Take Napoleon!
After lying on my back around France for a week, nursing the bathtub-related injury to the lumbago region, I set off for the trail. I had already hiked 500 kilometers the summer before in France, and now I wanted to do the Spanish part.
The traditional starting point for the past 1,000 years for the Spanish Camino de Santiago Compostela, a 500-mile walk to the tomb of Saint James in Northwestern Spain, is the French border town of St. Jean Pied du Port. That´s where I hitched a ride, winding up at the pilgrims´ refuge of an old Basque woman named Jeanine.
Jeanine, 72, gave me two backrubs per day to try to get me to the point where I could stand up straight. Three days, no progress. Still bent forward, I managed to walk the cobblestone streets, mount the steps to the old fortress on the hill, take a walk along the canal with a French copy of St. Augustine´s Confessions and spend the day coming up with what I felt to be a new theory of religion. (I´ll have to hit the anthropology literature to see if it´s already been done.)
Everything I did or said while staying in the refuge would result in these words from Jeanine: "That annoys me!"
"Did you buy any bread today?" Jeanine asked on Sunday.
"No."
"That annoys me! What are you thinking? The stores are closed tomorrow. No bread! Really."
On Monday, she said, "When are you going to get better? That annoys me! Pilgrims are supposed to stay here one day only. Here let me give you a back rub. Poor thing. When you finally get better, the hike is straight up into the mountains for eight kilometers. Ha ha ha! You are going to suffer. It´s not easy. Up up up. Finally, you cross the Spanish border and descend into Roncesvalles. Dangerous in the winter, eh? Weather unpredictable. Pilgrims die all the time. On both side of the trail, the cliffs go straight down. Wow!"
"Jeanine, have you ever hiked the trail?"
"No, never."
Not many pilgrims pass through in the winter, so I had a room to myself most of the time. One night with a fierce snorer from Spain. We stayed up late talking about the Iraq War. We compared life under Franco and life under Bush. The chief difference being that Bush was elected and the people believe him, and Franco was not and people did not.
But whenever a pilgrim passed through, Jeanine would dispense her advice on the trail, and no one would think to ask whether she´d seen the trail for herself.
"Take the Route of Napoleon!" she shouted after a group of Italians. "Sunny weather, route of Napoleon. Napoleon!"
The traditional starting point for the past 1,000 years for the Spanish Camino de Santiago Compostela, a 500-mile walk to the tomb of Saint James in Northwestern Spain, is the French border town of St. Jean Pied du Port. That´s where I hitched a ride, winding up at the pilgrims´ refuge of an old Basque woman named Jeanine.
Jeanine, 72, gave me two backrubs per day to try to get me to the point where I could stand up straight. Three days, no progress. Still bent forward, I managed to walk the cobblestone streets, mount the steps to the old fortress on the hill, take a walk along the canal with a French copy of St. Augustine´s Confessions and spend the day coming up with what I felt to be a new theory of religion. (I´ll have to hit the anthropology literature to see if it´s already been done.)
Everything I did or said while staying in the refuge would result in these words from Jeanine: "That annoys me!"
"Did you buy any bread today?" Jeanine asked on Sunday.
"No."
"That annoys me! What are you thinking? The stores are closed tomorrow. No bread! Really."
On Monday, she said, "When are you going to get better? That annoys me! Pilgrims are supposed to stay here one day only. Here let me give you a back rub. Poor thing. When you finally get better, the hike is straight up into the mountains for eight kilometers. Ha ha ha! You are going to suffer. It´s not easy. Up up up. Finally, you cross the Spanish border and descend into Roncesvalles. Dangerous in the winter, eh? Weather unpredictable. Pilgrims die all the time. On both side of the trail, the cliffs go straight down. Wow!"
"Jeanine, have you ever hiked the trail?"
"No, never."
Not many pilgrims pass through in the winter, so I had a room to myself most of the time. One night with a fierce snorer from Spain. We stayed up late talking about the Iraq War. We compared life under Franco and life under Bush. The chief difference being that Bush was elected and the people believe him, and Franco was not and people did not.
But whenever a pilgrim passed through, Jeanine would dispense her advice on the trail, and no one would think to ask whether she´d seen the trail for herself.
"Take the Route of Napoleon!" she shouted after a group of Italians. "Sunny weather, route of Napoleon. Napoleon!"
posted by Thon at 9:41 AM
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