna-marie on the via de la plata

2011-04-28T23:20:00.000-04:00

Hey peregrinos!

I've been too busy working and looking for a new place of residence to get my next Via Francigena installment out of the oven. But may I direct you in the meantime to Anna-Marie Krahn's website, Pilgrim Roads, where you will find the continuing chronicle of her epic walk to Santiago, first along the Via de la Plata from Sevilla, then deviating by way of treacherous goat-tracks and routes known only to contrabandistas to enter the city of the Apostle by the side door. Or this is what I gathered from my first all-too-brief non-virtual encounter with Pilgrim Anna-Marie in Toronto last month.

Right now she's about two weeks in, just gatehring momentum, so it's a good time to pick up the thread. The blog is well-written, entertaining and full of personality - and that's from somebody who hates blogs.

Peek back in here after a week or so and you should find some further adventures of Sigeric. But meantime, hie thee hence! http://www.pilgrimroads.com/

the french language in aosta (via francigena vi)

2011-04-09T23:23:00.005-04:00

The Alps are the great watershed of Europe. On the north face rise the Rhine, the Rhone, the Danube; on the south, the Po. Whether a drop of rain that falls in the Alps ends up in the North Sea or the Black or the Adriatic all comes down to gravity. But languages are carried by human beings and human feet can defy gravity, meaning mountains aren’t always an effective linguistic watershed.

1561, the date I tried to spell out to Sigeric, was the year in which French replaced Latin as the language of official business in the Val d’Aosta. This did not represent the imposition of a foreign language but rather a recognition of the fact that Aosta’s closest ties were - and had always been - not to the neighbouring Italian Po Valley culture, but to the French-speaking world over the mountains. That the de facto first language of this part of Italia was French.

The language decree was handed down by Duke Emmanuel Philibert of Savoy, who went by the genial soubriquet of Testa di Ferro, “Ironhead.” Old Ironhead himself was a French speaker by birth, but he had no bias against Italian. Indeed, he made it the official language of Aosta’s neighbouring province of Piemonte and its capital Torino, as well as Nizza – or as we call it today, Nice.

Of course, to complicate matters (and when are matters ever not complicated?), what is meant by “French” is ambiguous in the Val d’Aosta context. The French mandated by Ironhead for use in education, government and law, was Parisian French, while the French of the Valdaostans was the patois known as Franco-Provençal, a little language of its own, distinct from both northern French and Occitane, the French of the south, a spoken tongue replete with quaint medieval remnants. So in a certain sense, French was an imposed language in Val d‘Aosta.

For three centuries after Duke Emanuel Philibert, the Valley of Aosta, this snowy little cul-de-sac, continued tranquilly on its unique cultural path, its identity protected by membership in the bilingual realm of Savoy. But the fortunes of the House of Savoy had risen during those centuries, along with their pretensions. The head of the household no longer styled himself Duke but King - of Piedmont, Savoy and Sardinia. In 1861, King Victor Emanuel II raised the house one notch further, becoming the first King of the united Italian nation.

Prior to the unification of Italy, French was the mother language of one-eighth of Savoy’s subjects. The royal house itself used Italian and French indifferently, while Count Cavour, the prime minister who more than anyone forged the new nation, was far more comfortable in French. But to uphold his claim to the crown of Italy, Victor Emanuel needed the support of France, and France’s price was steep: the handing over of all Savoyan lands on the French side of the Alps. With this, the French-speaking population of the new Italy was reduced to fewer than 100,000, most of them living in the Val d’Aosta.

All of a sudden, Aosta found herself trying to swim in the minestrone of Italian politics. No longer was she left to go about her own business. Now she was an aberration, a throwback, an irritant. Successive nationalist-minded governments made legislation to disestablish the French language in Val d’Aosta., replacing French education with Italian. But the real struggle began with the ascension to power of Mussolini. In 1923, Aosta sent a deputation to Rome to chat with the new dictator about the future of French in Italy. Whether this move was an act of naive optimism or a desperate attempt to circumvent disaster, it only seemed to focus Mussolini’s attention on the French question. The immediate response was the closing of 180 rural schools where French was still the language of instruction. The next year brought a prohibition against French signage. The local Fascist commissariat was assigned to change all French street names to Italian, even as French newspapers were shut down. The wolf in sheep’s clothing was the designation of Aosta as a provincia. The apparent elevation in status was counteracted by lumping the entirely Italian city of Ivrea into the province, thus diluting the French presence.

The new Fascist headquarters were erected at the western gate of old Aosta. In the Piazza della Repubblica stood a tall column topped by statues of Romulus and Remus suckling at their wolf-mother’s teat. For the second time in its long history, Aosta found itself occupied by Rome. The new Italian conquest was more devious than the first, however. Val d’Aosta’s leading employer was the Cogne iron mines, an interest that dates back to Roman times (and may well have been a factor in making the land of the Salassis irresistible to the Empire). Mussolini now instructed the mines to bring in Italian-speaking workers from outside Val d’Aosta.

Italy’s declaration of war against France in 1939 was the crisis point. The Italian author Curzio Malaparte recalls Alpine troops crying and jeering as they stood at attention to hear Il Duce’s speech. The flames of Gallophobia were fanned, as all writing in French was prohibited and a witch-hunt was instigated against priests who continued to preach and teach in French. Ironically, the War interrupted a fascist programme already underway to “Italianize” 20,000 French family names. A 1940 editorial in the local Fascist organ proclaimed: “Let us no longer dirty our mouths calling an Italian by a foreign name.”

But the Aostans, like the Salassi before them, showed their independent streak. The first organized opposition to the Italian state came with the formation of the Ligue Valdotaine, dedicated to the preservation of the French language and Valdostan traditions. The Ligue was succeeded in 1925 by the Jeune Vallée d’Aoste, co-founded by Emilio Chanoux, an Aosta notary, and Abbot Trèves, a politicized priest of the sort the valley seemed to breed. Chanoux, born in 1906, was an ardent federalist who foresaw a post-war European federation reordered on regional and ethnic bases. By 1941, he was leading the Valdaostan partisan movement, Comité de Libération. On May 18, 1944, he was arrested and tortured to death by the SS.

Post-war, the movement for Aosta to secede from Italy led to massive demonstrations. Many believe that if a plebiscite had ever been permitted, Aosta would be French today. Instead, the new Italian government offered Val d’Aosta special status and substantial autonomy. By the laws of 1948, French was guaranteed equal footing with Italian, with school hours divided between the languages.

Statistics indicate that over the long run Italian has taken its place as the principal language of the valley and the clear favourite for work and school. As of 2001, 70% of Valdaostans aged twelve to eighteen reported using Italian as their principal language at school or work, compared to 32% in the sixty-three to seventy bracket.

Today, the square at the centre of Aosta is, depending which sign you read or which map you look at, Place Émile Chanoux or Piazza Emilio Chanoux.

aosta (via francigena v)

2011-03-30T09:31:00.005-04:00

Aosta’s library, like everything else in the city, is built on Roman foundations. You peer over the landing to the lower floors and see the great, pale stones that once formed part of the Porta Decumanus. It gives a whole new meaning to “exposed brick.” An event is in progress down there and refreshments are being served but I overcome my curiosity and head for the second floor where the special collection on the Val d'Aosta is housed in a wing of its own. According to the notice on the desk I need a library card for access but the librarian waves me in without raising an eye from her computer screen.

Ah, Italia.

I gather an armful of useful-looking history books from the stacks and colonize a table by the window in the reading room. I have the place to myself. The first volume I crack open is a hefty brute entitled Storia della valle d’Aosta by Andrea Zanotto. I do my best to skim through the Roman and church foundation history, the medieval saints and miracles and battles. But it’s too soon after lunch for this. (Did I mention lunch? A heaping plate of polenta concia - polenta swimming in globs of melted Fontina cheese - helped down by a generous quarter litre of red.) By the time I get to the Renaissance and Count Emmanuel Philibert de Savoie the words are strating to blur, I hear voices.

And then a familiar musty aroma meets my nose and the voices become a voice.

“And what vulgar tongue might this be?”

He’s leaning over my shoulder, eyeing the text with a scowl.

“Sigeric! I mean, Archbishop! Where did you get to last night?”

He ignores my question, still fixed on the text. “I can make out the semblance of a word here and there, but if they call this Latin… Oh, the world has sadly fallen. The end draws near.”

“This language is Italian, Archbishop.”

“Italian. And what is Italian?”

“It is a…” I don’t want to use words like ’vulgar’ or ‘corruption’ for the language of amore. “It’s a Romance language. A descendent of Latin.”

“A bastard descendent if you ask me. ‘Italian!’ Next it will be ‘Hispanic’ and ‘Lusitanian’ and ‘Gallic’…”

“Well, yes actually. We call those Spanish, Portuguese and French…”

“Enough, boy! Gog and Magog, that’s what I call it!” He snorts and leans closer. That smell again, of old books and damp stone. “It is no easy matter to read this hand. The form of the letters is peculiar. Can’t say that I recognize them all. Yet they have to them a great regularity. This is the work of a skilled scribe.”

“It’s called printing, Archbishop. It’s done by a machine.”

“A machine that writes? What a wondrous notion. But how then do the monks fill their time with no manuscripts to inscribe?“

“I would guess they have more leisure than in your day.”

“The Devil finds work for idle hands.” He pokes at the page with a thick, yellowed fingernail. “What manner of letters are these? And again here. They seem not letters at all but some barbarous script.”

He is pointing at a table of dates accompanied by population figures.

“They’re numbers.”

“I see no numbers.”

“Well this is an eight, and this is a four, and this is a zero…”

My pen is lying on the table. Sigeric seizes it with a sigh of impatience, closes his fist around it awkwardly, like someone using chopsticks for the first time, and scrawls in my open notebook VIII.

“This is an eight.” he pronounces.

“And this is a four.” IV

“And what was this other ‘number’ you named?”

Good Lord. Arabic numerals. He’s never seen one. He doesn’t even know zero. Must be another gift of the Arabs. I have no idea when Europe adopted these innovations, but it was certainly after Sigeric’s time.

“Well, let’s take a look,” my tutoring instincts kick in and I pick a date at random. “Do you recognize this figure?”

“It’s a one, yes. I see that, at least.”

“Good. Now this figure is a five, and this is a six and here is another one. You see? Fifteen-sixty-one. The year, that is.”

He looks absolutely stumped. I see this will take time. “Okay, let’s go through them all, starting with one.” We spend a few minutes on the integers, Sigeric grumbling and shaking his head all the while. But he seems to be picking them up. Then he wants to write them. I position the pen a little better in his hand and he essays the curves and spikes of 2s and 5s and 9s. Zero seems to give him misgivings. He declines to write it.

“That’s sufficient, lad. Somehow I have fallen out of the practice of applying my mind. We shall do more tomorrow.” He takes the book in both hands and riffles through the pages. “The parchment seems not very sturdy. But it is passing light. A great convenience to the peripatetic.” I’m tempted to tell him about e-books, but decide that can wait.

I have a bit of a dilemma. I’d like to get on with my research, but I’m afraid of losing Sigeric. A solution strikes me.

“How about if I read this out to you? You won’t understand much, I’m afraid the Latin is much transformed, but at least you can get used to the letters and their pronunciation.”

His thin lips spread in a smile. And so I begin. Now and then he slows me down or asks me to repeat a word, but for the most part he listens intently, watching my finger follow the train of words. And so we spend the afternoon.

aosta (via francigena part iv)

2011-03-22T14:12:00.007-04:00

In the morning
I look out my window. Across the way there are mountains where last night there was only mist and miasma. It’s overcast but the clouds look benign. A good day for a walk around town. My pizzeria Hilton lies outside the city walls, so I make my way to the burly parallel triple-arched entryways of the eastern Porta Praetoria. It’s something to savour, entering a Roman city. You know you’ve arrived.

The Forum lies just north of the decumanus; it’s now the Cathedral square. Beneath the square and open to the public lies the arched, echoing underground horseshoe of the cryptoporticus, an immaculately executed and invisible construction that served no more profound purpose, apparently, than to level the ground under the forum. Behind the forum, against an Alpine backdrop, is the theatre. Aosta’s, like many Roman theatres, is used in summer for concerts.

I follow the length of the decumanus - through its transformations from Via Porta Praetoria to Piazza Chanoux to Via de Tillier to Via E. Aubert - to the Piazza della Repubblica, outside the old Porta Decumana, then make a circuit of the town to see the massy walls from the outside. The stones lodged in mortar look like hard, crunchy candy set in nougat. It’s a long walk. The walls still enclose the better part of city, though at an average height of about fifteen feet, they look highly pregnable. They were higher once, but the materials were dislodged and carted away over the centuries to be reemployed as feudal strongholds.

Twenty centuries have passed since the foundation of Aosta, yet it is still a Roman city. Like its name, worn from Augusta down to Aosta, the city’s other vestiges of Romanity, though eroded by time, have never been erased.

I admire the Arch of Augustus, erected in 25 BC, as soon as the Salassi had been defeated. The view through the arch has not been improved by the introduction of a cross. Past the Arch stands a postcard-perfect Roman bridge, which - according to the plaque - has arched gracefully over nothing in particular since the eleventh century, when a violent storm changed the course of the river Buthier.

The eleventh century! Then Sigeric would have seen the river running in its old bed. And no doubt he crossed over this very bridge as he left Aosta. Yes, Sigeric would have seen many of these things - the theatres, the walls, the gates and arches, the lay of the streets. And already they were ancient when he saw them, already they were in ruins.

One thing I do not find in my travels is any indication that I am on the Via Francigena. Not a way marker, not an arrow, no sign of pilgrim lodgings. The bookstores have an item or two, but nothing related specifically to pilgrimage in the Val d’Aosta. I ask the chatty proprietor in Bar Franca if she ever sees pilgrims passing through. She has no idea what I’m talking about. Neither does the professorial gentleman at the bar who, she assures me, knows “everything” about Aosta. He leads me out into the Via Croce di Città and directs me to the Roman amphitheatre, but the words “Francigena” “pellegrini” stir no flicker of recognition.
Then I seem to strike gold - in the shape of a restaurant. Le Pelerin Gourmand, “The Pilgrim Gourmet,” sports a gaudy scallop shell over its door and a “pilgrim menu.” Surely this is where I will meet the doyen of the local pilgrim scene, a proprietor/chef who has walked to Santiago as well as Rome, a fount of information and stories, a welcome mat to the foot-sore traveller, in short, a pilgrimage freak. It is a little suspicious that the pilgrim menu is priced far beyond the means of your average grimy mendicant. But that’s fine, pilgrims come in all income brackets. As it turns out, alas, the owners of Le Pelerin Gourmand haven’t taken a pilgrim step in their lives. They chose the “theme” for their restaurant based on the fact that it stands on the site of a former pilgrim hospice.

Having failed to turn up any pilgrim footprints, I direct my attention to a question that's been teasing me. Just how French is Aosta? And how did it come to pass that this satellite of the Classical Empire, this little Rome away from Rome, should have become the French-Italian heartland?

It's not that you’d ever mistake Aosta for a French city. Yet there is something, something fleeting, like a breeze from the other side of the Alps - a snatch of an overheard conversation, a bookstore or restaurant with a French name, a street sign or plaque in French... There are items on the local menu that you won’t find elsewhere: that melty cheese dish they call fonduta, known on the other side of the Alps as fondue; and cresperelle, those superfine rolled-up pancakes that are nothing other than crêpes. There's always something that distinguishes this place from Italy

I go looking for clues at the Tourist Information Office, located at the side of the magnificent Hotel de Ville (or should I say, Municipio?) in the central piazza (or should I say, place?).

