I have a very unfortunate injury to my left foot, presumably from playing soccer. There is no cartilage between two midfoot bones. Walking at all is slightly painful, but becomes ever more so as the distance increases on a given day. This is a profoundly discouraging injury to a person who expected to run, hike and play soccer into his 70’s and even 80’s. But such is life.
When Karen decided to walk the French portion of the Camino pilgrimage from Le Puy to Estaing with her German friend Gudrun, I thought I would fly over with her and drive around while she was walking, practicing my French. But as we got closer to the trip, the idea of joining them for part of each day’s walk and chatting with the predominantly French pilgrims seemed like a better idea and more likely to produce genuine French conversations.
So I rented a car and drove ahead of the walkers, walking a few miles back to meet them each time as I leapfrogged their progress. They walked from 10-14 miles each day and I would do between 5 and 8.
Walking backwards on the Chemin de Saint Jacques, as it is known in France, was rather odd. Since almost all of the walkers are moving forward, I passed large numbers of them (sometimes several times in a day!), cheerfully greeting them with a ‘Bonjour’ and maybe a ‘Bon Chemin’. Some of them stopped me to ask why I was going the wrong way and this allowed me to engage in a conversation about my unique approach, my injury and anything else that might come up. It was great practice for my French.
In the evenings we stayed at ‘Gîtes’, the very low-cost but convivial lodges for pilgrims. We stayed in private rooms with bathrooms (spoiled Americans!) but many chose to sleep dormitory style and share bathrooms. Breakfast and dinner were communal, offering great opportunities to make camino friends and share life stories.
Most of the pilgrims were older, between 50 and 80. These baby boomer French were less likely to be confident in English and were super supportive of my efforts to improve my French. The shared goal of walking (even though I was a ‘faux’ pilgrim or Pelegrin, as I joked to all who learned my story) and our shared humanity was a wonderful elixir that seemed to imbue everyone with an optimistic spirit and a sincerely friendly demeanor.
I never tired of saying ‘Bonjour’, and the people I met repeatedly over the course of our ten-day pilgrimage were equally buoyant in their greetings and our shared moments laughing and conversing. It is clear that human beings really want to get along and enjoy one another’s company when we are on equal footing and sharing a goal. But sadly, it all seems to break down when the real world gets in the way.
My very odd and somewhat fraudulent Chemin de Saint Jacques, with its 200 Bonjours a day was a reminder to try harder to see our common humanity in every person I meet. The bitter pills of our current political climate have poisoned me in that regard, but the antidote is out there if I will only remember to reach for it.
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