What I most appreciate about very long days of walking is that the distance simplifies matters, tears the whole edifice down to its studs. Don’t think too much. Just wake up and go. And keep going. Obviously, too many days of that is a problem, for all kinds of different reasons. But two days? That’s like a juice cleanse for your feet. So leaving Faicchio was like being back in the US, rising at 4:30am, shoveling some carbs into my gullet, and setting forth under the cover of darkness.
I sprinted ahead of dawn for as long as I could muster, but it caught me soon enough, and we strode along parallel paths towards Alife, which like most everything here has its own mix of ancient origins. The Messapians of Puglia have been left behind now, replaced with the broader Oscan grouping and narrower Samnites. Alife seems to have been an important town, holding out for a half-century against Roman dominance, before finally being destroyed in the Samnite wars. Nonetheless, it was rebuilt, and those Roman walls have persisted, surviving sieges, raids, and World War II, still embracing the outline of the original, compact urban core. That last experience is difficult to read about. As Germans retreated from Alife in October 1943, they mined the area, leading to an American air raid on the 13th. Many civilians were killed in the strike. And yet, a photograph of the town in the wake of the bombing found use as an example in an American magazine of the precise nature of Allied bombing, avoiding civilians and surgically excising military targets.
Caffeinated, I marched onward, and despite that clear headed, simplified start to the day, thoughts began to intrude via a gap in my defenses–the damned audiobook! A Trojan horse if ever there was one. I was listening to On the Road with Saint Augustine by James K.A. Smith, an effort to synthesize Augustine, Kerouac, and the existentialists into a contemporary meditation on the challenges we face today, beginning–conveniently enough–with Christian pilgrimage and the notion of “the road is life.” Given that, over the past nine months, I’ve probably spent less than a month’s worth of nights in my own bed, with not too many to follow over the next eight months, this was a little on the nose.
The notion that “the road is life” immediately resonates with me. I vividly remember a morning on the first stage of the Camino del Norte, as I ascended to the ridgeline overlooking the Basque Country on my left and the Bay of Biscay on my right, and the sensation of adrenaline coursing through my veins. It had been a difficult year, and that moment exemplified freedom, my breaking free from constraint, from the chains that had been dragging me down, and an instantaneous resuscitation. The thrill of discovery, of not knowing what’s around the next corner, of anticipating the unexpected and almost always having that simultaneously subverted and fulfilled, the absolute satiation at day’s end and eagerness to do it all over again… let’s just say I proudly subscribe to the “road is life” newsletter.
But Smith, via Augustine, challenges that notion. First, he writes, “Our road-hunger is like some leftover evolutionary habit from our ancestors.” No argument there; many would argue that this is factually the case. The critical change in his view, though, is that “ours is a pilgrimage without a destination–which is to say, it’s not a pilgrimage at all, but rather a pilgrimage deferred, not because we stay home but because we revel in the roaming, or at least try to talk ourselves into that.” As a consequence then, while “we’ve inherited their pilgrim penchant […] it’s morphed into unsettledness, a baseline antsy feeling that leaves us never feeling at home.”
There’s a risk of conflation here. Smith is discussing a contemporary philosophical orientation through the language of pilgrimage. He is critiquing our glorification of life on the road, freedom from constraint, the pursuit of the untethered existence. He doesn’t have the Camino de Santiago or the Via Francigena top-of-mind. I can’t help but wonder about the connection, though. As a secular pilgrim, I’ve come to emphasize the importance of destination when so many peers who are similarly oriented elevate the journey above all else. I arrive in Santiago and Rome not to venerate the saints, but nonetheless I bring with me great appreciation for what they symbolize–as galvanizing forces, through their promotional agents, that brought all of us together, that made the route possible. But does that melancholy that I and so many other pilgrims experience at walk’s end speak, at least in part, to his larger claim here? When we embark on pilgrimage, on some level do we aspire to reach a true home, an existential hub, a place in which we feel rooted and a sense of belonging, only to be cast adrift once more at journey’s end? When we immediately start planning the next pilgrimage, do we align ourselves even more closely with Sisyphus, clinging ever more tightly to that boulder? At least we have found joy in it…
I may not have had a literal boulder, but it suddenly registered in my mind that I was climbing a hill, the first in many kilometers. The day’s stage had one ascent of note, climbing from the village of Latina to Statigliano, then up and over the Torre Normana di Roccaromana, before descending to the eponymous village. It’s a lovely stretch on the way up, and then a jarring drop along a choppy footpath, and it demanded my full attention for a while. Before too long, though, the trail flattened out, and Smith returned.