“Can you tell me about the status of French in Aosta?”

“Aosta is bilingual. At school, we study in French and Italian equally.”

“But does anyone still speak French as a first language?”

“Probably not in the city. But in the mountains, I know people who speak French with their families.”

“And what’s the history behind all that?”

The woman behind the desk opens and closes her mouth a couple of times, goldfish-style. Clearly this is not a question that can be answered in a sentence or two.

“Here is a map of the city. Let me show you how to find the library.”

aosta (via francigena part iii)

2011-03-14T15:35:00.004-04:00

Aosta is the first important town on the Italian side of the Alps, a place whose destiny, from its very inception, has been inextricably tied to that of Rome.

I retrieve my pack from beneath the bus, pull my hood up tight and get ready to dash into the pelting rain. Then I hear Sigeric’s mocking voice again. You call yourself a pilgrim? He’s right. A real pilgrim would have been walking all day through snow and rain to get here. I should feel grateful, grateful, that I’ve flown over the mountain pass and down the other side in the comfort of a bus. I yank my hood back boldly. Bring on the rain! It’s just a bit of weather, get over it!

Of course it helps that I’m only walking two blocks. Just before we reached the bus station, I spotted the two stars of a hotel twinkling by the roadway. Maybe not a pilgrim’s cheapest option, but certainly the handiest.

No it isn’t. Even before I make the hotel, I pass a pizzeria with a sign advertising rooms. The desk man takes me through the clamorous dining area and up a flight of stairs. It’s low season, so he’s going to let me have the matrimonial suite. I understand this is a privilege, though it’s not clear exactly why. The wallpaper is yellowed, the bed has done service as a trampoline. The place has something of the air of a - what’s the word in Italian? - oh yes, a bordello. But for 25 euros I should complain?

The rain is still splatting away at my window as I step out of the (hot) shower, dry myself with the (only slightly dingy) towel and stretch out on the (crisp, apparently vermin-free) sheets. Again, I hear Sigeric’s tsk tsk. I wonder where he's staying tonight. It’s an absurd question, of course. Sigeric doesn’t exist. He is a daydream, a hallucination, a musty exhalation of my subconscious.

But where is he staying tonight? Where did he stay a thousand years ago when he passed through Aosta? Some place without a radiator, that’s for sure. And without glass windows. Without a tv or a bedside lamp. Without anything like privacy. And without a pizzeria downstairs.

I wonder what Sigeric would take on his pizza.

Parents give their children grand names at their peril. It’s usually not long before Theodosius becomes little Teddy and Almudena plain old Al. The same holds for names of cities. Let Augusta Praetoria Salassorum roll around in people’s lazy mouths for a few centuries and you end up with Aosta.

Augusta. Aosta. It’s a natural progression, a sign of a name well lived-in. As for the Praetoria Salassorum part - roughly, “fortified camp of the Salassi people” - it was a bit of a misnomer from the beginning if you consider that an essential pre-condition of building Augusta etc etc. was, precisely, the extermination of the Salassi people.

The Salassi were a handful, a Celtic tribe who inhabited and controlled the high Alpine passes. Rome’s initial attempt, in 143 BC, to put these pesky mountain-dwellers in their place resulted in 10,000 deceased Roman legionaries. Plainly, the enemy had been misunderestimated. The Romans regrouped and came back for a second try in 140 BC. This time the result was reversed, and a century of relative peace ensued. But the Salassi never showed the Romans appropriate deference. The Romans wanted free passage through the mountains. The Salassi harassed them, dismantling their bridges, busting up their roads.

Of course nothing is better calculated to get under an ancient Roman’s skin than messing with his bridges and roads. New hostilities erupted in 35 BC and carried on sporadically for the next decade till the Romans were well fed up. After two years of determined warfare, of the Salassi who had not been killed in battle, some 28,000 were sold into slavery while another 8000 were pressed into the legions. Yet there is evidence that the Salassi were not entirely routed from their mountains, that a few thousand were granted Roman citizenship and permitted to settle in the new city. Perhaps their stubborn spirit of resistance was grafted into the Aostan bloodline.

The Romans, when they had done with slaughtering, enslaving and bullying the former residents into submission, set to doing what they did so well - building stuff. Kill and build, kill and build - the life of an ancient Roman! They laid out their new city on the usual grid pattern, with a central east-west road, the decumanus, bisected by a north-south street, the cardus. (In Aosta, these main streets were the roads from the Little Saint Bernard Pass to the west and the Great Saint Bernard to the north). They encircled the long rectangle of the town with a tall and sturdy wall, perforated with grand gates at the four cardinal points. They erected a handsome theatre, an amphitheatre, a forum with temple and baths and, outside the east gate, the colossal arc of Augustus we saw from the bus.

And one might wonder, why so much fuss over a military camp stranded in the farthest, snowiest, godforsaken north of Italy? But that only shows how the concept of “nation” has fractured our view of the big picture, for Italy’s extremities are Europe’s veins and arteries, the land links between the south of Europe and the north. And in times like Sigeric’s, when the sea roads were commanded by Vikings and Corsairs, land links were the only links.

over the alps to aosta (via francigena part ii)

2011-03-05T17:50:00.005-05:00

Last week, I commenced my Via Francigena journey by bus from Martigny in Switzerland. This week, the journey resumes on the Italian side with a strange encounter...

As the bus coasts to lower altitudes, snow turns to driving rain. I grow pensive. I will be arriving at night in a strange city in the middle of a rainstorm without a map or the faintest notion of where to stay. Oh yes, and carrying a large backpack. It wouldn’t be a party without the backpack.

I always tell people I love to travel. I’m trying to recall why. And that’s when I hear the voice.

“You snivelling little sod.”

There’s no one on the bus but me and the driver and the lady with the walker. I’m sure of that. Yet the voice comes from behind, so close that its cool breath of contempt tickles my earlobe.

“And you call yourself a pilgrim? Pathetic.”

I twist my neck to look back. In the unlit bus, I can make out only the dim impression of a face, long and whitefish-pale in the darkness. The man it belongs to - did he get on when I was dozing? - leans arms-crossed against the back of my seat in the familiar fashion of an old travelling companion.

“Great lamb of God, how you drone on,” he says in tone that is amused, yet not without a certain truculence. “‘Oooohhhh, I’ll have to walk in the nasty rain. What if it seeps through my Gooooooretex? It may be five or ten minutes before I find a warm hotel with a comfy bed. I’ll get a wee bit chilly.’”

The accent I’m sure is British, yet not quite like any British accent I’ve ever heard. Gnarlier, craggier, aged in some way I can’t put my finger on. There is also about him - I’m sorry to say it - but an odour. A distinctive odour. Not necessarily unpleasant, but antique. I instinctively draw back.

“I was three days crossing these wretched mountains, rain and wind every step of the way. And did I complain? Never a word. I thanked God He did not send hail or snow to try us.”

I’m about to ask who he is when suddenly I know.

“Sigeric!”

“Archbishop Sigeric to you lad,” he replies. “Sigeric the Serious.”

“So they really did call you that?” I extend my hand and this time it’s his turn to draw back. Evidently he is not familiar with the gesture. I withdraw my hand, substituting an awkward seated bow.

“This is an honour, Archbishop. I’m following in your footsteps, you know.”

“Rolling all over them is more like it. If you were following my footsteps you’d be out there plodding.”

“I’m sorry, I don’t mean to complain. I recognize that…”

“I’m not blaming you! If we’d had these bus contraptions back in the nine-hundreds, this is certainly how I’d have travelled. Ninety days it took me from Canterbury to Rome. Ninety there, ninety back. And I, an archbishop! It’s not like I’ve nothing better to do with my time than gallivant about the continent. I’ve got a flock to lead, all the business of a cathedral to conduct. I’ve got that spineless monarch banging on my door day and night, ‘The Vikings this, the Vikings that, what am I to do about the Vikings?’”

As Sigeric warms to the subject of tenth-century politics, the bus fills up. At each French-named village, and often in the middle of what looks like nowhere, one or two or three are waiting at the stop, young women mostly. “Buona sera,” they call to all and sundry as they board, then shake the water off their coats and take seats up at the front where they can chat together and tease the driver - entirely in Italian, I observe.

Sigeric pays the newcomers no mind. He goes on, speaking of a thousand years past as if it were yesterday. I have the feeling he hasn’t talked to anyone in a very long time. At last his fretful talk of ancient Britain winds down. He returns to the present.

“Come to think of it, I don’t know that I’d even bother with the bus. What I’d like is to take a ride in one of those… what do ye call them? Ryan Air and so forth?”

“An airplane?”

“Airplane,” he savours the word. “That‘s the ticket. I’d fly to Rome. Three hours from Heathrow to Leonardo da Vinci, gate to gate, God be praised. Saw it on the telly. I could pop out right after matins and be back in Canterbury in time for vespers. Can you tell me, son, who is this Leonardo da Vinci?”

The question takes me aback. “Leonardo?” I stammer. “Well, he was the original Renaissance man, you know? No, you don’t. You don’t know about the Renaissance. All right, after the Middle Ages, which is when you were around, or that’s we call that time now…”

“Middle? What were they between?”

“Between - before and now. I suppose. Anyway, in the Renaissance, in Florence… Did you ever get to Florence?”

His answer is lost in the squeal of brakes as we pull up to a red light. There are electric lights outside the windows now, and buildings and traffic. They catch Sigeric’s attention and he stares out, mesmerized. I study his face in the shifting, rain-tormented light. It is wizened and lean. Tight lips, drawn-in cheeks, hair shorn close to the skull setting off moderately protruding ears and the face’s defining feature: the twin dense white shocks of his eyebrows.

The bus navigates a knot of one-way suburban streets, then comes to a stop. The ladies up front rise en masse, gather their bags.

“Is this the centre?” I ask one.

“Not yet. This is the hospital.”

So that explains it. The other passengers must be the night shift. They bid the driver Ciao and head out into the rainy night. Only the lady with the walker remains on the bus.

“Sit tight, Archbishop,” I say. “We’re almost there.”

“I know,” he says.

Then we’re driving again, wheeling around a massive Roman arc - “The Arc of Augustus,” mutters Sigeric approvingly - skirting the old city walls with the train yards on our left, pulling into the bus station.

“Aosta!” calls the driver.

The signora pulls herself upright and turns to ask me for help with her walker. Too slow, the bus driver is already looking after it. She thanks me abundantly nonetheless in a rainbow of languages: “Tante grazie giovanotto, Merci beaucoup, bonne continuation. Danke, danke schön.”

“You’re welcome,” I reply. “De rien, niente, nada.” I flash a grin back at Sigeric.

But Sigeric is gone.

crossing the alps from switzerland to the val d'aosta (via francigena part i)

2011-02-25T14:12:00.007-05:00

As I mentioned in my previous blog, I spent some time last year exploring the Via Francigena by bus and train. This meant not getting the full-on pilgrim experience (that will come this year, I hope) but it freed me up to find out more about the places I visited than one usually does when in pilgrim mode, arriving late and hungry and curious mostly to know where one will be sleeping.

The Via Francigena passes through some remarkable places and for the next few weeks I'll be sharing some of what I learned about them on this blog - starting today with the Val d'Aosta.

It's drizzling in Martigny.

It’s drizzling and it’s miserable and the bus is not where it’s supposed to be. The train got me here with five minutes to spare, as promised, but the bus that is to convey me over the Alps to Italy is nowhere to be seen. The ticket booth is unstaffed. Who can I ask? I spot the conductor from my train. Yes, yes, he assures me. The bus should be here now. It isn’t. Well it should be. He frowns. This is all very un-Swiss.

A stocky, elderly woman with a walker accosts me. She’s asking me something in a species of French I've never encountered. I’m sorry, could you repeat that? She does - in German. I tell her in French that I don’t speak German. Could she ask me in Italian?

“Allora, Lei è Italiano?”

No, I’m not Italian. I’m Canadian,

“Alors, vous parlez français.”

We determine - in three or four languages - that she too is looking for the bus to Italy. That's a relief. If I’m stuck here tonight, maybe we can split a hotel room.

The lady laments some more. She has decided that I speak German, whether I do or not. Or maybe German is just the language she prefers to lament in. A different language for every purpose, like the Emperor who spoke to men in French, God in Spanish, and… I forget the rest.

A railway worker joins our little party. He wonders where the bus is too. He jollies the elderly woman in French. It feels like they’ve done this before. The bus rolls in fifteen minutes late. “Neve!” shouts the driver by way of explanation. There’s a sack of snow falling on the pass. Let’s go while we can.

He cranks the pop music and accelerates into the climbing hairpin turns with grim abandon. There is a digital clock at the front of the bus. It reads 10:37. I check my watch. It’s 5:19. I feel like I’m in Italy already.

Travel brochures of Switzerland are full of spectacular mountain shots. We go to see the mountains, and climb and ski and take choo-choo trains over them. We love the mountains. Medieval travel brochures, if there had been such a thing, would not have made such a selling point of mountains. Mountains were where you got lost and froze to death.

Here we are, mid-October on the Grand St Bernard Pass, and the first blizzard of the season is up and wailing. Can’t see a thing out the window. Typically, the pass is only snowless from mid-June, which doesn’t leave much of a window for a comfortable crossing on foot. Of course, on foot is how I would prefer to cross the Alps, like a pilgrim of old. But there are many things I would prefer: to look like Marcello Mastroianni, to write like Garcia Marquez, to have been born in a country where you can sit outside in a light jacket on a November evening drinking wine from the vineyard across the way... Over time I have grown practiced at discerning what’s going to happen and what ain’t, and a foot crossing of the Alps this year ain’t.

The bus climbs and climbs, and one by one the other passengers disembark, trotting into the teeth of the storm to their half-visible vertical villages, till the only ones left are the signora with the walker and I. We enter a tunnel (there is a sign showing a smiling Saint Bernard dog below the title: “Saint Bernard: le Tunnel,” as if it were some sort of attraction), sweep through la Dogana - Italian customs - with a smile and a wave, and we are officially, legally, formally in Italia.

But where we really are is in a tunnel, thundering into the heart of the mountain, like descending in a plane at night through clouds, waiting to see the lights on the ground.

I move up to occupy the seat behind the signora. “Dove va?”

She is going to Aosta to stay with her sister, her soeur, her sorella. She’s still not sure what language to use with me. Now she lives in Basel, but she comes down to visit when she can. Is Aosta her hometown? Not the city itself, she tells me, but the Val d’Aoste, the region, the Valley of Aosta. And what language, may I ask, does she speak to her sister?

“Français!” She sounds shocked that I need to ask.

We emerge on the south side of the Alps. But if I was expecting sunshine, vino, cucina, amore, I’m going to have to wait. The blizzard is blowing over here too. In fact, if I was expecting Italy I’m going to have to wait. The first town we hit is Saint-Rhémy-en-Bosses. The building where the bus pauses is a centre multifonctionnel, which counts brasserie and épicerie among its fonctions. Along the way we pass the Hôtel des Alpes, La Vieille Cloche...

Is this really Italy?

Yes and no. This is the autonomous region of Valle d’Aosta / Vallée d’Aoste, the only part of Italy that is bilingual in Italian and French.

to be continued...

the via francigena

2011-02-15T02:43:00.003-05:00

Throughout the Middle Ages, travellers to Rome from Britain and much of France followed a route known as the Via Francigena (Fran-CHEE-jay-na). The Via diverged, for the most part, from the itinerary of the modern traveller to Italy. Scroll down a list of its stopping places and you'll find names like Aosta, Ivrea, Vercelli, Pavia, Pontremoli, Pietrasanta, Viterbo... hardly the top of any tourist's wish list. Yet in their day, they were places of great importance and still now they sport their medieval (not to mention Roman and Etruscan) treasures of art, architecture and urbanism.

