“Refuse to be afraid of being afraid and let go of being tired of being tired. Rather, in all your moments of angst or exhaustion remember to take a brief step away from your self and realize that it is your fear & your fatigue that gives you the energetic foundation from which to wrestle […]
The path eventually got smoother and flatter (as most walked paths are – with enough persistence – wont to do), and shortly thereafter opened up to a lovely church (the Chapel de St. Sernin) resting on the edge of in a small tree-encircled glen. And yet what made this particular sanctuary so Peace-full was not […]
As I left the little chapel and started to head back out onto the road, when I saw the serene vision of another pilgrim sitting peacefully in a field of grass next to quite the majestic tree. And this rendezvous with Nathalie turned out to be one of the more significant meetings of my entire […]
After giving Nathalie a warm farewell hug, I headed back out onto The Way, and it was only a few kilometers thereafter when I rounded another bend and saw this glorious sight – a table laden with fresh apricots and cherries*, along with a sign that essentially read “Dear pilgrims … Help yourself … Thank […]
Due to the stalwart consequence I had recently displayed at the aforementioned donativo fruit stand, it didn’t take long for me to start to feel the internal buzzing of subtly gnawing hunger that typically accompanied my Walk. And it was around this very time that I rounded the next bend and came across a sight […]
I thereafter wandered down into the town of Durfort-Lacapalette, where I had thought I would be able to spend the night. And yet the few townsfolk I met there made it quite clear in a variety of ways – some subtle (“There is no place for you here. Try across the street.”), and some not […]
Aiding by having literally nowhere else to go (and the staunch guideline I had adopted of “never walking back” the way I had already come), I persisted onward & onward that very late afternoon – further and further away from The Way; deeper and deeper into the lush-but-vacant wilderness of that part of France … […]
Fortunately, my wait on the place’s gorgeous veranda was short-lived, as I soon saw a car pulling up the drive. I waved and smiled at the couple therein, who were obviously quite shocked to see me (I think most folks who stay there end up booking in advance). The woman in the car (Claudette) then […]
I woke up pretty early and cranked the radiators up full-blast to finish drying the still-damp clothes I had hand-washed* the night before. It didn’t take long to have them relatively dry & toasty, and then I performed the usual pre-walk routine (packing up my things, chugging some water, and then giving my chest a […]
After awhile I passed a tented fruit tree. It had been tented to keep out the birds, and yet as I walked past I heard an unusual rustling sound therein – a sound that turned out to be a woodpecker trapped inside its netting … :O How metaphoric – and indeed how tragic – that […]
I passed by another flock of fruit-laden fields and this time easily resisted the temptation to partake of the same, and then flowed smoothly into the city of Moissac – initially through its outskirts (where I paused briefly to compliment a local resident on her phenomenally beautiful rose garden) and then into the center of […]
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