“If the road is life,” he observes, “then we’re not really vagabonds. To be on the way is to have arrived.” And certainly, I have not only imagined this in past months, but openly aspired to it. At some point, spending five weeks on the road wasn’t enough; my appetite expanded to three or four months, a complete immersion in which nothing exists before or after the walk; all is consumed by the endless string of kilometers, unremitting and eternal. To transform the liminal into the absolute, the core. But Smith (and Augustine) would argue that I’m fooling myself. “The trick is to convince yourself that the road is life, making restlessness peace, uprootedness home.” Looking back at the past two write-ups, I can see some of this tension at work. When all goes well, the joy is transcendent; when a few stumbling blocks line up in succession, the angst is existential. Reading my mind, Smith writes that “‘the road is life’ is an exhilarating philosophy when you enjoy the comforts of a Parisian cafe.” In other words, there risks being, in his words, a “bougie-ness” to how we apply this notion in the West, performing as nomads from the comfort of a soft mattress, warm dinner, and meticulously charted route with multiple checks against veering off course.
On this day, at least, I’m guilty of all of those claims, with a room in a B&B waiting for me on the other side of Teano. The town itself is overflowing with history. It boasts ancient walls, pre-Roman in origin and attributed to the Sidicini people who settled here in the 400s BC. By 300, the Romans had taken control, renaming this Teanum Sidicinum, and in time it became home to one of the finest theaters in Italy. Its museum includes a mosaic that is claimed to be the earliest known representation of the Nativity scene. Alas, both of these were closed as I passed through. More recently, Teano is famous for being the site where Giuseppe Garibaldi and King Victor Emmanuel met in 1861 to finalize plans for the new state of Italy. The building where that occurred is now a defunct butcher’s shop, falling into decay. Read into that what you will.
From Teano, I marched northward, anticipating that I would mostly be reliant on my GPS track, as I departed from the Via Francigena Sud in order to reach the Cammino di San Benedetto. To my surprise, I continued to encounter VF waymarks for much of the day, indicating a feeder branch that linked with the main route. But Smith wasn’t done with me yet, and this was where he really captured my attention. Anyone who has dabbled in pilgrimage discourse is familiar with the pilgrim vs. tourist dynamic, or even pilgrim vs. hiker. Smith moved this discussion in a different direction. “What if the human condition was understood not as Odyssean (a neat and tidy return) or Sisyphean (learning to get over your hope for home), but as being like the experience of a refugee?”
This was an abrupt shift from the potential decadence of the “bougie” walk. Here’s what he has in mind: “What if being human means being a cosmic emigre–vulnerable, exposed, unsettled, desperate, looking for a home I’ve never been to before? The longings of the refugee–to escape hunger, violence, and the quotidian experience of being bereft, in order to find security, flourishing, and freedom–are good and just precisely because they are so deeply human. They even signal something about our spiritual condition: that our unshakable hopes of escaping a bereftness of the soul and finding the security of a home are not absurd. The exhaustion we experience from perpetually seeking, the fatigue of trying to live as if ‘the road is life,’ the times we crumple onto the road just wishing someone could find us and take us home–the persistence of this hope almost makes us wonder if it could be realized.”