Though a constant stream of pilgrims, merchants, conquerors, ecclesiastics, vagrants and migrant workers tromped the Via, only one voyager left behind a record: Sigeric, who visited Saint Peter's seat in 989 to be made Archbishop of Canterbury and took note of the stops on his return trip from Rome. (He did well to make it back to England; one of his predecessors froze to death in the Alps.) It is Sigeric's itinerary that provided the basis for the brand spanking new Via Francigena, launched in 2007. The "new" Via is modeled very much on the Camino de Santiago. It is a project that had been in the works forever (it was supposed to be ready for Rome's 2000 Jubilee), but finally took flight thanks to the personal intervention of ex-Prime Minister Romano Prodi, who had done the Camino by bike and insisted that Italy deserved its own pilgrim way.

It's a stupendous journey - 1900 km to Rome from Canterbury; 900 from the Alps. It crosses geographical, linguistic, cultural and (importantly, for this is Italy) culinary divides. It is a journey through time, through history, a journey of the spirit... The question is, will it fly?

The Camino de Santiago is in many ways an organic growth, the fruit of the unbidden work of countless hands and feet, an event that assembled itself. The Via Francigena, by contrast, bears all the trappings of a "tourism initiative," a pilgrimage by decree, dreamed up and presided over by a classic EU bureaucracy. Do the people on the ground - I mean, the Italian people - have any interest in this thing? Enough to make it work?

It's been a couple of years now that I've been mulling over whether to go for a long walk on the Via Francigena, so I finally went to Italy last fall to take a look. I didn't have time at my disposal for walking, so I scouted instead, following the route as closely as I could by train and bus. I knew that would rob some suspense and surprises from the eventual foot journey. On the other hand, it meant I could gather bags and bags of research material - books, maps and brochures, not to mention a couple nice bottles of red - without worrying about my knees giving way beneath me.

Will I go back? Well, duh. It's only a question of when. In the meantime, I'll be putting up some Via Francigena photos and blogs in the weeks to come, so stay tuned.

For anyone wanting a detailed, up-to-the-moment account of conditions on the Italian pilgrimage front, order yourself a copy of An Italian Odyssey by Neville Tencer and Julie Burk - though it's hard to say whether the book is more likely to lure you onto the Via with its delicious descriptions of cities, landscapes and meals, or scare you off with its portraits of sketchy lodgings, unmarked paths, wrong-pointing signs and places that can't be found even with GPS devices.

Neville and Julie's Via sounds lonely compared to the Camino. They encounter precious few pilgrims along the way, though happily they do meet their fair share of helpful, outgoing Italians. Nonetheless, the story speeds along from episode to episode and is over too soon. The couple take turns with the telling, which offers an often-amusing synoptic view. They have some very useful tips for sleeping and eating (especially eating) and a wonderful description of a visit to a rice farm. There are also lovely photographs and whimsical hand-drawn maps. My only complaint is that Julie and Neville's misfortunes of the road keep prodding them into full-on, gasket-blowing slanging matches. I felt a little like the kid in the back seat listening to Dad and Mom fight (Would you two just pipe down and let me enjoy the ride?) Fortunately, all is sorted out by the magic of Siena, and we get to enjoy Tuscany and Lazio to the fullest.

You'll find more information, including some dynamite photographs, on the Italian Odyssey Facebook page. You can also read an interview with Julie and Neville on Anna-Marie Krahn's website. Enjoy!

moja droga do santiago...

2011-02-06T03:36:00.002-05:00

Which, apparently, means "My Way to Santiago." In Polish.

Of course the Poles are great pilgrims, setting out on foot each year, especially in August, from all parts of the country to visit the monastery of Jasna Gora, home to the Black Madonna of Czestochowa, the "Queen of Poland." (In a previous blog, I talked about how this tradition has recently been transplanted to Ontario.)

The research for Virgin Trails, my book about the veneration of the Virgin Mary, didn't take me as far afield as Poland, but the Poles were so good as to come and find me. Polish publisher Sic! released the first foreign edition of All the Good Pilgrims last fall: Moja Droga do Santiago: opowiesc pielgrzyma-agnostyka. (The subtitle means "stories of an agnostic pilgrim." Fair enough.) The cover is gorgeous, the publisher has a very cool logo, and the book is available from various online sellers for a mere 39 zloty. (I know! That's pretty hard to beat!) So if there's a special Pole in your life who happens to be between books...

While we're on the topic, even tangentially, of the Virgin of Czestochowa, let me recommend the fascinating and idiosyncratic pilgrimage/quest memoir of American author China Galland, Longing for Darkness: Tara and the Black Madonna.Galland's search for the feminine face of the divine takes her to some remarkable places, both without and within.

new web albums

2011-01-28T01:41:00.001-05:00

Well look who it is, back already. I've got this lovely new blog, might as well use it, eh?

It's beyond my Neanderthal tech skills to add new albums to my website, so lately I've started uploading (downloading? outsourcing? inbreeding? I'm never going to get this computer lingo straight) photos to Picasa web albums. You just have to click here to see them.

Last night I was editing and captioning (in a sparse sort of way) the pictures I took in the fall of 2009, when I walked for eleven days along the camino/chemin from Le Puy to Figeac. For the most part, it's a country ramble through beautiful long stretches of nothing but you and the clouds and the hills and, yes, often the cows. You live on cheese and bread and wine and swear you've never lived better. Between Le Puy and Figeac, there is nothing that even remotely resembles a city, though in every village and hamlet, there is a magnificent little bakery and a charcuterie and even a cheap, clean place to sleep. Not that there was much demand for beds in October. There were three of us who started on the same day from Le Puy (unbeknownst to each other) and made it to Figeac (by which time we knew each other well), plus another eight or ten who were only walking for a week, or a day or two, or who mysteriously vanished between one sleepy hamlet and the next, never to be heard of again... We were definitely at the end of the season.

The part of the trip I remember best was the barren, stone-strewn highlands of Aubrac, where I felt like I could have been in Scotland. But there were pleasant walks through lush river valleys too, and some outrageously tiring climbs, and some real live forests. If I compared it to the Camino Frances in Spain, I'd say it was more natural, more strenuous, more solitary, and more varied in its landscape. The food? Oh, how to choose? The people? They were helpful, courteous, sometimes downright friendly - a living refutation of all those "snarky French" stereotypes. Surprisingly, one place where the Spanish Camino almost holds the edge is in church art and ornamentation. I'm not talking about the quality of the art, I mean that the roiling history of revolutions and wars of religion in this corner of France has left many a church wall stripped bare. Pleasing if you like austerity. A little sad if you were expecting medieval opulence.

Though if medieval opulence is your thing, there's always Conques, which takes your breath away and doesn't give it back. And the two treasure towns at the beginning and end of my little pilgrimage, Le Puy and Figeac, wonderful lively inhabited museums, unspoiled by tourism.

The photos don't begin to do justice to the beauty of these places. But go ahead and check them out anyway. You're welcome to look at my photos of Uruguay, Argentina and Chile too. Not that they have anything to do with my writing, but it's cold outside, why not let your mind travel to warm places?

a new year, a new look, and a new blog to check out: "Pilgrim Roads"

2011-01-19T11:23:00.006-05:00

Yo. Anybody out there?

I venture back into the land of Blog. Last spring, my CRM (centre for random musings) was booted off my server and it's taken me ages to get things sorted out again. The layout of my relocated site was a hash, when I tried to update my home page I got nothing but error messages... I was not a happy blogger.

So imagine my delight when I shambled into the living room this morning, cranked up my computer, and encountered - this. A brave new look. Soothing colours, clean lines. Order. And how did this blogstoration take place? Who got me back on the blogtrack?

May I introduce the new star of web-based Camino writers, Anna-Marie Krahn. Since last fall, Anna-Marie has been producing entertaining and thought-provoking little essays based on her own Camino experiences, along with interviews with other pilgrims and, since the beginning of this year, a sort of Camino/pilgrimage news centre. It's an ambitious project that only shows signs of getting bigger and you'll find it at Pilgrim Roads.

Now, apart from being a fine writer, Anna-Marie has mean computer smarts and true Camino spirit. Cause when she saw what a shambles my blog had turned into, she got out her wrench, pulled on her hip-waders, and had it all patched up in (she claims) five minutes. Apparently all I owe her is a bottle of Rioja. Thanks, Anna-Marie.

And what about me? Any projects for this year? You bet. A walk on Italy's Via Francigena, the medieval road from northern Europe to Rome. I was there last fall for a first look and will have some photos up shortly on a Picasa web album.

What else? My latest short-story/essay appears in the Fall 2010 edition of Queen's Quarterly. It's called "(Charlie's) Angels of the Camino," and it's about one of those odd bounces of the ping-pong ball of history that occur so often on the Camino. If you can't get your hands on QQ, be patient. The story is going to be reprinted this summer in Reader's Digest. As close to Oprah as I ever hope to get.

There's more stuff to tell you about, but for now I thought it would be enough just to affirm that I am still living and hatching writing schemes. Here's to a new year full of strange and wondrous journeys.

some good camino reads

2010-01-19T15:59:00.014-05:00

Here we are, well into January, as I sit down to my first blog of the year. Clearly I am not a born blogger. Yet I must rouse myself, for there is much to blog about!

Fr'instance? Well, for all of you with Chapters/Indigo Christmas gift cards burning holes in your pockets, I have some Camino reading to recommend. It's always a struggle for me to start into yet-another-book-about-the-road-to-Santiago, I have read so many, yet once the journey's underway they're awfully hard to put down, the good ones, anyway. Two recent reads that took me back to Spain in all the right ways are Guy Thatcher's A Journey of Days and Arthur Paul Boers' The Way is Made by Walking.

Guy's account is lively, frank and utterly unpretentious, beautifully illustrated with the author's colour photos, and topped off with a thoughtful epilogue, "Life's Lessons Relearned." It was when I read Guy's final note, "What Happened to...", where he tells of the further adventures of some of the pilgrims he met on the way, that I realized how much I had been drawn into his Camino. I really felt like I was reading about people I knew personally! As Guy made his journey at the age of seventy, his book will be especially affirming to those who wonder if they've still got it in them to hike across Spain.

As for Arthur's book, I wasn't sure initially how well I would connect with it. Arthur, after all, is an ordained Mennonite Church minister and his understanding of the Camino falls very much within a religious paradigm that I don't share. If, for Guy, the Camino is about "Life's Lessons Relearned," for Arthur, it's "Christ's Lessons Relearned." But Arthur tells his stories well (with preacherly skill?), and breaks the usual Camino-book mold by arranging his material thematically rather than chronologically. Before long I was drawing parallels between my journey and his own.

I suspect that whatever religious tradition you belong (or don't belong) to, the lessons of the Camino are pretty much the same. Arthur's topic headings include: trusting, solidarity, traveling light, unintended consequences, moving at the speed of life, providential encounters... The usual suspects. My favourite part is his elucidation of the concept of "focal living" with its "four affirmations":

There is no place I would rather be.
There is nothing I would rather do.
There is no one I would rather be with.
This I will remember well.

Many of us could have made those affirmations on the Camino.

One more literary note. Pilgrim-author Brandon Wilson's Along the Templar Trail has been awarded the 2009 Society of American Travel Writers' Award for Best Travel Book. Bravo, Brandon!

Till next time.....

home from walking in france

2009-11-03T23:54:00.006-05:00

Just back from an amazing eleven-day, 240-kilometre walk along the Via Podiensis, the road from Le Puy, most venerable of the French pilgrim ways to Santiago. It's a wonderfully bucolic walk from Le Puy, pop. 20,000, to Figeac pop. 10,000, with the biggest town in between, Saugues, clocking in at 2000 inhabitants. You can go for hours without seeing a highway or a power line; what you will see (and hear and smell) is plenty of cows. The scenery is spectacular and ever-changing, though all those magnificent vistas come at the cost of a lot of ups and downs.

There was only a handful of us walking, ten or a dozen the first week, down to four by the end of the second, and many of the gites (equivalent to Spanish refugios), to say nothing of the cafes and bars, were already closed for the season. But we were always able to find a bed somewhere. The facilities were comfortable and clean, the ways clearly marked, the bread, cheese, meat, coffee, wine - all very French.

Many differences between the French way and the Camino Frances. Most of the people I met considered their journey a walking holiday rather than a pilgrimage, and there is no need to carry a credential or identify oneself as a pilgrim in order to stay in the gites (with a few exceptions). It's easy to buy groceries in France early in the morning, not so easy to find an open bar or restaurant at night. The churches are more likely to be open at any time of day here than in Spain, though most are surprisingly unornamented compared to Spanish churches, having been burned down or stripped bare during the Hundred Years' War, or the wars of religion, or the Revolution.... Lively history, France.

Lots to talk about! I'll save some for the next blog.

and one more thing

2009-10-13T23:52:00.003-04:00

What? Me again already?

A couple important items I didn't mention in my last posting.

First, the fall meeting of the Canadian Company of Pilgrims, Toronto chapter, is coming up fast. Arthur Paul Boers, author of The Way is Made by Walking, is the featured speaker, while four other Canadian Camino authors, Sue Kenney, Jane Christmas, Guy Thatcher and yours truly, will be chatting up our wares as part of the halftime festivities. That's Saturday, November 7th, 1:30 at St. Matthew's United Church (more details at santiago.ca)

And what was the other thing? Oh yeah, the first foreign sale of All the Good Pilgrims. As of fall 2010, my Camino tales will be hitting bookstores in..... Poland!

So how do you say Buen Camino in Polish?

Something to blog about

2009-10-09T23:51:00.002-04:00

Blog? Who, me?

Hey, it could happen. I just need something to blog about.

Is that why I'm going to France next week? Just to gather blogging material? Hey, any reason for going to France is a good reason.

Actually (since you asked) I'm going for a walk along the ancient pilgrim route from Le Puy. I hope to make it to Conques, 200 kms down the road, with a detour to Rocamadour. Le Puy and Rocamadour, as home to two of the most celebrated "Black Virgins," have been high on my to-see list for a while now.

I hope to come back with some great pictures, and something to blog about!

a terrific camino gathering in toronto

2009-03-10T14:37:00.006-04:00

Last weekend saw the closing of the Toronto run of the "Sacred Steps" exhibition and the opening of a new chapter in the story of Toronto's Company of Pilgrims. "Sacred Steps" was an unqualified success -- an eye-filling, soul-warming array of art and photography curated by veteran pilgrim and Camino nut, Professor George Greenia of the College of William and Mary, and laid out with loving attention by Saint James Cathedral archivist, Nancy Mallett. A special feature of the Toronto show was a tribute to our two most celebrated Camino artists, Oliver Schroer and Lupe Rodriguez, both of whom succumbed to leukemia in 2008. The tribute to Oliver came in the form of a display of photographs by Peter Coffman, his pilgrim companion, while one wall of the cozy St James gallery was given over to three of Lupe's bold Spanish landscapes.

February's opening ceremony, held in the Cathedral, brought out a crowd of 350, a tribute to our city's growing Camino-awareness. But equally impressive was the turnout for the show's final weekend, which doubled as a meeting of the revived Toronto pilgrim chapter. English-Canada's original Camino group had been dormant since long-time movers and shakers Barb and Anthony Cappuccitti took a well deserved retirement last spring. But now, thankfully, Pat Sayer and a new team have stepped up to the plate. One-hundred-and-fifty seats were filled for Saturday's meeting, hopefully a sign of many more good things to come.

