It was at this point that I confidently decided to head onward towards the next town of L’Estrade, looking briefly back upon St. Chely and then doing so resolutely — upward and onward along a quite steep & most slippery path; a path that to this day remains one of the most stunning stretches of […]
“If you suddenly and unexpectedly feel joy or forgiveness or affection, don’t hesitate to embrace & exude the same. Give in to them all fully, and then give them all on to others. There are plenty of lives and even entire towns about to perish or be destroyed, so don’t wait even a moment to […]
I continued onward along the difficult-but-gorgeous path — up & Up & UPward — sporadically passing fellow pilgrims as I climbed. Interestingly enough at the time (a thought noted completely in retrospect, of course), almost every single one of these compatriot walkers was of a noticeably advanced age, and just as intriguing, almost every single […]
Unfortunately, upon arriving in L’Estrade I discovered (thanks to the kindness of the local resident pictured below) that I was not in L’Estrade at all, but rather the much smaller village of Les Enfrux — a tiny hamlet that lay on the “GR6” hiking trail that I had taken from St. Chely, NOT the Camino’s […]
Even when we are lost (or hurting, or exhausted, or destitute, or depressed, or terrified, or confused), if we but pause long enough to look around, we can see that there is always Love to be given — and that there is always Beauty to behold … 😉 “Gratitude goes beyond the ‘mine’ and ‘thine’ […]
The first town I reached while trying to find my way back to The Way was the little village of Bonnefon — a village aptly named “The Good Fountain”, for it was a village where the church in which I paused provided quite a soothing solace indeed, as I rested for awhile under the compassionately […]
Well, it turned out there was a little Gite (the French equivalent of a pension) located right next door to the church — a Gite that had quite a few cars parked in front of it and quite a few folks milling about nearby, so I decided to enter and ask for directions therein. I […]
There were several fundamental guidelines (a.k.a. “rules”*) to which I adhered during the entirety of my Walk — using no money, carrying no tent, and having no personal ID being among them. That having been said, there were several other more minor “rules” that came to being along the way, and one of these was […]
It was quite a few kilometers of walking from Bonnefon back to the Camino’s primary GR65 route, and I will freely admit that I found myself on more than one occasion that afternoon doubting whether I would indeed intersect with that glorious Path again that day. And yet I knew I walking in the overall […]
It didn’t take long after rediscovering The Way for me to encounter yet another remarkably kind fellow pilgrim — this time it was Susi from Berlin, who was walking the Camino with her beautiful dog Pina … 🙂 “Whenever two immigrants meet in a strange or forbidding place, the desolation always eases and things feel […]
Susi & Pina turned out to be two of the sweetest people I met on the entire Walk — open-minded and insightful and caring and warm-hearted, and it was truly a privilege to walk & talk with them both on this day … 😀 “Friendship is two people who walk together, sometimes day after day […]
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