Читать книгу Walking to the End of the World - Beth Jusino - Страница 18

In spring, the mist on GR65 can be as thick as rain.

NOS AMIS

I tried to take Sylvain’s advice the next day, to find a peaceful rhythm of walking, but my body wasn’t ready to let my mind settle into monasticism.

We left Saint-Côme-d’Olt and navigated the outskirts of Espalion, where the ruins of a castle guarded a bustling town that blended modern (and open!) retail with turreted manor homes lining the river. We bought oranges and sipped midmorning espressos at an outdoor cafe, and I thought about how much I loved France.

Four hours later, as I approached Estaing, I thought about how much I hated France. I was limping, swearing, sweating, and generally making a scene along a sunbaked commercial road, braving blind curves and speeding trucks.

If you talk to two pilgrims who have walked any part of the Way of Saint James, you’ll get three different opinions about what the path is like.

“The Camino is all busy roads and hard pavement. There is no nature!”

“The Camino is all mountains and rocks and mud. There is no smooth path!”

“The Camino trails are so soft and easy that you could do it in slippers!”

Reality, as it usually does, lies somewhere between the extremes. The Camino that Eric and I walked in France and Spain was a mixture of paved roads—usually remote country lanes, where cars were infrequent—and natural paths of gravel or dirt, wide enough for two people to walk abreast. Of course there were exceptions: entering larger towns or cities meant pounding the pavement through busy and not-so-picturesque suburbs. There were some stretches in France where we walked on roads with narrow shoulders, dodging moderate traffic, for a few hundred meters at a time. There were plenty of sections in both countries that were steep, rocky, muddy, and slippery.

The only consistent thing I can say about Camino paths is that every day, and sometimes every hour, brought something different.

My traffic-clogged walk into Estaing was not the fault of the GR65 planners, though. The official path had veered off the road and uphill a kilometer behind me to follow a protected path through the woods. But I was tired and footsore, and I refused to follow the sadistic red and white stripes up another hill when, according to the map, following the road would be a more direct route to the city.

Eric, being sensible, took the marked path, so I was alone in my ill-considered shortcut. Once again, I obsessed on a single thought. My feet hurt.

By this point I’d seen pilgrims with terrible blisters. I’d seen people younger than me hobbling sideways down hills because of knee injuries. I’d heard about walkers who had to go home early. I had none of those problems.

But man, my feet really hurt. Was I just a wimp?

The internal doubt weighed me down as much as my pack, and the hot pavement pushed back against my swollen feet. When I came around a corner to find Eric—who had walked the hillier, longer, harder path—already waiting for me, I lost it.

The next ten minutes weren’t pretty, but eventually I followed him, grudgingly, into Estaing, past the beautifully restored riverfront and down crooked streets where gray stone buildings seemed to be held up by sagging doors and broken windows.

Eric stopped in front of one of the weathered doors and rang the bell. This was the donativo gîte run by the Catholic Order of Saint Jacques. A middle-aged woman wearing normal, middle-aged clothes welcomed us. Only later did I realize she was a nun.

I was still in a haze of pain as the sister checked us in and showed us the simple dorm where men and couples slept. Women traveling alone or with other women slept in a separate room for privacy.

As we settled in, the Brothers Grim arrived. Though we never talked to them about their travel plans—or anything, given the language barrier—we’d seen them every day and often stayed in the same gîtes. They always greeted us, and we made as much small talk as we could manage. (“C’est bon?” “Oui, c’est bon.”) Yet I still rarely saw them talk to each other.

I distracted myself by pondering their mystery as I limped through the daily chores. There was a lovely yard where I hung my laundry next to a chicken coop, and I sat there with my journal for an hour as the sun slowly revived me.

I eventually found Eric in the library, a creaky-floored room full of books in French about the lives of saints and missionaries. The place was cool and soothing, as was the cheerfulness of the two nuns who stopped in to check on us. They moved silently through the echoing residence, a relic of the time the diocese attracted more than two nuns and a single priest, and apologized for not speaking better English, as if we weren’t the interlopers in their world.

After our communal dinner, we all helped to clean up, and there was a bit of a production while the priest stamped our credentials and recorded our information. Then the pilgrims were invited to join the convent’s permanent residents for their evening prayers.

It may seem odd that two recovering Baptists, walking the Camino without spiritual motivations, would consider going to a Catholic service in a language we barely understood. And there were definitely times it felt odd.

But to understand the historical significance of the walk to Santiago, I couldn’t ignore the faith that created it. Without James the apostle of Jesus, and the church that the Romans built from their story, there would be no Camino. The church cared for pilgrims for centuries before a secular government put red and white stripes on trees to guide us.

These nuns and priests weren’t here to convert us. No one in a faith-based gîte ever even asked what we believed. They simply welcomed us as pilgrims in need of shelter. It was the grace of people like these, night after night, who got me through the tough days. So when the nuns of Estaing invited me to join their evening prayers, I said yes.