No one went away disappointed either, as pilgrim-author Guy Thatcher talked us through his Camino, and George Greenia (above) offered up an address that was part heart-felt ode to the Camino, part a medievalist's take on where the contemporary pilgrim experience departs from the traditional. If Guy's presentation at the meeting is any indicator of the quality of his book, it must be a great read - straightforward, unpretentious, digressive in a good way, just thoughtful enough, gently humourous, and with lots of colour photos. The title says it all: A Journey of Days: Relearning Life's Lessons on the Camino de Santiago.

Incidentally, if you're not hooked into Canada's ever-growing network of Camino groups, check out santiago.ca, where you'll find announcements of gatherings from BC to New Brunswick.

i'm back!

2009-03-01T01:59:00.007-05:00

And you probably never even noticed I was gone. But I was. Four wonderful weeks in Uruguay, Argentina and Chile. Great food, friendly people, dreamlike landscapes, thrilling overnight bus rides and - ah, the heat. Stole an extra month of summer this year.

But we're back to Canada now, to see winter through to the bitter end.

I could go on about the beauties of South America, the beaches, pampas, vineyards, hot springs, and blue lakes sleeping at the foot of smoke-puffing volcanoes. Or about the human wonders: the cafes of Buenos Aires, Carnaval in Montevideo, Valparaiso's polychrome houses... But what I'm going to tell you about instead is a saint I discovered while I was away, a saint you may never have heard of before, but who may prove worth knowing. His name is San Expedito - Saint Expeditious - and there is a special devotion to him in Chile, where I found this altar to him, in the Mercedarian church in Santiago.According to legend, Expedito lived in the fourth century in Asia Minor. He started life as a pagan, but when he heard the gospel, he resolved immediately to convert to Christianity. The Devil spoke in his ear to dissuade him from this path. "Think it over first," said the Evil One. "Do it tomorrow." But Expedito replied, "No. I will become a Christian today." Which is why he is prayed to as the patron saint of just and urgent causes, and why he has that little cross in his hand bearing the Latin word "hodie" - "today."

So if your problems can't wait till tomorrow, call on Expedito, the Fedex of patron saints!

sacred steps on the camino de santiago

2009-01-18T13:29:00.005-05:00

Over the past few months this blog has featured three exceptional visual artists of the Camino. Well, here come some more. The Sacred Steps exhibition, which has already visited several university galleries around the United States as well as the Spanish Consulate in Montreal, is on its way to London, Ontario and Toronto. Sacred Steps brings together the artwork of eight American and Canadian Camino photographers and painters.

I'm a fan of the saturated colours and understated symbolism of my friend Wanda Sawicki's work, which was a highlight of the 2005 joint gathering of American and Canadian pilgrims in Toronto, but I'm also looking forward to seeing up-close the topsy-turvy townscapes and steeples of Father Jerome Tupa, the scenic watercolours of Katie Lopez, and - well - anything that evokes the Camino. (Click to see Wanda interviewed by London Free Press, January 18th.)

The exhibition appears at London's King's College, January 23rd to February 15th, with an opening address by Arthur Paul Boers, author of The Way is Made by Walking, then peregrinates off to Toronto's Saint James Cathedral for a February 19th to March 8th run.

happy new year! (and a call for collaborators)

2009-01-01T22:41:00.004-05:00

January 1, crawling out of the smoking debris of 2008 - and into a bright shiny 2009! First resolution: blog more often. No, wait. First resolution: be a better person. Second resolution: blog more often.

Seems it's been a snowy snowy winter on the Camino. (A cold coming we had of it, just the worst time of the year for a journey, and such a journey: the ways deep and the weather sharp, the very dead of winter.) And the bedbugs are still biting (for updates, tune in to Yahoo Group Santiagobis or Pilgrimage to Santiago.com). Still, there's nowhere I'd rather be right now than slogging through a metre of snow up the slopes of O Cebreiro...

No, wait. Where I'd most like to be right now (with slogging up O Cebreiro a distant second) is where I will be this time next month, in steaming hot Argentina. Don't know what kind of pilgrimages I'll find myself on there (gaucho? tango? the Che Guevara trail?) but promise to blog about it (see resolution #2).

Let me peer a little deeper into the future. March and April 2009, I'll be doing several talks and readings around Toronto. If you've never come to one of my readings, I'll be expecting you. Dates and places to come. And then in May, I'm off to start work on my next book. Off to where exactly remains a secret even to the author. Feel free to contact me with bright ideas.

Before then, however, I hope to have some news about what turned out to be my project for 2008, Discovered Madonnas, a three-act play full of magic, miracles, poetry, passion, twists, laughs, pilgrims and twisted ankles set (where else?) on the Camino de Santiago. Alert to theater folks with a love for the Camino: I've done the writing (or the first six drafts, at any rate). I need your help to get it on stage. No joking, I'm waiting to hear from you!

The Occupied Garden: a pilgrimage to one family's past

2008-11-17T18:23:00.007-05:00

There are pilgrimages and there are pilgrimages. Some are vast, religion or state-supported affairs that draw tides of humanity. Others are quiet, personal voyages. The pilgrimage of Canadian sisters and authors Kristen den Hartog and Tracy Kasaboski is of the latter sort, a journey into letters, archives, and family memories in search of the lives of their grandparents' and their father's generations in the years leading up to and during the Nazi occupation of Holland.

Rich yet scrupulous in detail, The Occupied Garden recovers the life of an ordinary family living in extraordinary times, times when feeding a family was a struggle, and living by precepts of integrity and human decency required daily acts of heroism. Like any true pilgrimage, it is both a return to the familiar and a discovery of things new and strange, as the iconic figures of opa and oma (grandpa and grandma) become again what they once were: young lovers and, later, parents with huge decisions to make.

I had the pleasure of hearing Kristen speak about her book this fall at a fund-raiser organized by Toronto-area editor and writer Allyson Latta, who happened to be one of the early readers of All the Good Pilgrims. Allyson leads memoir-writing worshops, so it was fitting that all proceeds went to Alzheimer's research; the evening was devoted in every way to the preservation of memory.

For anyone looking to write about their Camino experience, a writers' workshop is not a bad place to start. To learn more about Allyson's, go to daysroadwriters.blogspot.com.

five glorious walks on the camino de santiago

2008-11-02T23:11:00.005-05:00

People ask me - often in solicitous tones - why I keep coming back to the Camino de Santiago, or more precisely, to the Camino Frances, the great pilgrim trunk-road that runs from the Spanish Pyrenees west across northern Spain to Santiago de Compostela. "You're in a rut," the questioners seem to imply. "It's a big world, there are other experiences to be had, other roads to walk. Why this one... again?"

What do I tell them? Follow this link to find out...
http://travelwithachallenge.com/Rhythms-of-the-Camino.html

Peter Coffman website

2008-10-15T22:28:00.004-04:00

Just a quick update to let everyone know that Peter Coffman's long-awaited website is finally up! Aaaaaaand it was worth waiting for. Peter, of course, is the talented fellow who walked to Santiago with his friend, the late, lamented Oliver Schroer, and provided the award-winning photography for Oliver's Camino album. At petercoffman.com, you'll find Peter's classy black-and-white Camino shots (disclaimer: I have a great big copy of "Route Napoleon," the cover photo of Camino, hanging in my living room), as well as a gallery of architectural beauties, ranging from Delphi to the Robarts Library. Feast your eyes!

Oops! Stop the presses. I just paid a visit to Oliver Schroer's site looking for the Camino cover photo and discovered a whole new gallery of photos by Angela Browne from Oliver Schroer's final concert, performed at Trinity-St. Paul's United Church, Toronto, June 8th -- including this one of Peter Coffman.

luisa rubines - de oca a oca

2008-09-25T23:43:00.008-04:00

Speaking of talented photographers, I was pleasantly surprised last week to discover a Luisa Rubines website up and running.

I met Luisa on my 2003 Camino. In All the Good Pilgrims, I described her as "a tornado with ringlets, an angular, intense young Galician woman, always halfway to somewhere." At that time, she was taking pictures for an exhibition on the theme of the esoteric Camino; more specifically, on el juego de la oca, "the Goose Game," the popular European children's board game (ancestor of our Snakes and Ladders) with roots in the Renaissance, which many see as an allegory for the pilgrimage to Santiago. Fittingly, we first met up in Logrono, where each of us was conducting our own inquiry into the life-size Goose Game that is laid down in stone in the plaza of the church of Santiago. We kept bumping into each other (it might be more accurate to say, "Luisa kept whizzing by me") all the way to Castrojeriz, where I hung up my walking shoes for that year.

When I reached Santiago in October 2004, Luisa's exhibition - De oca a oca polo Camino de Santiago - was on at the Museum of Pilgrimages. The 63 photos, displayed back-lit in the darkened gallery, presented the Camino as a magical and mystical journey of personal transformation. In the penultimate photo, just before the pilgrim/goose is reborn as a swan, the pilgrim/photographer leaves behind the bonfire of her old self and wades naked into the ocean at Finisterre to be born again. Leavening the seriousness of the theme were the king-size dice and the spiralling labyrinth of el juego de la oca on the gallery floor, which extended a playful invitation to the viewer to join the game.

The exhibition was a joy. I looked forward to following the trajectory of Luisa's career, even if from across an ocean. Yet when I started writing my book and went looking for her on the Web, I found that her old site was out of service. All the matches turned up by my Google searches turned into dead ends. (Ah, our wanderings in the labyrinth of the Internet!) From time to time, over the past three years, I have sent out Google search parties, but never with any results.

And then last week, I decided to give her one more Google and opa! There she was! With only 8 Camino photos, her website is not as generously illustrated as one would hope. But there is a capture of Luisa's complete juego de la oca gameboard, as well as samples of her other work - colourful images of Cuba, dire photos of the homeless children of Mexico's slums, and a black-and-white gallery entitled Galicia profunda - "deepest, darkest Galicia"...

I'll send this to Luisa. With luck she'll get back to me with some explanation of where she's been hiding - and what's coming up next.

small is beautiful: the camino as seen through a pinhole

2008-09-19T01:41:00.003-04:00

Here's a project for a brave photographer: shooting pilgrims' feet.
That's what Canadian visual artist Melinda Mollineaux did when she reached the end of the Camino this May. The results were on display recently at Ottawa's La Petite Mort gallery.

Mollineaux says:

"I photographed the soles of pilgrims' feet in the Plaza de Obradoiro as we arrived in Santiago, the final destination of the pilgrimage. These photos were very special to take; they were like prayers as I knelt in front of each person, with a kind of joy, waiting as the light reflected off their feet into my camera. I spent those few seconds in awe of the fullness of a life's journey in each person - beautiful, tired and radiant - in front of me. If only we would daily approach everyone we meet like that."

What makes Mollineaux's images of the Camino unlike any you have seen before is that they are pinhole images shot with used and discarded cameras
(Pinhole cameras? takes me back to junior high physics class!) The colour images are painterly, the black-and-whites spectral, seeming to recall a lost time. I've taken the liberty of reproducing a couple of them here. There are lots more on Melinda's blog, Beauty is really good. Just look under the entry for September 8th and click on the "Small is Beautiful" slide show. There are some lovely "conventional" pictures of the Camino as well.

oliver schroer 1956-2008

2008-07-30T01:12:00.007-04:00

July 3rd saw the passing of Oliver Schroer, the admired Canadian musician and composer whose unique gift back to Saint James' Way was the stunning Camino CD, a collection of original compositions recorded in churches along the way to Santiago, and mixed in with the ambient sounds of the pilgrimage. I was very fortunate to see Oliver's last show June 6th, four weeks before his death. Performed at Toronto's Trinity Saint Paul's Church and billed (with characteristically mordant humour) "Oliver's Last Concert on his Tour of this Planet," it was a generous two-and-a-half hours of music, mostly solo, a remarkable feat of bravura and stamina for a man near the end of a protracted fight with leukemia - really the show of a lifetime.

Oliver was a tremendous catalyst in Canadian music, as the "Olifiddle" benefit concerts held for him at Hugh's Room during the past year made evident. I attended two of the evenings last summer, where musicians from all over Canada delivered their testimonials to the influence Oliver had had on their lives, careers and musical styles. There was every sort of musician present, but above all, the evenings belonged to the fiddlers. I would never have guessed the wealth of fiddle talent that exists in this country.

And the fiddlers were in evidence at Oliver's final show as well, not only on stage but in the audience. During the first encore, "A Song for All Seasons" from his Hymns and Hers album (recorded during his sickness), a dozen or so of Oliver's students who had flown in from BC went strolling through the auditorium, serenading the audience as they accompanied Oliver. Even when the concert was over, it wasn't over. My wife and I lingered another fifteen minutes at the doors of the church to hear a lively impromptu concert (in Oliver's coined term, "a random act of violins") delivered by these same young artists. It wrapped up a deeply sad and joyous evening.

Oliver's memory is not fading anytime soon. His youth corps, The Twisted String, are forging ahead under the management of Oliver protegees Emilyn Stam and Chelsea Sleep (not to mention terrorizing the Toronto subway system - see the YouTube video), as is Oliver's old band, the Stewed Tomatoes, with Jaron Freeman-Fox - whose sly and sprited duet with Oliver was one of the sensations of the concert - taking over the fiddle duties from the master.

And on the Camino side of things, Peter Coffman, Oliver's walking companion, who was on hand for the original recordings and took the powerful black-and-white photographs used in the CD booklet, has a book of his Camino photography coming out next year with Ottawa publisher Novalis. Perfect material, along with Oliver's music and a glass or two of tinto, to stir memories of the long walk to the west that binds us all together.

Photo credit: Peter Coffman (whose website has now been under construction for nearly as long as Gaudi's Sagrada Familia.)

ward on the street!

2008-06-15T01:31:00.001-04:00

So just in case you thought I was bluffing, here I am at my "stall" at last Sunday's Festival on Bloor. Yes, I'll do anything to sell a book or two - which was approximately how many I did sell that day - but it was well worth it to spend a few summery hours chatting up passersby with sexy pick-up lines like, "Can I interest you in a book about a long walk?"

Of those who didn't just pass by but stopped to talk, five had done the Camino and a good many others had an aunt/ friend/ co-worker/ significant other who was about to do it / had just done it / was doing it right now. Oh yes, Camino fever is spreading.

And maybe even getting out of hand. Reports from Spain indicate record pilgrim numbers this spring and a lot of unseemly sparring for beds in refuges. Much of the pilgrim deluge seems to originate in Germany, where popular comedian Hape Kerkeling's account of walking the Camino topped the bestseller lists last year.

"Hmmmmmm," I muse. "Maybe with a few more efforts like my Festival on Bloor appearance, the next great torrent of pilgrims will be Canadians, every one of them with a copy of All the Good Pilgrims in their hands." Or maybe I've just been in the sun too long...

rhythm number three: the rhythm of solitude and society

2008-03-25T22:28:00.003-04:00

"Its doors (are) open to sick and well, to Catholics as well as to pagans, Jews, heretics, beggars, and the indigent, and it embraces all like brothers."

The words of the 12th century hymn (quoted here from Gitlitz and Davidson's masterly cultural handbook) refer to the Hospital of Roncesvalles, but they could equally be applied to the Camino today. For while the Camino gives us wonderful opportunities to be alone, the chances it offers us to meet people are unparalleled. The pilgrims on the Camino de Santiago are women and men, very young and very old and every age in between, of every nationality, profession and culture. They run the religious spectrum from devout Catholics to committed atheists with a generous sprinkling of pagans, Jews and heretics.

Many of these people, if we passed them on the street or sat next to them on the subway, we would never talk to. Our thought would be, "We have nothing in common." But on the Camino, you do have something in common. You are walking in the same direction, on the same road, to the same destination, sharing the same bars and shade trees and shelters along the way. And because you are walking, there is plenty of time to talk.

