While mountains provide the grander view, their valleys offer the more traversable roads … Such was the case today after I descended the previously mentioned steep & stony path to enter & cross the flat plain leading to the city of Yenne; a beautiful river-side way that was as soft underfoot & easy on the […]
I eventually arrive in the town of Yenne proper and even though the church was already closed and the folks in the local church parish proved to be far less than helpful (and only mildly friendly at that), those same parishioners did encourage me to check out the local Tourist Information Office — where Lisa […]
I made it to the local donativo hostel without any problems and was promptly welcomed by Marcel, an supremely gentle elderly man who co-runs the hostel with his wife Michelle. Michael (the kind Austrian pilgrim I had met the night before at the hostel in Chanaz) was there as well, and we were both amusingly […]
Up early after a fantastic 10+ hours of sleep ( :O ) and share a delightfully charming breakfast with Michael and Marcel and Michelle. Head back out onto The Way with the former and bid our final farewells* as he walks on while I wait for the church to open before departing … 🙂 “Like […]
The swallows that congregated around almost every church steeple along The Way were some of my very favorite walking companions — so much so that I often stopped walking when they were out & about; so much so that getting anywhere in those particular moments took a comfortable backseat to stopping and being and watching […]
I walked a loooooooong walk up The Way’s tight, rocky path this morning, and despite aching feet and a surprisingly intense level of overall fatigue I eventually reached the lovely little chapel of Notre Dame de la Montagne — a mountaintop sanctuary nestled into a copse of evergreen tree; the beauty of which being matched […]
“It was a blinding, mineral, shattering silence. We hear nothing but the quiet crunch of stones underfoot; an implacable, definitive silence, like some sort of peaceful yet fully transparent death. The sky was a perfectly detached blue, and we advanced with eyes down, reassuring ourselves that we could flow on and not stumble. The shy […]
Whenever I found an intriguing stone along the path I tended to pick it up and carry it with me — either to give to someone I would later meet along the way, or (as in this particular case) to add some additional form &/or beauty to the various cairn-tributes with which previous pilgrims had […]
“One of the open secrets of life on Earth is that the answers to all of life’s most burning questions have been inscribed in one’s Soul all along. Indeed the Soul is a kind of ancient vessel that harbors the exact knowledge we need to navigate our way well through life. Each of our lives […]
Due to the escalating heat, today was the first day I turned my one pair of long pants into makeshift shorts, marking the brief transition phase between the Walk’s colder days (when long pants where worn while walking and shorter pants, if at all, were worn at night) and its later, far warmer ones (when […]
“I don’t know who I am, and I don’t think other people will ever truly know who they are either. That is why we have to be humble enough to learn to live with this mysterious question — Who am I? Far more importantly, of course – precisely because we will all remain mysteries to […]
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