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Orthez, France. It is only a few days’ walk from an important village, Saint-Jean Pied de
Port, where two of the French trails converge before threading into the
Pyrenees and then to Spain. When British pilgrims crossed the English Channel
by boat in the Middle Ages, they often drifted south to towns such as Orthez.
Then they would gather to cross the Pyrenees in huge groups for protection
against—as every history book says —blackguards and highwaymen. I figure this
is a more fitting place to really begin.
     
    The way out of Orthez is a
narrow industrial highway and a favorite of amphetamine-powered, speeding
truckers. Ten minutes into my first (true) steps of walking as a pilgrim, it
begins to rain. I struggle into my lighter-than-air poncho. Each passing semi
cracks a whip of stinging droplets against my legs and face. Flow
serendipitous. Now I don’t need to flagellate myself.
    Everything mocks me this
morning. All my doubts about this pilgrimage find expression in this valley.
The roar of each truck is a chorus of humiliating laughter. The billboards
continuously advertise a soft drink called “Pschitt.” The otherwise serene
French countryside is populated by stubby pine trees, each branch ending in a
tight fist of dark green needles from which shoots up, like a taunting obscene
gesture, a single finger of tender growth. The pathetic fallacy is getting on my
nerves.
    The danger of the speeding
traffic reaches critical mass when one truck passes another beside me. Suddenly
a truck rattling at eighty miles per hour is kissing my elbow. The air foil at
that speed slugs me with the force of a body blow, pitching me into a drainage
ditch. I brush myself off. My shoulder is sore. The rain quickens its pace to a
full gallop.
    As I enter the village of Saliers de Bearn, I consult my map carefully. The next two days are nothing but
trucking highways, danger, Pschitt ads, and certain death. But after Saint-Jean
Pied de Port, the road is less traveled, more pilgrimesque. A short note on my
pilgrim’s map mentions that in Saint-Jean there lives an old woman named Madame
Debril who has been greeting pilgrims for decades. Here is authenticity. The
tradition of the humble volunteer who lives on the road to help pilgrims has a
long historical pedigree. In the account of his 1726 pilgrimage, a French
pilgrim named Guillaume Manier wrote admiringly of one Mme. Belcourt of Bayonne
who lived “in the first house on the right, which has a sign of Santiago
applied above her door. There all pilgrims coming and going rest. This woman is
known on the four continents of the world for that.” Madame Debril and
Saint-Jean sounded like a proper beginning for a modern pilgrimage.
    I sit on a public bench,
consider the prospect of two days on a truckers’ highway, and remind myself of
the rich tradition of human frailty associated with the road.
    I think about Benedict and
his monasteries, and about Saint James, and about the very origin of the road
itself. The first “proof” the early promoters of the road cited of Saint
James’s presence in Spain came from the writings of a man named St. Beatus. He
lived fifty years before the discovery of the tomb, and he had heavily
publicized Saint James’s association with Spain (the “most worthy and holy
apostle, radiant, gold-glittering leader of Spain”). Beatus used a simple list
of the apostles and the places where they had proselytized as an original
source of James’s visit to Spain. This list had been copied by an anonymous
scribe who mistakenly wrote that James’s territory was “Hispaniam,” or Spain, rather than “Hierosolyman,” or Jerusalem. So the pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela—which
has been credited with forging Spain into a nation, defeating the Moors,
sending Arab learning into central Europe, bringing light to the Dark Ages,
sparking the Renaissance, fashioning the first international laws, and
conjuring the idea of a unified Europe— owes its origin to a