On a perfect day on the Camino, the three rhythms come together. There is the gentle, constant rhythm of walking, the solitude of the between-spaces, and then a reunion and a celebration as we reach the next town with its bar or fountain, where already pilgrims are meeting and laughing over the usual talk of distances, heat and blisters. We can pass through with a smile, or stay to enjoy the company, and maybe leave with a new walking partner. On the Camino, we are only as alone as we want to be. It lets us measure out and balance our desire for solitude with our desire that our journey be shared.

rhythm number two: the rhythm of human settlement

2008-03-19T01:45:00.004-04:00

I'm back from the west coast to grey old Toronto, where the snow is still mounded up on the lawns and the streetsides. BC was very good to me. The pilgrim gatherings were wonderful and more than 200 people turned out for my three public library readings. (My sister was pretty good to me too, driving me all over town.) I just wish I could have brought home some of those daffodils and cherry blossoms.

The second vital rhythm of the Camino de Santiago is the rhythm of human settlement. There is little continuous settlement on the Camino, or in most of Spain. Instead, there is a village, a town, a city, surrounded by a great emptiness. Human settlements, especially in the early parts of the Camino, are like pearls loosely strung on a necklace.

This rhythm of habitation and emptiness derives in part from Spain's history. In the old days of chronic warfare and raiding, people sought safety in numbers, going out to their fields by day, huddling together at night. It is also a natural consequence of Spain's dryness: where there is a well, people congregate. The resulting landscape impacts strongly upon the walker's experience of the Camino.

Why? Because of course the places I have described as "emptinesses" are nothing of the sort. They are full of space and sky and wind and wheat. They are places that invite the mind and spirit to expand and soar; or, conversely, to feel their meagerness in the face of nature (or "creation" for those who see it that way). They are wonderful places to be alone, places where you can set your eyes on a distant horizon, fall into the rhythm of your walk and let your thoughts run free. (I think of the walk from Puente la Reina, or the Sierra de Atapuerca before Burgos, or between Rabe de las Calzadas and Castrojeriz, or over the Paramo de Leon to Villar de Mazarife...)

And at intervals along this lonely, peaceful way there are human settlements. Compact little boroughs where life is lived in the streets, and the plaza with its fountain is the community living room and the pilgrim rendezvous point.

Which brings me to the third rhythm of the Camino...

rhythm number one: the rhythm of walking

2008-03-15T04:19:00.005-04:00

Along with our heartbeat and our breathing, it's the most basic rhythm we have. The rhythm of walking. Ages ago our ancestors traipsed out of Africa and populated most of this planet (for better or for worse) on foot, a step at a time.

Up as far as the Arctic Circle, out across Asia, south to Australia, over the Bering land bridge and all the way down to the tip of Tierra del Fuego. (As I write this I think of that urge so many of share to keep on going beyond Santiago to Finisterre, where we finally feel there is nowhere left to go.) Walking defines us. We are the creature who goes on two legs in the afternoon, and the agreed-on signs that we have joined the human club are our first steps and our first words.

Yet because of the life we live today, many of us have lost, or have hardly ever known, the rhythm of walking. City life disrupts natural rhythms and imposes unnatural ones. We navigate crowded sidewalks, stop and go at traffic lights, pop into and out of buildings, vehicles and elevators, bounce and jerk around on our feet like ball bearings in a life-sized pinball game. How many of us have exercised our great human legacy - of waking and walking, and then waking and walking again, and so on day by day in the direction of the horizon till we get to wherever it is our feet want to carry us?

One of the beauties of the Camino is that it offers us the chance to find the rhythm of our walk (for each of us has our own), and the pace that is right for us, and then to live by that rhythm of step by step day in and day out for a few precious weeks.

the rhythms of the camino

2008-03-13T03:48:00.004-04:00

What are the rhythms of the Camino?

When I tried to prepare an answer to this question on the ferry to Victoria, the first thing that came to mind was the rhythm of a pilgrim's day, the waking and walking and eating and sleeping and waking and walking and.... Though, thinking back, I had to admit that I never established much in the way of daily rhythms for myself. This was not for lack of trying, I was always saying "Today I'll do this and tomorrow I'll do that." It was just the Camino always tripped me up.

Take the waking as an example. There were mornings, a very few, when I woke all by myself at the hour of my body's choosing, days when I "took my waking slow." But most mornings I had help waking up. Sometimes it was from the hospitalero: the old "inspirational music at 6:30" routine. Sometimes it was from roosters or church bells. But mostly it was from some fellow pilgrim up long before dawn's first light to prepare his or her pack.

The early riser (and I'm talking 4:30 or 5 o'clock) invariably possesses a vast number of items, each wrapped in its own crinkly plastic bag. He wears a headband with a little miner's torch clipped to the front, which keeps flashing in my swollen eyes. As I lie paralyzed, he removes each of his items e v e r s o s l o w l y from its crinkly plastic and lays it on the bed. When they are all spread out before him, he examines them by torch light (I imagine him whispering "My precioussss.") Then he wraps each one up again s l o w l y s l o w l y and puts them all back in his pack.

Why does he do this? I don't know why he does this. But he does. And the rhythm of waking is shot.

Or what about that morning when I was wakened by a flashlight in my face. A man was standing beside my bunk, whispering, "Cinq, cinq," while he flashed the number five with his fingers. I went through some pretty lurid scenarios before I figured out that he had simply mistaken me for a member of his group and was telling me it was five o'clock and time to get up. There was no getting back to sleep after that.

When I think of my other attempts to establish daily rhythms - walking a certain distance in the mornings, arriving by a certain time, drinking only half that bottle of wine that came with supper, etc. - I reach the same conclusion. That, for me at least, trying to dictate terms to the Camino was largely a waste of time. I got more out of the Camino when I let it have its way with me.

So what "rhythms" was I going to talk about?

more fun

2008-03-12T04:09:00.002-04:00

And it only gets better! Beautiful group tonight at beautiful West Van Memorial Library, where Margaret Mould spoiled me rotten. And hey, is there an ordinance in Vancouver requiring every library to have at least one staff member who has walked the Camino? West Van has two!

I just wish I had more time to talk to people at these events. Please, anyone who didn't get to talk to me, or have a question answered, don't hesitate to e-mail me. Just click on the page that says Contact.

Before the gathering in Victoria, Wendy Loly did me a favour. She asked me to talk about a couple of subjects. i.e. not just to READ from my book, but to TALK. And this required me to THINK. At the time, I didn't feel like she was doing me a favour, I felt like she was subjecting me to a penance. But once I'd got the thinking out of the way and could see the results, I felt a little better about the whole exercise.

So what were Wendy's toughie subjects? Numero uno, scheduled for the first hour of the meeting, was to talk about "the rhythms of the Camino." Ben Cole had thirty-some minutes at the top to address Camino nuts and bolts: the who/what/when/where. In my part of the hour, I was supposed to give a feel for the pilgrim experience.

Question numero dos provided the theme for an afternoon breakout session led by Ben, Mary Virtue and me: Why do the Camino more than once?

Some of the answers I came up with for these questions were pedestrian-and-predictable. Others surprised me. I'll be sharing them in this space over the next little while.

fun on the west coast

2008-03-11T02:39:00.004-04:00

So here I am in Vancouver, barely off the plane, and I've already talked to two pilgrim groups and one public library crowd. Saturday's Victoria gathering offered a full day of Camino info and lore (and a great paella lunch) thanks to the organizational prowess of Wendy Loly and a high-powered team of volunteers.

In Surrey on Sunday (nice ring to that), Leigh Anderson made us feel like we were sitting around his rec-room with his cheery, easygoing style. But the best part of both gatherings was the breaks, when pilgrims and pilgrims-to-be mixed and mingled, sharing advice and stories and wishing each other well on their future big walks. Thanks to everyone for making me welcome, and giving me a chance to escape Toronto's Never-ending Winter of 2008.

Hats off too to Ben Cole, co-author with his partner Bethan Davies of some super guide books and maps of the Camino. His talk on the Via de la Plata almost convinced me that it would be great fun to spend a few weeks walking thirty-five kilometers a day in 45 degree heat. (Or was it forty-five kilometres in 35 degree heat?) Nearly got me, Ben.

And then tonight, a sterling audience of a hundred-or-so on a rainy Monday at Vancouver Public Library. Thank you to librarian and peregrina Janice Douglas. I tell you, I'm likin' this west coast!

Father Jose Maria dies

2008-02-29T23:38:00.004-05:00

Last weekend marked the passing of a beloved figure of the Camino de Santiago, Father Jose Maria Alonso Marroquin, 81. For thirty years, the genial, energetic padre welcomed pilgrims to his refuge, housed in the secluded monastery of San Juan de Ortega, warming their stomachs and their spirits with his legendary garlic soup and a rousing chorus of Ultreya, the anthem of the Camino. Father Jose Maria was also a founder of the Burgos Association of Friends of the Camino and worked tirelessly for the restoration of his historic monastery and parish church.

In this beautiful and austere video clip of San Juan de Ortega in winter, taken from the film "Tres por el camino," Father Jose Maria serves up his garlic soup almost as a holy communion. You could say it was.

(Photo: Xose Antonio Vilaboa Barreiro)

mexico and discovered virgins

2008-02-26T00:42:00.005-05:00

Just got back from a few days (too few) in sunny Mexico visiting the gorgeous colonial cities of Queretaro, San Miguel de Allende and Guanajuato, as well as the capital itself. A natural highlight was the Pena de Bernal (please imagine a tilde over the 'n' in Pena), considered to be the second-largest monolith in the world, and an abundant source of positive energies (or so Michiko assures me). Urban highlights included the laid-back plazas of Queretaro, the patchwork quilt of Guanajuato's houses scattered up and down their ravine, and Mexico City's urban villages of San Angel and Coyoacan.

I intended to call on the Virgin of Guadalupe while in Mexico, but time was short and there was too much else to do and see. Next time. But I did catch a glimpse of the Virgin of Guanajuato. Here is how she is described in the Eyewitness Travel book: "The statue was given to the city by Charles I and Philip II of Spain in 1557. Reputed to date from the 7th century, it is considered the oldest piece of Christian art in Mexico." I didn't even have to see Our Lady to know that there was no way she dated from the 7th century, that she was, in fact, a virgen encontrada - a "discovered Virgin."

There are virgenes encontradas throughout Spain, but they are particularly thick along the Camino de Santiago. Nuestras Senoras de Roncesvalles, del Puy (Estella) and de Valvanera (matron of La Rioja), Santa Maria la Real de Najera, la Virgens del Manzano (Castrojeriz) and de la Encina (Ponferrada) are only a few of the most celebrated. But what are the virgenes encontradas? They are statues of the Virgin and Child (most often seated) that were created for churches of the Camino in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. Later, however, a certain legend became attached to many of them.

According to the legend, which varies slightly from place to place, the statues were crafted in the early days of Spanish Christianity, before the Muslim conquests of the eighth century. When the invaders came, the Christians concealed the statues in caves, under the floors of churches, in holy springs and other secret places, before fleeing for the mountains of the north. Four hundred years later, when the Christian tide moved south again, the statues called out from their places of concealment through strange music or lights, mysterious birds or stags, wondrous deeds (the hoof of Saint James' horse splitting a tree trunk to reveal the Virgin concealed within). One way or another, they would call the attention of the returned Christians to let them know, "We are here, waiting for you. Bring us to the light and build us a church."

The tales of the discovered Virgins reveal the profound link between the mother figure, the feminine principle in the Spanish soul, and the earth over which she rules and watches. The holy mother and child rise up from the soil (or the water, or out of the very hearts of trees) as spontaneously and naturally as they rise up within the Iberian religious imagination.

snowy thoughts

2008-02-01T23:14:00.000-05:00

It's snowing it's snowing it's snowing in Toronto. Will this never end?

What's it like in Roncesvalles tonight? Are there any brave and slightly mad pilgrims shivering in its great bunker of a refuge? Are the heights of the Camino sunk in snowdrifts?

A 13^th century Latin poem about Roncesvalles paints a cozy picture. In the Spanish translation:
Sobre los rigores del tiempo invernal,
El hielo es perpetual, las nieves igual,
El cielo brumoso y el viento glacial,
Tan solo es tranquillo la casa hospital.

Roughly, "Under the rigours of the wintry weather, the ice is perpetual, the snows the same. The sky is cloudy and the wind glacial. The only peaceful place is the Hospital." (Roncesvalles was/is called a "hospital" in the old Latin sense of a place of hospitality.)

In the winter of 1570, Elizabeth of Valois passed through Roncesvalles on her way to marry Philip II of Spain. The royal carriage overturned in the mountain pass and men and horses died in the frigid cold. But even in the dead of winter, there were 400 pilgrims staying at the hospital. (Good old Liz gave 3 reales to every one of them.

At the other end of the Camino, up in the Montes de Leon, the pass of Irago was stocked with settlers "to the population of fifteen" by a decree of Fernando IV in 1302 so that there would be someone to clear the snow for the pilgrims. And according to tradition, the villagers of El Acebo were exempted from taxes in exchange for placing and maintaining 800 stakes in winter to mark the Camino.*

In 2002, I had the pleasure of crossing the Montes de Leon in the teeth of a howling blizzard. The Guardia Civil stopped me halfway and told me the highway was closed. I told them I was Canadian. They shrugged and drove away. The Spanish have great respect for the freedom of the individual - up to and including the freedom to freeze to death in the mountains. But I didn't freeze. I kept to the road, stopped for soup at Tomas the Templar's, and made it safely to El Acebo, where as far as I know they now pay taxes same as everywhere else.

*Poetry and fascinating facts courtesy of Aventura y muerte en el Camino de Santiago, Braulio Valdivielso Ausin (yes that's his name), Editorial la Olmeda.
Top photo (mountains above Roncesvalles) by Carlos Vinas-Valle: http://www.rencesvals.com/

the journey of a thousand miles

2008-01-26T13:50:00.000-05:00

Harking back to yesterday's blog, there is another Chinese proverb that is often quoted in reference to the Camino, the one that goes: "The journey of a thousand miles (or whatever the Chinese sages measured distances in) starts with a single step."

I well remember the single step that started my first journey to Santiago. It was in the wrong direction. I had just received my credencial, my pilgrim passport, from the office in St-Jean-Pied-de-Port. It was after noon and I was dying to start out. I stepped into the SJPP's steep main street, the track of the Camino through town, looked both ways, then began to walk - up.

Well, naturally. I had to cross the Pyrenees. The obvious way was up. So I strode through the historic gates of Saint-Jacques and out into the country, breathing deeply, feeling pilgrim energy surging through me. I had walked for a bit when I saw something - a sign? a yellow arrow? approaching pilgrims? - that indicated pretty clearly that I was going the wrong way.

I didn't turn around immediately. I didn't want to be recognized as the wrong-way pilgrim. Instead I stopped and gazed out over the valley, as if that was why I had come out here in the first place. It was one of those times I really wished I smoked. When my vanity was placated, I turned around and strode right back through the gates of Saint-Jacques, past the pilgrim office and down to the bottom of the town, noting as I went that sometimes you have to go down before you go up.

Once I'd got myself pointed in the right direction, I was pretty much okay the rest of the way to Santiago.

message to eileen (and a happy Burns Day to all)

2008-01-26T01:57:00.000-05:00

I just received an e-mail with an interesting question and a lovely quotation. Sent an e-mail in return. Got it back with notification of a "permanent failure" in the delivery. How terrible to have no hope; to be doomed to permanent failure. And what's worse, the person who sent me the e-mail would be left thinking me too lazy or callous to answer her question.

