Thursday, March 24, 2011

Pilgrims book excerpt

An excerpt from my book – complete, but unpublished. The beginning of my pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostella in north-western Spain.

Morning on this third of May is cool and damp. Paris is preoccupied and I slip through its streets unnoticed. In the Gâre de Lyon I board the train for Le Puy-en-Vélay in the southeast of France, a starting point of the Santiago pilgrimage.

Spring is waiting outside the city limits. The lush green of the French countryside spreads out like an open embrace. Traveling at a remarkable speed, within a few hours we enter the Haute Loire region and the landscape becomes more rugged. Streams jostle alongside the railway lines and hills rise sharply behind them. Excitement and anxiety knit into a warm knot in my stomach that rocks with the rhythm of the train. By afternoon, I have arrived.

Set against the volcanic background of the Massif Central mountains, the town of Le Puy-en-Vélay is a pocket of red tile roofs in a rich cloak of forest green. Three immense pillars of rock jut up between the roofs like granite arms reaching skyward. An immense red iron statue of the Virgin Mary perches on the tallest of these peaks. Her child is in her arms; her sightless eyes are fixed on the town below. Her body faces westward, toward the horizon’s uneven line over which flows a human river of pilgrims to Santiago de Compostelle.

Crouched at Mary’s feet is Notre-Dame du Puy, a somber Roman cathedral. Narrow cobblestone streets wind in a maze beneath the cathedral, twisting and turning before leading me to the modestly marked gate of the pilgrim hostel. My guidebook lists this as a ‘gîte d’étape’ - a dormitory-type accommodation for hikers and pilgrims. Run by nuns, the Maison St. François is tucked inside a small enclosure not far from the cathedral. The building is not large, but has an interior courtyard with a small fountain. The floors are of smooth flagstone.

A nun with glasses and a blue cotton dress greets me. Once she understands that I intend to walk the pilgrimage to Compostelle, she smiles kindly and offers me a room that is sparse but neat.

1 comment:

  1. I vote that your March gift for blogging all month is to self-publish your book: http://www.amazon.com/gp/seller-account/mm-summary-page.html?topic=200260520

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