July 2025 : The Chemin St Jacques: from Carcassonne to St Jean de Luz. – After walking 400 kilometres along the Pyrenees, from the mountains to the sea, life takes on a deeper perspective..
My body is on a journey. It’s going to raft in a canoe that, oddly, is folding and has wheels. All the better for me to carry it to the point where I can float gently down the river, bathing in the luxury of my green eye. The crumpled earth throws trees joyfully up into the sunlight all around me, while I glide effortlessly between them. They give me comfort as warm as the feel of a blanketed bed at home, which is in fact where I am. I am wondering why our expedition is so slow to start. I have the canoe on wheels. I have paid the guide 100 euros. Food is taken care of. And still we are not moving. Although I can see the hills, the trees, the wide river beckoning, I am not there.
Slowly I realise that my body’s senses are there: my vision, my memory, the rhythm of movement in my body mind, but actually I have been sleeping and my unconscious has not understood that the journey has ended. We do not walk forever on the boundless earth, carrying our small needs on our back. At some point we arrive at a station in our journey and get off the track, go back, indeed, to the track we were on before. It’s just my body, which so relished the freedom, the simple discovery of earth’s nooks and crannies, that she hasn’t understood that the journey is over. For now.
What is a pilgrim?
I walked along the Pyrenees, from Carcassonne to St Jean de Luz, and then on to the Atlantic coast. Every day was a movement of discovery and yet every day the same, fundamentally. A discovery of feet that walked where mine walked, hundreds of years ago or the day before; a sense of connection with pilgrims of the past and with every human being everywhere. The ones who live in a place do not walk there. They flow in small circles of available comfort, as do I – between my bed and my kitchen and my car and my neighbourhood. I travel a few miles in a day. But never with that questing eagerness that the pilgrim has, where each tree and the unique twists of its bark is a discovery, where every fruit has to be identified and tasted, where the mountains play hide and seek with the clouds, or the wide blue sky declares itself hugely, emphatically, spotless.
I don’t count the kilometres. I care only about the hours I have to walk before I can agree to pause, wash off the sweat, find some food. And the next morning my legs and feet are ready to go again – happy to embrace the hot solid shoes and socks that they were so eager to be free of the night before.
I meet others who do the same journey. We are classed as pilgrims. And we have cards – credentials – that are stamped in order to prove it. We have special meals and special places to stay. So, inevitably, the others ask, why are you doing this?
And the point is…?
The question begins to bother me. I don’t know how to answer it. I know that my body longs to do it. My body wants the physical feel of freedom, of comfort among the grass and trees, of excitement at the power and presence of the folded mountains of rock. My body delights in the residents it encounters along the way: the cows, the sheep, the horses. I even talk to the flies who bite me and warn them that if they bite, they die. They don’t listen. And they die.
The definition of a pilgrim is someone who uses the journey to pay homage, and I do that, with one pace after the other. I am paying homage to the beauty of my life, the fact that my body works well, to the environment it thrives in and the spirit of life I find in all that I see. For most of the people I encounter en route this is the same. We do not call it God or Jesus. We call it life, but it is Spirit as we know it on earth. It is in our families and their health and survival. It is in the trees and the rich abundance of the soil, rain and sun. It is in the rows of vines or corn, hectares of neat lines, or the small vegetable plots, so carefully tended. It is in the chestnut trees, spilling golden trails of flowers all over the hillside, the cherry trees and plum trees that scatter their fruit at your feet.
But when this spirit is collected and reflected by the humans who walk the trail, its presence is expressed in stone cloisters, medieval doors and dark chambers of the soul where candles are kept burning with thoughts of love. In every church and chapel you feel your humanity, your nearness to this understanding of the Spirit of life. I feel the need to embrace every human being, alive or dead, as myself, and I try to lever open my heart when the humans I encounter seem to cramp my freedom. There is one who tells me to lock all the doors and to trust no-one. She too is a visitor to this trail so I wonder why I should trust her but not the residents of this place we are visiting in passing. But I try to open my heart.
There is another whose walking sticks clank against the road when he emerges from a trail close behind me, walking at the same pace. I find the noise drowns out the birdsong I’ve grown accustomed to and it chafes on my ears, but I know I must accept that he is me and open my heart.
There is one who truly opens my heart when he asks me if he can wash my feet, now that I have arrived to be his guest after a hot day’s walking. He washes my feet with tenderness and love that I feel the power of so fully that I decide to go to the mass he is holding in the church later that day. They talk of the body of Christ and the blood of Christ and I do not feel the need to consume either. But I say to Jesus, “Since you are here, please take away the pain in my left hip because if it continues like this I wont be able to finish this walk.” I notice the next day, after I’ve been walking an hour or two, that it’s gone. And I remember my request. It never comes back. Thank you Jesus.
So in every church I pay homage and I pray. And I realise that my journey is not so much through trees and mountains and fields. It is really a journey through humanity, through my own differences from others and my limits. Through their differences from me. And beyond this there is the sense of being part of the crew that sails this ship. Our planet is the boat. It will drift and evolve in its own way. We have the privilege of sailing with her and steering her for our better life. And we are all part of the crew that sails.