And that's when I remembered MY BLOG! Hopefully, Eileen will pass through here sometime and see my response to her question. (Let me know if you do, eh?)

So here's the message:

I have been planning to go [on the Camino] for the past 8 years...and still holding back. Some say, \"When the student is ready, the teacher will come.\" Wonder if it ever was the case for you the first time you set your heart out to walk El Camino.

To which I can reply (having counted it on my fingers) that it was a full nine years from the time I first read of the Camino (knowing at once that I would do it someday) and the day I finally took my first pilgrim steps (in the wrong direction, as it turned out.)

The proverb is apt to the Camino. Our feet find it when they're ready. Though in my case, I'd modify it: "When the student gets tired of waiting, he'll go find himself a teacher." There's plenty of them on the Camino.

our ladies of ottawa, montserrat and kyoto

2007-12-19T00:10:00.000-05:00

Hey, just back from our nation's capital. (Okay, I got back last week, don't split hairs.)

But what a town, what a town! My first Ottawa evening was spent in the vibrant company of my sister-in-law's book club, gossiping about the characters in All the Good Pilgrims and consuming lots of Rioja wine. Saturday I spoke to the local Camino gathering, convened by the genial Austin Cooke, who was newly returned from a spectacular Camino that commenced at the shrine of the Black Madonna of Montserrat; talk about virgin trails! We had a fine turn-out of forty despite the fact the meeting fell plunk in the middle of Christmas shopping season. I hope everyone had as much fun as I did.

Saturday night it was off to rustic Dunvegan, where I celebrated Hanukkah in the bosom of the local Jewish community (ie. Ronna and Lionel) before spending the night at Greg Byers' cozy retirement villa. Finally, Sunday afternoon I spent talking up All the Good Pilgrims at Nicholas Hoare Books.

Which brings me to something that impressed me about Ottawa: the degree of Camino awareness. Just about everyone I talked to at Nicholas Hoare already knew about it, whereas at Toronto bookstores most people are hearing about it for the first time. Is this because Ottawa is so near Quebec and its Catholic traditions? Does it have something to do with long holidays in the civil service, or early retirement? Is it all the politicians doing penance for taking envelopes stuffed with thousand-dollar bills? I wonder...

Anyway, a little off the beaten track of the Camino, the Globe and Mail published my Japan article in their weekend travel section. Nothing to do with pilgrimages -- unless of course you want to make a Memoirs of a Geisha pilgrimage.

live in kingston!

2007-12-02T01:34:00.001-05:00

Seems like years, but it's only two weeks ago I was in Kingston, enjoying some local hospitality.

My first night's host, Peter Coffman, was also my partner-in-crime for the weekend's Chapters event. If you don't know Peter's work, find out about it. Three years ago, Peter walked the Camino with Canadian violinist extraordinaire Oliver Schroer. Along the way, Oliver composed and recorded the haunting melodies that are collected on his 2006 album, Camino. The recordings were made in acoustically perfect churches, giving the music a sublime resonance and brightness.

Peter, formerly a commercial photographer, chronicled the journey in powerful black-and-white images. These are featured on the album cover and notes, and won Peter the 2007 Independent Music Awards prize for Album Photography. You can see a few of these images in the Camino gallery on Oliver's website. For the rest, you'll have to be patient till the long-awaited petercoffman.com site is finally launched. (Keep checking; Peter promises it's coming soon.)

As for my second night's hosts, well they don't really have anything to do with the Camino (though they crossed its path a few times on a trip to Spain earlier this year) but they're disgustingly talented too: Lise Carruthers, a landscape artist and painter whose tornado-and-wind funnel series make for a unique guest bedroom experience, and Rob Gonsalves, a Governor-General's award-winner for his whimsical, perspective-shifting paintings (see the children's books Imagine a Night and Imagine a Day (Atheneum)). And though Rob doesn't know it yet, he's going to do the cover for the reissue of Virgin Trails, whenever that happens.

a long overdue update

2007-11-24T20:08:00.000-05:00

Eeeeek! How do seven weeks go by like that? Well. Like that.

What's new? I've been up to my old tricks, sitting for hours in cafes around Bathurst and Bloor (lately my favourite has been Aroma, though sometimes lately I've been back at my old haunt, the Future Bakery, where the coffee has either improved or wasn't as bad as I remembered it), writing. Yes, I really do write in cafes. I'm still using the same old battle-hardened Dell that I bought used back in 2001 (with a classic Windows '95 operating system) and I couldn't tune in to the Internet if I wanted to, which is probably a good thing.

So what am I writing? Well, as I haven't been anywhere new or exciting lately (unless you count Kingston), I find myself falling back on old themes. I'm working Virgin Trails up into a dramatic monologue with, so far, pleasing results. However, as I don't have a theatre background I plan to shop my script around soon to see if any local theatre companies are interested in helping me develop it. (Yes, that was a cry for help.) And my other project... Would you believe, a novel set on the Camino? No promises, it's a work in a very early stage of progress. I'll keep you posted.

I'd been thinking where to go (and what to write about) next. Top candidates were the Shikoku Buddhist pilgrimage in Japan, the Via Francigena from Canterbury to Rome and the Cammino di Assisi (something I've only heard of recently, it follows the path of the first Franciscans through the Appenines (see http://www.camminodiassisi.it/ if you're interested in knowing more).

Yeah, there's lots of long walks out there. But if I pursue this Camino novel idea, then next spring will probably find me back in those glamour spots of Spain: Castrojeriz, Mansilla de las Mulas, Ponferrada... Ah, the Camino life for me!

One quick note before I go. It's already getting late to think of Christmas, but if there's some little knick-knack or gift you didn't pick up while you were in Santiago - a pin, a pendant, a fridge magnet - take a look at http://www.pilgerandenken.de/, a great German mail order website that stocks a wide range of Camino souvenirs (you'll find the jewelry under pilgerschmuck, which is not what I thought schmuck meant. Live and learn...)

More soon, promise.

downtime and dervishes

2007-10-03T00:58:00.001-04:00

Hello? Anybody still out there?

I haven't been blogging the last couple weeks. Partly that's testimony to how easily habits can be broken. Mine, anyway. My Internet was out of service for a few days and boom - that was enough to throw me off my blog, as it were. Partly too, it's because I've been working on other writing. The blog is fun, I enjoy researching topics and hunting down illustrations, but it's time-consuming and I have other things that want very badly to consume my time.

In the past few weeks I've been working to finish off four travel narratives, all of which have been simmering on the back burner for more than a couple years, all of which I would be delighted to see in print. Two are related to the Camino, two are stories about my travels in Greece and Turkey of a few years back, all are about sacred journeys and the sweet ironies of travel. Here's the first page of one of them. It's called "Ringing Rumi's Doorbell" and it's about a trip I made to Turkey in pursuit of the Whirling Dervishes.

Some years ago I saw a film called Baraka - do you know it? - an amazing montage of human and natural moments captured all over the world and corraled into a single movie. In one scene there were whirling dervishes. I knew at once that's what they were, though I'd never seen one before, nor even knew that such creatures still existed save as part of an outmoded figure of speech. Yet there they were, direct from the Arabian Nights, living, breathing, whirling like...

They spun across the screen for only three or four minutes but they left an indelible impression. Their whirling was not the frantic, Tasmanian devil-dance I had assumed it would be. It was, rather, a celestial turning, a wheeling of the crystal spheres. The dervishes whirled in an airy, bright room with wooden floors and high windows. One at a time the long, black figures approached an elderly, bearded man, tipping their heads in close enough for him to speak into their ears. Then as they stepped away their black cloak slipped from their shoulders, the white gown beneath was revealed and they began to turn. They were beautiful and solemn, their forms strangely elegant, from the tall cylindrical hats down to the wide billowing gowns. As I watched them I fell into a peaceful embrace, a spell, a trance, a waking sleep. It reminded me of a feeling I knew as a child, when I would watch my parents engaged in some quiet work (editing an article, stitching up a seam) till I was absorbed in their absorption and drifted out of myself, out of time.

The religious or the spiritually inclined might call this a mystical experience, a glimpse through the veil. For me it was simply a moment of beauty, a dreamy solipsistic moment. All I wanted was for that moment to go on and on. Instead I kept having to rewind it. There was no way around it, if I wanted the feeling to last, I would have to find a high, airy room where dervishes twirled through beams of light. And if that meant going to Turkey, so be it. I don't know if other people plan their trips this way, but it seemed perfectly reasonable to me.

It was a few years more before I actually got to Turkey. I didn't worry about the delay, however. The dervishes had been around for a long time; they'd wait for me. Looking back now, I'm surprised at how casual I was about the whole business, never even bothering to look into the wheres and whens of their performances (if that was the word for what they did). I thought they'd be easy to find. So it was that I arrived in Istanbul ignorant bliss intact.

living in the spiritual world

2007-09-14T19:06:00.000-04:00

September 14th is a special day for pilgrims to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, the day when the discovery of the True Cross is celebrated. According to Jewish legend, the fact that this commemoration falls at the same time as Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, is not a coincidence but an attempt by the early Church to Christianize a Jewish holy day.

The most visible pilgrim in Israel today, however, is Madonna - the pop singer, that is. "Esther," the Hebrew name she has taken for herself, is attending a Kabbalah conference at the King David Hotel in Jerusalem along with her husband and kids, designer Donna Karan, Rosie O'Donnell and the Moore-Kutchers. She's been pushing Jewish mystical practices on her fans and friends since 1998, including selling copies of The 72 Names of God: Technology for the Soul by Kabbalah scholar Rabbi Yehuda Berg at her concerts.

Berg's Kabbalah Centre (which was quick off the mark to claim the treasured kabbalah.com web address) has come under fire for commercializing Jewish esotericism. In mainstream Judaism only men are permitted to study these writings, and only after years of intellectual preparation. Berg fires back with the claim that the Kabbalah was written by Abraham and "predates Judaism," citing Isaac Newton and Plato as Kabbalah followers.

Living in the material world? Not this girl.

walking to end breast cancer

2007-09-11T23:29:00.000-04:00

This past Saturday and Sunday saw Toronto's fifth annual "Weekend to end breast cancer." My niece Emily was one of 5,521 participants who together raised $17.3 million dollars in what has been called the biggest single-event fund-raiser in Canadian history. How did they do it? By walking sixty kilometres! Thirty k's a day, a positively Caminoesque distance, and mostly on hard pavement, with Saturday night's lodging in a tent city and a rainy Galician-style start to Sunday morning. Way to go!

Meanwhile, over in Spain, the fifty members of Dilo caminando were soaking their feet. Dilo caminando -- "say it by walking" -- is a group of women affected by breast or ovarian cancer who last year started walking the Camino de Santiago to raise awareness of cancer and dispel the taboos around the disease. The 2006 walkers, all from the province of Aragon, covered the route from Somport to Pamplona. This year's pilgrimage, which was joined by walkers from Navarra and Leon, began September 1st in Puente la Reina and wound up Friday the 7th in Leon, where hundreds turned out to welcome the women to the city. Next year's goal is Santiago de Compostela. Animo peregrinas!

(Toronto photo by krx72)

september 8th, Mary's birthday

2007-09-07T10:09:00.001-04:00

I'm off to Canada's vast northlands (does a hundred miles northeast of Toronto qualify?) for a boy's weekend of beer and barbecues, so I'm posting my September 8th blog a day early. Tomorrow is the feast of the Nativity of Mary, one of only two saint's birthdays celebrated by the Catholic Church, along with that of John the Baptist (most other saints being remembered on the day of their death or martyrdom).

The Bible has no birth records for Mary, but this day was allotted to her in both Byzantium and Rome from at least the 7th century. It falls a neat nine months after December 8, the feast of her (immaculate) Conception, and at the point of transition from summer to autumn, the time of the harvest. It is an occasion for lively local pilgrimages in many parts of the world.

Fitting, then, that it was on September 8th, 2002, that the first image of Mary, accompanied by a strong scent of roses, appeared in the window of a greenhouse in the Metis community of Ile-a-la-Crosse, northern Saskatchewan (Canada's real northland). The image of a hooded, standing woman was followed by others, including a rosary, and soon crowds estimated at up to a thousand were making the pilgrimage to the greenhouse from all over the vicinity. The following months brought new images, in Fond-du-Lac, Black Lake and several other Dene and Metis communities, which drew new crowds of the prayerful, the sceptical, the curious.

There was some reporting of these incidents at the time, but soon, as usually happens with such things, public interest loped off elsewhere and there has been no news since - at least none that I've been able to scare up on the Internet. But I'll come back to this next week, to see if the images -- and the pilgrimages -- have persisted.

listen up! new mp3s!

2007-09-05T00:46:00.000-04:00

How many of you have felt, on coming home from the Camino that nobody really wants to hear about it? There you are, fresh from this great, burgeoning, life-altering adventure that you're exploding to talk about -- and no one's listening. You don't get so much as a 'How-was-your-pilgrimage?'

A big part of this, of course, is that the Camino can't be summed up in the sort of easy categories we use to talk about other trips. I mean, how were the accommodations on the Camino? How was the food? What did you see? The highlight of your Camino might have been the meal of potatoes and onions fried in olive oil that you whomped up with some pilgrims one night at the refuge; or the time you looked down at the path and saw your name written in stones by some friends who had gone ahead; or the day you tripped and busted a tooth and the first person you met in the next town was a dentist who fixed it for free; or the icy night when you looked up at the stars swirling in the black skies over El Burgo Ranero and tears began to stream down your face for no reason that you could tell.

All these things happened; some of them happened to me. They were things of the heart, of the moment, of feelings that can only be understood with a thorough knowledge of the circumstances and the context that gave them meaning. And who has time for context these days?

It's one reason why I write books. It lets me get the tales out of my system. It's a funny thing, but I know people who wouldn't listen to me tell stories for ten minutes, yet are happy to spend hours reading them. Still, that old hankering to tell, to just open up my mouth and let the stories out, never goes away. Which is why I enjoy reading from my books so much and why (ah! I sense he's coming to the point) I have recorded four passages from All the Good Pilgrims FOR YOUR LISTENING PLEASURE.

Yes, once again I have ventured into the recording studio with Our Lady of the Soundboard, Helena W., and emerged with... Well, hopefully with something you'll enjoy. The shortest of the four tracks is under three minutes, the longest nearly twelve. There are plenty of rough spots and mistakes, and I have an awful time trying to locate a Dutch accent, but what do you expect from an amateur? Give 'em a listen. Hope you like 'em.

what's wrong with this picture?

2007-09-03T00:34:00.000-04:00

I knew there was something wrong with this picture.

In the year 2000, while I was in Paris taking notes for my book Virgin Trails, I paid a visit to the impromptu pilgrimage that had sprung up in the Place d'Alma, above the tunnel where Princess Diana's fatal crash occurred. I thought I might sneak something into the book (Princess of the World vs Queen of Heaven?), but the whole business got lost in the editing process and my notes and photos from that day went into cold storage. Permanently, I thought.

Then several days ago, I decided to do a blog on the tenth anniversary of Diana's death and suddenly they were relevant. The notes were close to hand in my computer (lovely things, computers) but the photos were stashed in a shoe box..... somewhere. So I skimmed around the Net till I found this photo on a website about the Statue of Liberty (many thanks.)

But somehow the photo didn't jive with my notes. For instance, my notes speculate about the first pilgrim/mourner to come to this site "with a can of glue," and later mention civic workers "scraping photos" off the memorial. Yet the image from the Net clearly shows that the photos are not pasted to the statue, but hang primly from the little guard rail that encircles it.

"Guard rail?" I thought. "What guard rail...?"

