I Would Walk Five Hundred Miles and I Would Walk Five Hundred More

…just not along a canal.

Actu­ally I only tonight caught up on our sta­tis­tics; we actu­ally crossed the five hun­dred mile point a few days ago. So we are def­i­nitely more than halfway there, both in time and in space! Today also marked 40 days on the road—a num­ber of great bib­li­cal significance—and the noon­day devil struck with a renewed fury.

At least we weren’t car-dodging, and had a more or less ded­i­cated pedestrian/bike lane to fol­low (though at least once we had to climb through a con­struc­tion site again to keep fol­low­ing the lane). But it was straight—flat—unvarying—boring bor­ing bor­ing! We think that walk­ing on an unchang­ing path also causes some­thing like repet­i­tive stress injuries; it’s strangely hard on the body. The scenery around and about didn’t have much to offer, either. The one excep­tion was our first glimpse of rice fields and rice har­vests. The fas­ci­na­tion fac­tor there ran out pretty quickly.

After lunch we passed the time read­ing aloud from Dante’s Divine Comedy—starting with hell, of course, as it seemed to match our envi­ron­ment best. By some inex­plic­a­ble turns of events, my seem­ingly end­less years of lib­eral edu­ca­tion man­aged to omit this great clas­sic. So, since I’m spend­ing this long stretch in Italy and am a great fan of Dorothy Say­ers oth­er­wise, I thought it was time to give it a go with her trans­la­tion. The slaver­ing mis­eries of the damned were cer­tainly a help­ful dis­trac­tion from the tor­ments of the canal.

The other great dis­trac­tion of the day was an attempt to lance a blis­ter with cot­ton thread soaked in rub­bing alco­hol. There are no words to describe how painful this was (except maybe words that Dante has already put to good use in describ­ing the suf­fer­ings of the under­world). That slowed our progress for awhile.

And then almost as a mat­ter of course we had rain in the evening, almost up to our arrival at 7:30, which is the time it gets dark now. As the sun was set­ting it peeked through the clouds even as it con­tin­ued to rain, so we looked for a rain­bow. But we didn’t see one. Some days are just like that.

Guy Almes says:
September 30, 2010 at 11:31 pm
Sounds like y’all need some cheer­ing up, hik­ing through flat sec­tions of Italy. Though weeks ago, I thought of chorales that would be nat­ural to sing, I’m now think­ing of a curi­ously ecu­meni­cal spin by St Fran­cis on a medieval antiphon. The text fol­lows:
Ado­ra­mus te, sanc­tis­sime Domine Jesu Christe,
hic et ad omnes eccle­sias tuas, quae sunt in toto mundo.
Et benedicimus tibi quia per sanc­tam Crucem tuam redemisti mundum.
My impres­sion is that the sec­ond line was the part that Fran­cis con­tributed, and I can’t sing it with­out think­ing of ecu­meni­cal themes. The melody I’m famil­iar with is by P. Joh. Schnei­der OFM.
All the best.
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Eugene Mossner says:
October 1, 2010 at 5:24 pm
How does one read and at the same time con­tinue hik­ing and dodg­ing traf­fic? Isn’t this dangerous?
Eugene Moss­ner
Sag­i­naw, Michigan
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AZMichael says:
October 7, 2010 at 12:42 am
On the Camino De San­ti­ago, every­one grum­bles about the “meseta,” the hot, flat, unvary­ing expanse of cen­tral Spain– well, except for the large num­ber of pil­grims who skip it all together. For those who stick it out, it ends up being the unpleas­ant via purga­tiva… because, well… there’s noth­ing else to do apart from fac­ing those noon­day demons and cling­ing to the mercy of Christ.
But I sup­pose that’s a nec­es­sary step on the way to the via uni­tiva– union with Christ, and through him, union with our broth­ers and sis­ters in the faith.
Our prayers con­tinue with you as you near your des­ti­na­tion! Thanks for let­ting us tag along virtually.
Bless­ings,
Allison
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