The Pilgrim's Tale
/
the view from a hilltop 'wanderweg' trail in Germany: thE GerMANs hAVE walking trails... everywhere.
First, the story of the old German pilgrim.
Years ago, a friend and I were sitting on a bench in Lucca, Italy (or someplace similar) and an old gentleman walked up and asked if he could sit down beside us. Of course, being young females at night, we started inching immediately toward the opposite side of the bench. A healthy caution, to be sure, but as he sat and talked - just visiting with fellow foreigners, because he was traveling alone - he told us the most amazing tale, and if we'd left we would have missed it.
He loved to walk. He’d always loved to walk, alone most of all. His favorite way to see places was on foot. He didn’t have much money, but on occasion he’d leave his wife at home in Germany (“She,” he said, “does not so much like the walking”) and he’d take off on one of the old pilgrim’s trails criss-crossing Europe, which are still used today. As a pilgrim, he said, you get a pilgrimage card, collect stamps at each church you stay at, and even sometimes stay there for free.
“Old Catholic trails,” he said. “For pilgrims on their way to visit holy relics.”
I told him that sounded amazing. Unfortunately, I was not Catholic. Though hearing of these pilgrim trails, I almost wished I was.
Then he gave us the most conspiring smile. He pulled out his card, already stamped by a dozen Catholic churches. “Ssh," he whispered, glancing around the piazza, which babbled obliviously on in Italian. "Do not tell anyone. But, I am not Catholic either. I am Protestant.”
And with that, as my friend and I grinned in helpless delight, he got up and winked and strode away. After a few paces he turned back to say:
"One thing. One thing you must remember, when traveling alone. Wherever you stop, always look back to be sure you haven’t left anything.”
He surveyed the bench where he’d sat, checked the ground with great flourish, then gave us a bow and wandered happily away across the plaza. His pants were worn. His shoes were dusty. His face looked at once solemn and mirthful. I remember he seemed both wise and on the verge of laughter - the same way I always feel when walking alone. When I come untethered, and I’m reacting to no one, and the slightest startling bird song makes me burst into a grin.
As he walked - ironically - something fell from his pocket, and he did not look back or notice. He left it behind.
A pencil.
I picked it up from the cobbles, in the lamplight: short, wood-colored, sharpened down to only a few inches long. I remember keeping that pencil, tucking it away. I stashed it safely in my toiletries bag, where it sits to this day. I’ve carried it everywhere. Though now, reading the pencil’s label, I almost doubt it was his, because the writing is in English. Shouldn’t his pencil be in German? Am I misremembering? Was this pencil really his? And yet, it’s the pencil I remember being his, worn and short and dusty, and I’ve carried it ever since.
As the man walked away I remember gazing after him, and thinking: I love to walk.
Of course, back then, I still didn’t know quite how much I loved to walk… but even then I knew it. I knew walking stirred stories in my head, and cemented directions in my mind, and that I’d never feel at home in a place until I’d walked it alone. And I'd just met someone else who felt the same.
I remember thinking: I, too, have very little money. I felt guilty buying anything. I always felt inadequate, especially then, on that summer abroad in Italy, like no matter how hard I worked I didn’t deserve to be there, couldn’t afford it. I really couldn’t. I’m still paying off the loan, and will be for the next ten years. But that summer abroad in Rome - among the ancient monuments and myths and ruins, along worn cobblestones so many millions of heroes and villains had walked - was like a summons, the sort of longing that comes along infrequently, and turns you illogical.
Perhaps it’s a longing for the life you want to have, or the person you want to be.
It happened when I watched that pilgrim walk away. A deep yearning, though I didn’t know it at the time.
He became one of those visions: of who I wanted to be. I didn’t dare, I couldn’t imagine, but I think in that moment I started dreaming, and as so often happens when we encounter a person we admire, the whole world readjusted to accommodate this new vision of what I could be. I’ve had that feeling several times since. Once was in my fifth year of architecture school, nearing graduation, a year after meeting this pilgrim. It happened when I started reading writer’s blogs, and learning famous writers were also insecure and filled with self-doubt and good humor and years of trials and failures just like me. Laini Taylor. Marissa Meyer. Kristin Cashore. I devoured all their blog posts on writing and I felt galvanized, like I’d met them, and now that I’d met them and seen what they’d done it seemed possible. To have writing as a career, instead of a practical office job, like architecture. I’d been writing for years and always felt selfish for doing it, like something I loved this much ought not to be legal.
That became the reason for writing this blog. I imagine these posts going unread for years, but still, I ought to start writing them now. Because somewhere down the line two decades from now, a young writer may read these after reading my books, and see that I, too, was filled with self-doubt and ran out of money and felt selfish for choosing writing over an ordinary career, but I did it anyway. Even though it was hard. Even though I felt I wasn’t good at it, not good at all, that writing must be easier for everyone else, but still, in the quiet hours before I fell asleep, when I daydreamed about the sort of person I'd want to be, they were always daydreams about a brave woman who wrote wild and unruly stories for teens, and traveled alone, and went on pilgrimage treks and talked to strangers in the piazzas of foreign countries at night. I imagined myself writing blog posts that inspired young writers who doubted themselves, blog posts made them say yes.
I imagined myself at the end of the road, instead of the beginning.
Now, this Wednesday, I'll be in Spain starting the 500-mile Camino de Santiago: my first pilgrimage trek. I'll be following the yellow seashell symbol all across Spain.
It's a well-worn trail from France across Galicia all the way to the sea. Pilgrims walk with only packs on their backs, just like the bards of old, in the fantasy novels I always loved to read. Pilgrims stay in cheap municipal hostels or churches and do it for all sorts of reason: religious or otherwise, spiritual or transitional, or just plain gratitude and a desire to marvel at the world.
Mostly, I just love rituals.
I'm scared and excited and anxious. Years ago, when I daydreamed about traveling and walking alone I never daydreamed that I'd be scared.
But maybe the people we admire were always scared when they started.
Happy scribbling.
- mlj