Tonight I located my photos from 2000 and, eureka, they show that there have indeed been some changes to the "Princess Di memorial." The barrier is new and all of those lovely photos (and broadsheets proclaiming conspiracy theories) have been bundled away. Decorum rules. Here's a glimpse of what the place looked like in the days when pilgrim enthusiasm was unbridled.

random acts of kindness day

2007-09-01T09:40:00.000-04:00

One thing every pilgrim and traveller has experienced is the random act of kindness. The unostentatious, open-hearted gesture that comes out of the blue and leaves us speechless with gratitude. A stranger goes out of his way to set us on the right road. A farmer offers us a handful of chestnuts or a cluster of grapes. A bartender pours us a drink on the house. Another pilgrim takes our pack for a while, or invites us to share her meal, or goes fumbling in her bag to dig out creams and blister pads for our beat-up feet. We can all think of stories.

But the point of random acts of kindness is that they're random. They just happen. You can't institutionalize them. Or can you?

In New Zealand, they're giving it a shot. September 1st, 2007 marks NZ's second national Random Acts of Kindness Day, a day when everyone is supposed to do something to "lift the kindness temperature" of the nation. This is not a national holiday, more of a private initiative (with sponsorship from World Vision and Starbucks, no less), but it looks like it's worth a try. I say we go international with it. Let's all get out there today and shock someone with a random act of kindness.

(NB: the video is from 2006, the first RAK Day. And there does seem to be an international RAK movement. Check out the website of the American Random Acts of Kindness Foundation, which identifies itself as "the US delegate to the World Kindness Movement, an organization that contain various nations." If you know more about the RAK movement, let the rest of us in on it.)

place princesse diana, paris

2007-08-31T09:42:00.000-04:00

It looks so much shorter in real life, the tunnel at the Pont de l'Alma. In those second-by-second TV reconstructions of the accident (or as some would have it, "the accident") it seemed to stretch for miles. In reality, it scarcely merits the name tunnel; "underpass" is more like it. Nevertheless, this is where it happened.

And by some - can we say? - happy chance, up there above ground, directly over the entrance to the tunnel, where the living stroll and breathe and laugh, there sits a tiny park with a modest memorial: a golden replica of the flame of the Statue of Liberty, looking like a soft ice cream cone in a strong wind. It is the centrepiece of "Place Diana, Princesse de Galles, Princesse du Monde."

Well no; actually it's a symbol of Franco-American friendship offered to Paris on the occasion of the centenary of the International Herald Tribune in 1987. But in the minds of the people who flock to this site, leaving behind photos, bouquets of flowers and the inevitable graffiti expressing undying love and conspiracy theories, the golden flame burns for Princess Diana.

Doubtless the International Herald Tribune will continue to regard the square and the monument as its own. But Diana was the people's princess, and the people have expressed their will in this matter. It must have started simply enough, with curiosity, a desire to see the place where it happened. People came and found a theatre for the expression of grief. The flame gave them something to pose in front of for the necessary photos. Someone started posting the photos. And a pilgrimage was born. The body is not here of course. Diana is interred on her own tiny island on the Spencer family estate. But here, her death is more present. You only need to peer over the guardrail.

One day, a last flower will be laid by a last mourner. Some civic worker will tidy away the last of the photos. And these heart-felt memorials will seem as quaint and remote as the grief expended over the death of Victor Hugo or Sarah Bernhardt. But not anytime soon.

fly the sacred skies

2007-08-29T10:06:00.001-04:00

Air Pilgrim has taken off. According to the CBC, Mistral Air, a small Italian carrier, has signed a five-year agreement with the Vatican to offer flights from Italian cities to pilgrimage sites including Fatima, Santiago de Compostela, Czestochowa, Sinai and the Holy Land. Yesterday saw Mistral's inaugural flight, to Lourdes. By next year the airline hopes to be carrying 150,000 passengers.

Cardinal Camillo Ruini, CEO of Opera Romana Pellegrinaggi, says the aim of the airline is to let pilgrims live their pilgrimage from the moment they leave their homes to the moment they return. To that end, flights will include periods of spiritual preparation and meditation, and in-flight videos with religious themes. The seat covers will bear the Papal arms of the ORP and its motto, "I seek your face, Lord." (There is apparently no truth to the rumour that "On a wing and a prayer" was ever considered as a slogan for the airline.)

Budget carrier Ryanair was quick to respond to the launching of Mistral, claiming in a statement that, "Ryanair already performs miracles that even the Pope's boss can't rival, by delivering pilgrims to Santiago de Compostela for the heavenly price of 10 euros."

Italian news agency ANSA reports that Opera Romana Pellegrinaggi is an organ of the Holy See, founded in 1933 with the objective of making organized pilgrimage, "a valid means of human advancement and evangelization." Last year, ORP presided over the holy travels of some 350,000 pilgrims, both incoming (tours of Rome and the Vatican, including audiences with the Pope) and outgoing. Its staff includes over 900 priests and some 400 lay pastors and co-ordinators who act as spiritual and technical guides for its pilgrim package tours. ORP also charters the "special trains" that give nightmares to French and Italian rail-schedule planners. In 2006, over 200 such pilgrim trains plied the Italian rails, 154 of them, carrying over 100,000 pilgrims, bound for - where else? - Lourdes.

A few more staggering numbers, courtesy ANSA:
number of pilgrims worldwide, 2007: 190 million
pilgrims to Lourdes this year: 8 million
most frequented pilgrimage site: Our Lady of Guadalupe, Mexico City, 10 million

world sauntering day

2007-08-28T09:47:00.000-04:00

Put on some comfy shoes and get ready to go nowhere in particular because August 28th is World Sauntering Day. The observation goes all the way back to the mid-70s, when publicist W.T.Rabe (known also as the father of LSSU's world stone-skipping tournament) decided it was time for people to slow down, smell the roses and take a long leisurely look at the world around them.

So get on down (but don't hurry!) to the boulevard, the boardwalk, the plaza, the esplanade... Banish all thoughts of destinations from your mind. And if you're on the Camino, don't race to that next refuge. Let it come to you.

To learn more about the history of World Sauntering Day, and the rules and principles of sauntering, listen here. Now I'm going out for a saunter. Hope to see you.

the templar trail

2007-08-24T14:17:00.000-04:00

Well, it had to happen sometime. My gratitude to Bill Cornelius for being the first to respond to one of my blogs. For his account of the Polish-Canadian pilgrimage to Midland, scroll down to the August 11th entry. And we expect to be hearing more from Bill when he gets back in six weeks... from his walk to Rome on the Via Francigena pilgrimage road. Go, Bill!

Yes, it's a peregrinating world out there, as people keep beating new paths and fixing up old ones. It was just a few days ago I was talking about the Abraham Path from Turkey to Hebron, and now here comes Brandon Wilson with "the Templar Trail." Here's his message, sent last week to the Santiagobis Yahoo Group.

A trail that I walked last year runs from France to Jerusalem. It traces an early pilgrimage route that coincides with that of the Romans and Godfrey de Bouillon of the First Crusades. The Templar Trail traces the Donau radweg, a beautiful bicycle path through Germany, Austria to Budapest. Then you walk onward through Serbia, Bulgaria and Turkey. There is plenty of tradition along the way, as you pass through 11 countries and areas practicing three major religions. No problem generally finding good accommodation and I was able to walk it in 160 days (133 walking days) for about the same cost as the Camino. I've been talking to groups about it lately with the hope that it will someday become an international trail for peace (fitting irony there, given its role in the Crusades).

Ultreia, Brandon Wilson

This one's not for the faint of heart. 4200 k's and not another pilgrim soul... Or not yet, anyway. Brandon's book on the walk, including stages, distances, sights and practical details, will be out in January. To find out more about this intrepid pilgrim (whose journeys have also taken him to Tibet and Africa), check out http://www.pilgrimstales.com/

botafumeiro back in service

2007-08-23T15:43:00.000-04:00

They call it the botafumeiro - the smoke-dispenser - and there's nothing else like it in the world: 1.5 metres in height, weighing over 50 kg, requiring a seven-man team, first to set it swinging, then to subdue it when it's had its little run.

No one can say for sure why the censer of the cathedral of Santiago is so massive, though it is commonly believed that it once served as a giant air freshener (not a bad idea when you consider that until 1786 the cathedral was also a place where the unwashed pilgrim masses ate and slept). The mechanism that sends it hurtling like a pendulum from one end of the nave to the other, at top speeds of 65 kph, dates back to the 16th century. The current botafumeiro of silver-plated bronze dates back to 1851; it replaced the 1544 edition, which was stolen (and doubtless melted down) by Napoleon's gangsters in 1809.

And yes, in case you're wondering, twice in its history, the botafumeiro has cut loose and gone for a flight. On the first occasion, in 1499, Catherine of Aragon was present. In fact, it was her sending-off party before her marriage to the to-be Henry VIII. Maybe to show what it thought of the marriage, the botafumeiro snapped its rope and went soaring through the windows into the Praza das Praterias. No one was injured on that occasion, nor on the second, which occurred in 1622.

Since then, the botafumeiro has had a clean safety record, and to keep things that way,it was taken out of service for two months earlier this summer so the cords could be replaced. We'll see how well these ones hold out. Thousands of pilgrims were disappointed not to see the botafumeiro in action, but she's swinging again, as this broadcast from TV Galicia, July 11, shows. (I know, it's not exactly news, but it's great footage and a chance to listen to the soft gallego tongue.)

http://www.agalega.info/videos/reproductor.php?emi=410&corte=2007-07-11&hora=15:16:03&canle=tvg1 (patience, it's slow to load)

NB: the above photo was taken by Michael Krier and comes from the Confraternity of Saint James (CSJ) photo library, a terrific (and growing) source of Camino images.

http://www.csj.org.uk/digilib-intro.htm#use

new rules to govern compostela

2007-08-21T14:28:00.000-04:00

According to La Voz de Galicia (http://www.lavozdegalicia.es/santiago/2007/08/17/0003_6066768.htm), as of January 1, 2009, only those pilgrims holding credentials issued by the Cathedral of Santiago will be awarded the Compostela at the end of their journey. Currently, there are an estimated forty to fifty versions of the credential floating about, and the stated purpose of the reform is to combat abuses and clarify who is eligible for the certificate.

The Compostela is given to those who have completed the Camino "con sentido cristiano, aunque solo sea en un actitud de busqueda" - "in a Christian sense (manner / direction), even if it be only in an attitude of searching." At present, according to a cathedral spokesman, it is being claimed on a regular basis by "mere hikers and budget tourists" who show up at the Pilgrim Office bearing any old stamp-bearing document issued by dodgy Camino organizations and unscrupulous tour operators.

The abuses alleged are real. There are certainly individuals and groups who use the Camino's albergues as rest-stops on cheap holidays, driving from one to the next, arriving early to claim beds that should go to pilgrims who have walked or biked. I have known a few of these characters, and let me assure you that every last one of them held official credentials. They're really not that hard to obtain. So it's hard to see how the announced "reform" is going to change anything, and not surprising that many pilgrims are looking for a hidden agenda behind this unilateral move by the Cathedral of Santiago.

Let's hope there is no need for concern, and assume that if there is we can count on the various Camino associations - the ones who actually restored the path, established the refuges, and instituted the credential system - to speak out loud and clear on the issues.

more on the abraham path

2007-08-18T09:36:00.000-04:00

"We go to conferences all the time with Muslims, Jews, and Christians, and then we agree on all kinds of things, but we never feel the results on the ground. It's as if I'm running my car engine, but I never take it out of the garage. So maybe it's better if I walk with my own feet."

Dr. Hamid Murad, Jordanian Muslim leader

When Dr. Murad talks about walking with his own feet, he's speaking quite literally about a burgeoning international, inter-faith initiative known as the Abraham Path, a pilgrimage-project that is meant to unite Christians, Muslims and Jews on the journey of their common ancestor: from Turkey down through Syria, Lebanon and Jordan to Israel and the West Bank. Sound ambitious? Then consider that future extensions of the pilgrimage into Iraq (Abraham's birthplace), Egypt (where he sojourned) and - why not? - Mecca are also on the table.

This is all, in the words of a fellow blogster, "either a really good idea, or a really bad one." Several of these countries are at war (declared, undeclared or civil), and travel between them by their own citizens is often forbidden or restricted. Even for foreign pilgrims who can get the necessary papers, safety is a huge concern. But William Ury, the Harvard University conflict-negotiation expert who conceived the project, isn't waiting for conflicts to be resolved on an inter-governmental level. The aim of his pilgrimage is to solve them on a one-to-one basis, as people get out and "walk with their own feet." Besides, says Ury, the infrastructure for the project is already largely in place: "We're not creating this path. This path already exits. In some ways, we're just dusting off the path so you can see the footsteps."

Those of us familiar with the Camino will readily understand what the Abraham Path is trying to achieve in setting people on a single road to a common destination - a road where they will walk and talk and share bathrooms and cooking facilities and morning coffee and listen to each other snore (snoring is the common language of every race and creed) and somehow put up with and maybe even get to like each other; where each of them will be reduced and exalted to the common denominator of pilgrimhood. It's a powerful idea if it can be put into practice. And putting it into practice is what's happening now, with the first leg of the Abraham Path through Jordan scheduled to be ready in spring 2008. (Cautiously) break out your walking shoes!

http://www.commongroundnews.org/article.php?id=20417&lan=en&sid=1&sp=0 http://www.abrahampath.org/about.php?lang=en

"There is an old saying that some conflicts are so difficult, only a story can heal them..."
Click here to see a 7-minute RealPlayer video presentation on the Abraham Path initiative.

http://www.law.harvard.edu/media/2007/01/22/apinew_weiss.rm

record crowds for the King and the Apostle

2007-08-16T08:49:00.000-04:00

Last night's candlelit vigil for Elvis was the biggest ever according to the Memphis Commercial Appeal (great name for a newspaper). An estimated 50,000 mourners, pilgrims, fans were still making their way, one by one, past the King's grave at sunrise this morning. One died of heat stroke in the afternoon leading up to the vigil, as Memphis temperatures soared to 106F. Check out this article for an interview with Roy Smalley, a "tribute artist" (aka, "Elvis impersonator") who also serves with the County Rescue Squad. He speculates on the reaction of someone waking from a faint to find they are being revived by Elvis.

http://www.commercialappeal.com/mca/local/article/
0,2845,MCA_25340_5674359,00.html

And if the grave of the King is busy, how about the tomb of the Apostle? Not in centuries, maybe never, has Santiago de Compostela seen crowds like these. Last week, the Pilgrim Office in the Rua do Vilar handed out 7,209 compostelas, a single-week record (*the compostela is the certificate given to pilgrims who have walked one hundred kilometres or more and cyclists who have done two-hundred.*) On Saturday alone, 1500 accreditations were made, the first time the total has surpassed 1200 in a single day. Office hours were extended to make sure no one went home without their quaint Latin scroll, and though no figures are available, you can bet the little stationery shop across the road that sells cardboard tubes made an absolute killing.

Seems like we still need our kings and saints...

http://www.elcorreogallego.es/index.php?idMenu=3&idNoticia=198696

elvis - wanted alive

2007-08-15T08:46:00.000-04:00

August 16th, 1976. The day that will always be remembered by, well by those who remember it that way, as the day the King died. (I never "got" the whole Elvis thing, but then I missed most of it.)

Tomorrow marks the thirtieth anniversary of Elvis Presley's passing, and tonight, for the twenty-sixth time, the event will be solemnized by a single-file, candle-lit procession through the grounds of Graceland to the King's tomb. Move over, Lourdes. Here are some details taken from the Candlelight Vigil Fact Sheet/FAQ.

