Walkers Have Never Been Modern
Walkers Have Never Been Modern for Bruno Latour Robert MacFarlane along with Stanley Donwood and Dan Richards wrote a beautiful little book called Holloway. A holloway is “a sunken path, a deep & shady lane. A route that centuries of foot-fall, hoof-hit, wheel-roll, & rain-run have harrowed into the land.” In other words, a holloway […]
May 25
May 25 St. Ursanne to Saignelégier 28km Mud, but pure pastoral beauty. Today’s walk was a little tough toward the end– just need to get back into shape–but beautiful in an understated way. This region is steep, but not stupendous, an agricultural area with lots of muddy pasture crossings. The path followed Les Doubs River […]
May 24
May 24 Porrentruy to St. Ursanne, 16 Not an ambitious first day– getting our legs back and learning to navigate in a new country. Did climb up an over a ridge or two, but nothing difficult. It was fun to watch Bennett note the little differences in the world– the steep pastures, the heavy cow-bells, […]
May 23
May 23 Hoping it is not a harbinger of what is to come, it rained hard all night and through the first part of the morning. Certain to be some muddy trails, but today is a day to read and write, waiting for Bennett to arrive late this evening. Wandered the town a bit, stopped […]
May 22
May 22 The Santiago de Compostela streets were nearly empty, passing only some last-night partiers who now were early-morning stragglers. The airport bus rolled down quiet streets, retracing much of the path I had walked almost two weeks earlier to finish the primary path of the Camino Frances. The intervening time alternated between the hectic–late […]
Sunrise
Sunrise Early on in Walden, Thoreau says, “It is true, I never assisted the sun materially in his rising, but, doubt not, it was of the last importance only to be present at it.” Presence at first light, ever elusive but somehow fundamental. The labors of many people require they rise before the sun, but […]
May 21
May 21 The Camino brought some surprises on the last day. I expected most of the walk to be through the Santiago de Compostela suburbs but instead found myself on some narrow roads winding up and down through classic Galician villages including A Ponte Maceira, a town divided by a swift river crossed by an […]
May 20
May 20 Today I kept telling myself that this was the last good long day through the Galician countryside (tomorrow is just 22 km into Santiago, much of that suburb street walking). It was a day of farms. The farmers are plowing and planting feverishly. I regularly stepped off the path to let the tractors […]
May 19
May 19 My image of the end of the world invariably includes fog, so this morning’s walk out to the Finisterre lighthouse lived up to expectations. The path makes its way up out of the town onto the spine of the ridge that eventually runs down into the sea. Fishing boats were coming across the […]
May 18
May 18 After a week of living the life of a tourist–Santiago to A Coruna to Muxia–I once again strapped on my backpack–now solo–and resumed my trek around the world. Today it was from one “end of the world” to the next. 30 km from Muxia to Finisterre, the longstanding end of the ancient Camino, […]