If “playing pilgrim” feels performative at times, “playing refugee” runs the risk of being downright offensive, especially while sipping a cappuccino in an elegant cafe. And yet, Smith is undeterred: “We are not just pilgrims on a sacred march to a religious site; we are migrants, strangers, resident aliens en route to a patria, a homeland we’ve never been to.” This is Augustine’s message, a lesson learned by a man who traveled from North Africa to Rome and Milan, in pursuit of accomplishment, grandeur, status, only to leave it all behind. The power of pilgrimage is that it weaves together the journey without and the journey within, but it’s easy for the former to displace the latter, to hold preeminence, to distract us from the heart of the matter.
The trail climbed through the Roccamonfina volcano complex, the oldest in the region, dating back to some 600,000 years ago, though it has remained dormant for 50,000. It was a strenuous start to the day, but in time I emerged into a long, narrow valley, the Liri Valley, which would lead me westward to my destination.
When I make a route, as I did in this case, there are a few priorities. First, of course, is distance; I’m looking for a semi-efficient way of linking Points A and B. Second is terrain; if I can avoid pavement, so much the better. Third is lining up at least a few towns, to ensure access to water and maybe a snack. In this case, I was fortunate to stumble my way into a trajectory that brought me through a crucial part of history, leading through Mignano Monte Lungo and San Pietro Infine en route to Cassino.
Here is an excerpt from an oral history interview with Herman Chanowitz, former captain in the 2nd Tactical Air Communications Squadron, on what occurred in this region: “The Germans were absolutely sure that nobody could get through Cassino if it was properly defended. They believed they could block the Americans, so what they were doing was fighting for time. The Germans had a construction battalion with them. They were famous. They would get Italian labor, pay them a certain amount, and if the guys didn’t want to come, the Germans would force them — abduct them from their homes. The idea was to build a defense line. They called it the Gustav Line, going from near Gaeta to Cassino and all the way across to the Adriatic side. They needed until Christmas time, so what they did was fortify the mountains on either side of Highway 6. Once you pass Capua going up to Cassino, you pass though towns like Mignano — we called it “Death Valley” — Presenzano, Teano, Mignano. The Germans really fortified those mountains. All they wanted was time. They’d say, ok, keep the Allies back for at least a week or so and then fall back to the next mountain and make sure that we are all lined up by Christmas time. And that’s what happened.”
I walked through the Sacrario Militare Italiano di Monte Lungo, a military cemetery housing the remains of 974 Italian soldiers, and another long-forgotten cemetery where Allied soldiers were quickly buried in the heat of the conflict. Most jarring, though, was San Pietro Infine, the last town before Cassino, which was completely destroyed in the conflict, its residents taking to the caves below for shelter. A new town was built right next to it, so the ruins survive as a ghost town, now converted into a museum, a reminder of what happened here.
Heading towards Cassino, I thought about the narrow ways we often conceive of “the road is life.” The American glorification of the freedom of the open road, of being unconstrained and independent, is foundational to my thinking; there’s no way to purge that paradigm completely. And yet, part of what drew me to pilgrimage was adding some element of constraint; the route was defined, the destination was established, and once I chose that particular route many of my subsequent possible choices were curtailed. I had opted for freedom within limitations. Even within that, though, I was recasting pilgrimage in my own likeness, exchanging veneration for self-reflection and historical curiosity. But Smith’s call to reflect on “the road is life” from a refugee perspective is timely and important, an orientation that simultaneously elevates the arduous and hazardous aspects alongside the hopeful ones, the ones calling for remarkable courage and persistence. Similarly, consider the “road is life” view of the exile, caught in between worlds, feeling at home in neither, and what that does to a sense of belonging. And leaving Smith for a moment, but looking back towards San Pietro Infine, I can’t help but imagine the “road is life” for the person who is seeking escape, caught literally in the line of fire, when the road has brought nothing but death, first from the north and then from the south. When one day’s allies are tomorrow’s enemies, and the innocents suffer the most.
The abbey of Montecassino gradually took shape high overhead. Jarringly, the town of Cassino was celebrating a chocolate festival, my existential considerations suddenly swapped for free samples. A vertiginous ending to two days that, if they did include a tearing down to the studs, ultimately concluded with a much broader frame being established.