When does the Candlelight Vigil begin? How does it work?
The opening ceremony takes place at 8:30 p.m. on August 15, near the front gates of the mansion property. Fans gather in the street and in Graceland Plaza to see this. There is a queue line in the street. At the end of the ceremony, torches lit from the eternal flame at Elvis’s grave are brought down to the gate. The queue line starts to move as fans walk through gates and light their candles on the torches and then walk single file up the driveway to the gravesite in the Meditation Garden and back down. To accommodate everyone who is in line, the procession lasts into the morning of August 16, the anniversary of Elvis’s passing.
Graceland staff members are positioned all along the way to offer assistance. Near the front gate, Elvis fan club leaders from all over the world work in shifts to offer further assistance. http://www.elvis.com/pdfs/EW07VigilFactSheetFAQ.pdf

Of course, the vigil is only the highlight of the annual Elvis Week. Other events include the Graceland Scavenger Hunt, the Ultimate Elvis Tribute Artist Contest, Elvis Bingo, the Hunka Hunka Burnin Peppers Memphis Farmers' Market and tours of the Elvis Presley Memorial Trauma Center. (This is actually starting to sound interesting.) It's getting late to catch the action this year, but if you're ever in the mood for a rock n' roll pilgrimage, this is the one.

http://www.elvis.com/elvisweek/2007/ew_events.asp

the melting god

2007-08-13T15:42:00.000-04:00

At an altitude of 3800 metres, the cave of Amarnath, sacred to the Hindu god Shiva, must be among the highest pilgrimage destinations in the world. It is also one of the most dangerous, as pilgrims have increasingly become the targets of militants in war-torn Kashmir. 2005 saw the murder of 32 pilgrims; last year, 10. In 2007 to date, twelve have been killed, including nine yesterday in a grenade and machine-gun attack on a pilgrim camp by a lone militant. State officials have moved to suspend the pilgrimage which, despite its perils, has attracted an estimated 84,000 pilgrims since the one-month season began July 19th.

Even the pilgrims who have made it safely to Amarnath have found little to worship there, as once again the object of their veneration has melted. The sacred object of the Amarnath cave is a Shiva lingam (the phallic image of Shiva) in the form of a natural ice stalactite.
Normally the stalactite waxes in summer and wanes in winter, but last year the stalactite failed to form at all - prompting person or persons unknown to construct one. The shrine's attempts to pass off this man-made frosty-the-snowman as Lord Shiva fooled no one, and scandal erupted amid accusations that shrine authorities had attempted to deceive pilgrims.

This year, once more, the lingam failed to linger. The secular-minded are pointing to global warming as the cuprit, the faithful left wondering why the Lord Shiva has withdrawn his favour.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/cms.dll/articleshow?artid=18235398

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/1656541.cms
http://sachiniti.wordpress.com/2007/07/02/amarnath-shiva-lingam-melts-completely/

polish-canadian pilgrimage to midland

2007-08-11T11:03:00.000-04:00

For centuries, pilgrims have set out from every part of Poland in the month of August, converging on the shrine of Our Lady of Czestochowa for the Feast of the Assumption, August 15th. From the way it was described to me a couple of weeks ago by Wanda Sawicki, the event is in the vein of a romeria, a mobile summer picnic and festival involving whole families and communities.

Since Pope John Paul II's 1984 visit to Canada, the tradition has been transplanted to Southern Ontario, as Polish-Canadians put on their hiking shoes and hit the road for Canadian Martyrs Shrine in Midland. According to the shrine's website, 8000 to 9000 pilgrims are expected this weekend. Does anyone out there have a personal account of the journey, or details about the logistics? (how many miles do you cover in a day? what happens along the way? where do you sleep and eat?) If so drop us a line. It would be great to know more about this local pilgrimage.

peregrina the pilgrim dog

2007-08-10T08:47:00.001-04:00

On this day in history....

Yes, August 10th was the day I reached the end of my first Camino. And it was a Holy Year, 1999, so the madness was comprehensive, embracing. Fashion designer Paco Rabanne had called for the-world-as-we-know-it to end on the 11th, coinciding with the solar eclipse, so there was no time to lose. I started out from Arca early early on a sunny morning (there had been record rainfalls in Galicia that summer, which is saying much) with five Spanish companions and an old honey-coloured dog whom people called Peregrina (the Spanish word for a woman pilgrim).

No one was sure where Peregrina had started her pilgrimage, though some said as far back as Leon - more than ten days' journey. It was hard to imagine what ever motivated her to start walking. She must have sat and watched the pilgrims pass her farm for years. Then one day she got up and joined them. She slept at the refuges, where pilgrims fed her scraps from their meals. In the daytime she loped along at an easy pace, walking with one group of pilgrims or another. This morning, she had chosen us.

It was noon when we reached the Monte de Gozo, just before Santiago. After the fashion of pilgrims of old, I rushed ahead of my friends to be first to the top. Somehow I ended up losing them. I found out what had happened when I ran into them the next day (August 11th, when the world did not end). It seems Ana had twisted an ankle on the way up the hill. But I never saw or heard of Peregrina again. There are very few pilgrims who walk back from Santiago, so it's hard to imagine her turning around and finding her way back. I like to think that after Santiago, that good-natured, shaggy old pilgrim kept walking till she found a new home on a farm out on the road to Finisterre.

women's day in south africa

2007-08-09T17:20:00.000-04:00

We concern ouselves here with all things pilgrimage, so let's not overlook the August 9th celebration of Women's Day in South Africa. The day commemorates the 1956 march of 20,000 women on the Union Buildings in Pretoria to protest the apartheid pass laws. Now a march isn't the same as a pilgrimage, but it's another demonstration of the power, symbolic and actual, of a mass of people walking together with a common goal. Last year, to mark the 50th anniversary, the walk was restaged (aha! ritual, holy days - this is starting to sound like a pilgrimage).

The main observation this year is in Kimberley, where President Mbeki is speaking, and today's online edition of the Mail and Guardian reports that thousands of women have gathered at the stadium there, "some bussed in from as far as Pampierstad." Bussed in? They didn't walk? Well so much for symbolism. Or maybe it's just a way of saying these women have earned their seat on the bus.

http://www.mg.co.za/articlepage.aspx?area=/breaking_news/breaking_news__national/&articleid=316202

santiago de compostela, july 25th

2007-08-08T14:45:00.000-04:00

We've just passed Saint James' Day, July 25th. While most of us celebrate our birthday, for a martyr it's the day of his death that counts. Of course, from the standpoint of the faithful, the point of the rejoicing is not the saint's old life ending (decapitation, James' fate, is a hard thing to be merry about), but his new life beginning.

Here are some views of "los fuegos del apostol," the fireworks in the plaza of the Cathedral of Santiago ignited in honour of Saint James and his martyrdom. There's no denying the cathedral looks magnificent, though I'd be a little concerned about all the moss that festoons it bursting into picturesque flame.

chove en santiago

2007-08-07T08:35:00.000-04:00

Some beautiful music today, and a bewitching singer. If you hit the link, YouTube will transport you to the Atlantic shores of Galicia where you will hear/see a song/video about the rain (chove) in Santiago. The group is Luar na Lubre, which means roughly, "moonlight in the enchanted forest," and that soft language that doesn't sound quite like Spanish, isn't; it's Gallego. As for that instrument that sounds like a bagpipe, it is; or at least it's a Spanish bagpipe, the gaita, which you'll hear a lot of in the Celt-influenced music of northern Spain. The lyric is by Federico Lorca, from his Seis Poemas Gallegos. The singer, Rosa Cedron, has since left the band (alas) to pursue "other projects." Turn down the lights and let it wash over you.

the abraham path: a middle eastern pilgrimage road

2007-08-04T10:11:00.001-04:00

Those who have walked the Camino often find themselves scouting around for new horizons: the Via Francigena to Rome, Norway's St. Olaf pilgrimage and the Buddhist pilgrimage around the Japanese island of Shikoku, to name a few.

This spring I learned of the most ambitious pilgrimage project yet. The Abraham Path is a proposed walking (cycling, driving) route that will follow the steps of the Biblical patriarch from Harran, Turkey, where Abraham first heard God's call, through Syria, Jordan and Israel to his tomb in Hebron on the West Bank. It's a bold initiative to bring the three faiths together on a single road, and while there is political resistance to overcome, the ambition for Fall 2010 is to have more than half of the 1100 km route mapped, waymarked, and pilgrim-trodden.

Sound too good to be true? Find out more: http://www.abrahampath.org

spice pilgrim located

2007-08-03T13:17:00.000-04:00

I thought I'd put up this picture of myself that I received today from the University of Toronto homecoming weekend booksale just to show how civilized I look when not walking across Spain with that grizzly "Outback Bob" beard.

I took home most of the books you see here at the end of the day (everyone in Toronto had somewhere else to go that weekend), but it was fun to meet and talk to other authors, including a face from the past, my former high school librarian. You never know who's going to publish a book next.

And speaking of faces from the past, I broke down the other night and joined Facebook, just to see if there are any Camino networks out there. There are several, most of them based in Britain, but including one small Canadian group.

I didn't get too deeply into them, however, because it occurred to me that some of my long-lost Camino companions might be Facebookers. I started punching in names and, sure enough, I had soon found Spice Pilgrim Kara, whom I haven't been in touch with for three years. I whipped off a quick message, threw it into cyberspace like a paper airplane... and she opened it a few hours later in an Internet cafe in India.

Magic.

Her Camino took her from Barcelona (where she worked for two years) all the way to India and Nepal, where she's been hanging out for six months. Ah, the traveller's life. She and Nuala parted somewhere along the way, but it's not permanent. I'm sure they'll be back together someday for Further Adventures.

lourdes colour photos and mp3s

2007-07-31T20:49:00.002-04:00

My web designer extraordinaire, Denise de la Cruz (http://www.duhkneez.com/), was burning the midnight oil last night pasting fourteen new colour shots of Lourdes into the Virgin Trails I photo album. These are pictures from my first visit when, for reasons lost in the murk of time, I shot only slides. The upshot, of course, is that I've hardly seen any of these pictures myself, except for the two or three times I've hauled out my slide projector (or rather, my friend Mark's slide projector) and cast them up on a white curtain (all kinds of funny ripples on the face of the basilica). The thing that struck me about them is how powerful the sunlight is. It was almost always misty and often raining in Lourdes in the morning. Then at mid-afternoon, just in time for the Eucharist Procession, the sun would come blazing through and everyone would say, "Ah, c'est un miracle!" The picture above shows pilgrims at the taps outside the Grotto, filling up their bottles with genuine Lourdes water.

My first two mp3s, with excerpts from Virgin Trails, are also up. They are very experimental, my first time in a studio staring at a mike and trying to imagine an audience. It's tough! And a lot of what I came up with didn't sound right to me, but I thought these tracks were all right. Next month I'll have some lively new stories from All the Good Pilgrims. You can listen to them in the car, or the shower, while vacuuming, or to help you sleep, or even while you're reading, if you like to hear the author's voice in stereo. Big big thanks to Helena Werren for getting me set up, telling me over and over I was doing fine, and then staying after work to edit out those little dry-mouth pops and heaves of breath before the beginning of sentences.

saint james day in bayfield

2007-07-30T11:04:00.000-04:00

Saturday, Michiko and I went to Bayfield, on the shores of Lake Huron, for a little celebration in honour of Saint James Day (July 25th) in the company of the London, Ontario Camino circle. It was a perfect day for a mini-Camino through the woods (and spectacular gardens) of the area, followed by a potluck lunch at the cottage/estate of John and Ana Thompson.

Along the way we stopped at Bayfield's precious little nineteenth-century Church of the Trinity, where I read a few stories from All the Good Pilgrims. The acoustics of the church were incredible, and it was just a cozy fit for the thirty to thirty-five of us. It was a terrific experience for me, not just because I was able to read from the lectern of a church without lightning striking me down, but because it was my first public reading from the book (except for a couple of three-minute cameos at other events). It takes a few trials to figure out which stories are best adapted to reading aloud, and to get the timing of those stories down, and then there's the voices of the characters... I was lucky to have a sympathetic audience.

The atmosphere of the gathering was casual and friendly. On our walk, we naturally found our own pace, and then discovered walking and talking companions who suited our pace. It was very Camino. Thanks to everyone, especially John and Ana, John O'Henly, Roberta, the sweet kids who poured us lemonade at our garden stop, Wanda, and the glorious day, which rained nothing on us but sunshine.

photos and memories

2007-07-23T15:21:00.000-04:00

I hope you have time while you're visiting the site to browse through the photo albums (I feel like I'm showing a house when I say things like that: "Did you notice the floors? Cedar. We sanded them all down and refinished them...") I have four albums, two each for Virgin Trails and All the Good Pilgrims. If you haven't read the books, they'll give you a teaser of what to expect. If you have, you'll find out what some of the people and places in the books actually look like.

Is this a good thing? You'll have to decide for yourself. I'm sure you've had the experience of seeing a movie based on a book you've read and thinking, "These actors are all wrong. They're not how I pictured them at all." You might find something similar with the photo albums - "That's not Karl. That's not Montse." - though in this case it's reality that isn't living up to your imagination. So if you want to keep your images pure and personal, approach the photo albums with caution.

You won't find pictures of everybody who appears in the books, however. (And maybe that's just as well: if there were pictures of everybody, nothing would be left to the imagination.) Not that this was a conscious ploy on my part. I dearly wish I had pictures of - just to toss out some names - Inacio and the Weird Sisters and Linda and that weirdly beautiful South African woman who told me I was part of her deja vu. If I don't have pictures of them, it's simply because I found it hard on the Camino to think in terms of posterity. We were all there together in that moment and we were going to be together for a while and no one was thinking of a time when we wouldn't be.

I noticed that a lot of pictures got taken in Santiago, when it sank in that we weren't going to be seeing each other again, maybe ever. But by that stage there were so many pilgrims you had lost track of, never to see again. And it's only when you get home and have time to go through your pictures that you realize, "I don't have a picture of Pepe? How could I not have a picture of Pepe?" But maybe that's just as well too, because when people live only in your memory, unanchored to any image, they sometimes become more fully who they are to you.

Check out the Virgin Trails album in a week or so and you'll find some bright additions. My best pictures of Lourdes are all on slides and I'm having a dozen or so converted to digital. They'll replace some of the duplicated images in the Virgin Trails album and give you a living-colour image of a fascinating place. If you want one, that is....

welcome!

2007-07-22T01:45:00.000-04:00

Well, here we are at the beginning of a new adventure. My first blog. Not quite the same as starting out on the Camino, but daunting in its own way, like having a mike stuck in your face and being asked to say something. I guess the place to start is with a big welcome to you, whoever you may be (at this point, there's a very good chance you're a friend or member of my immediate family - but if not, Hey! come in and join the party), and a thank you for stopping by and looking around. I hope you enjoy your visit and come back often.

I'm going to try to keep this blog buzzing with information about the Camino and other pilgrimages, post bits and scraps of my writing new and old, spice things up with photos and links, and occasionally just yammer on about travelling and living and this strange business of writing. If you have any questions, topics to discuss, bones to chew, thoughts to pitch on the bonfire... Well, I look forward to hearing from you. You'll make my work here both easier and more interesting.

There will be more to come in this space soon. Meantime, I suggest you break out your Latin dictionaries and read the post from July 20th entitled lorem ipsum. I wonder if old Cicero would be pleased or miffed to know his writings on ethical theory are still alive two thousand years on - as "dummy text." That's literary immortality for you. (For more on lorem impsum, http://www.lipsum.com/)

Lorem ipsum

2007-07-21T01:32:00.001-04:00

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