I’m a competitive person. Probably more competitive than you.
On the whole, I’m content with that. It has served me well enough professionally. Perhaps a little less so personally. I recalibrated over the years, and that made a difference. Early in my career, I wanted to be perceived as the best teacher at my school; the competitive drive was something geared towards differentiating myself from others. Eventually, I matured, and realized that my sense of self-worth didn’t require being perceived above my colleagues. Instead, the competitive drive was redirected towards my own internal standards, like a cross country runner striving for a PR, as opposed to just beating others in a race. It’s not that the latter is a bad thing, especially when there’s an objective, consistent standard to be applied (unlike education). However, success when competing against others doesn’t necessarily elevate you as an individual to become a better version of yourself–indeed, sometimes the exact opposite is true.
If there’s a downside to it, the unfortunate reality is that, at some point in our lives, we’re all going to hit our peak when it comes to a particular skill. For a gymnast, it might come at 18; never again will they be as good as they are at that moment; if they’re lucky, they’ll have another 70 years to reflect on that fleeting glory. My last few years of teaching, I found that all of the low-hanging fruit had been plucked clean, and that I was working as hard as ever in order to sustain my level of performance, as opposed to feeling myself hitting new highs. As I write, nearly a full school year has passed since I stepped away, and I still have no clue if I’ll go back, or if I’ll do something else with my life. I’ve got another year, at least, though an international financial collapse won’t be likely to extend that window. Sitting here, in a dark kitchen in Rieti at 5:30am, it’s difficult to reconcile myself to plateau and decline, to not be in a position to grow and challenge myself in new ways.
This could also be a conversation about walking. I’ve now had pilgrimage and long-distance walking as a presence in my life for more than half of it. Unlike teaching, there has been a neat, tidy, and objective way of measuring my progress as a walker. Little by little, I became capable of walking farther and farther, and also faster and faster. I broke 40km a couple of times on my first Camino. It took a while before I dared to top 50, but 60 fell pretty soon after that, a consequence of me striving to cram all of the guidebook scouting that needed to happen into a narrow window. I hit 70km when I arrived in Roma at the end of the Via Francigena, figuring that the best time to test one’s physical limits would be at the conclusion of a pilgrimage. No need to walk the next day, after all. And then I blew past that on the US walk, topping out around 85km on four different days. The most significant accomplishment in all of that was my ability to consistently emerge physically healthy and mostly content with the distances. It’s good for the ego, at least for a competitive person, to pursue–and triumph over–challenges that strike most people as pretty crazy.
And yet, on this walk, my follow-up to the US crossing, I deliberately set out to not replicate those daily distances. Today was only my fourth day over 50km, nearly six and a half weeks into the trip. I’m averaging right around 35km per day, which is still an aggressive pace by pilgrim standards, but a clear step back from what I did in the US. Part of that is a consequence of more demanding terrain; vast sections of the US are flat as a pancake (on my mind, given that my hosts served up pancakes for breakfast as I prepared to depart from Toffia), making the miles far less strenuous (and far more monotonous). The larger part, though, is driven by the simple desire to make the experience a little more enjoyable, with more time available to linger in places along the way.
As I set out from Toffia, though, pushing a good pace along the gentle undulating road, I realized that part of me–that competitive side–was dissatisfied with that pace, with the sense of having dipped in performance, with the accompanying concern that I was, so to speak, leaving points on the field, by missing out on whatever other towns and other places I might have seen if I had pushed myself harder.
The hills grew steeper as I moved into my second hour, hoping to be about halfway to Poggio Moiano, the first town of the day, at that point. As the competitive demon chirped away, the angel on my other shoulder urged me to consider all that is entailed in being a “good” walker, and to shift my thinking beyond a simplistic metric of kilometers covered. I recognized immediately that, as a consequence of first leading students and then writing guidebooks, I’ve become much better over the years at observation, spotting details, taking in a scene. My eyes are rarely down at my feet, aside from the rockiest of trails. My head is on a swivel, shifting around constantly, often turning back behind me to catch the views that are so easily missed, but so often memorable. When I’m on a waymarked route, I am comfortable relinquishing myself to the arrows and stripes, trusting my eyes–and the volunteers.
A stunning vista opened up before me, as I descended into a valley sprinkled with olive trees where a pack of sheep congregated at its base, shepherd dogs bounding around the margins, as one man urged them onward. It’s the kind of scene you imagine as being quintessentially rural Italy, the perfect confluence of place and timing, arriving there at just such an optimal moment to see these elements come together. I was so lucky to be here. The man waved at me, pointed towards the next hour, and shouted, “A Roma, a Roma!”
I smiled, and then I stopped. Wait, a Roma?
We quickly determined what had gone wrong. As my alternative route past the Farfa abbey had rejoined the official route, there had been no special waymarks or indicators. There was one large, insistent, blue and yellow arrow, practically screaming at me to go this way–dissuading, I realized, pilgrims on the official route to Roma from veering onto the alternative. No other signage existed, though, so I blithely veered onto a route that led me backward. I thanked the man and then turned back, rewarded with a sustained ascent back to the intersection, surging forward with the anger I often feel when fouling up a turn. If I’m a “good” walker, after all, I should manage those mistakes. In each of my last two conversations with my hosts, they warned me that the intersections between the main route and the variant are poorly marked and that they periodically have to bail out guests who veer very far off course, and then I stepped squarely in the same trap.
My legs churned furiously. I set out this morning a little later than normal, wanting to have breakfast with my hosts at a reasonable hour for them–again, totally worth it, given the bottomless stack of pancakes–but also eager to reach Rieti at a decent hour, since I had stayed outside the center with Mauro last time around. And now, I was what, already an hour behind schedule? Finally, Poggio Moiano appeared on a hill before me, though a ravine separated us, requiring a sharp descent followed by an equally audacious ascent. Every muscle in my body was calling for me to power through, especially when I saw that the Cammino cuts through to the right of the center; a proper visit required a modest detour.
One of the harder lessons for me to learn, in becoming a “good” walker, was that just because I can walk quickly and without breaks doesn’t mean that I should. Any good song plays with tempo; any good play has a sense of dramatic build-up. Variety matters as much to me in a walk, knowing when to let the legs feed and when to dial back the intensity and allow a moment to breathe, a place to unfold. I took a deep breath and strolled into the town’s piazza, a long curving slice of grass and cement overlooking the valley. I bought some yogurt and sat on a bench. A man from the adjacent biker bar, looking exactly how you would expect, sat the next bench over. A group of four older men ambled past, perhaps having the same morning they’ve had for sixty years. It didn’t change my life or anything, but it took the edge off that wrong turn, and it gave me a moment to appreciate that scene I had witnessed, which I would have missed if everything had gone “correctly.”
When I renewed the climb through town, I settled into more of a rhythm. With no route variants to disrupt the walk from here to Rieti, I released myself to the waymarks. The town faded away, orchards gradually took shape around me, and the view of the world beyond expanded wide. I paused at the Church of San Martino, which now has a pilgrim hostel, and then continued onto the next little church, Santa Vittoria, which was unfortunately closed, as I would have loved to see the catacombs. The route looped through a field past the archaeological site of Trebula Mutuesca, ancient foundations visible in the dig area, but all fenced off. In time, another hill town took shape before me, Poggio San Lorenzo, requiring another tiring ascent. The elevation profile for this section doesn’t draw attention in quite the same way that some of the stages on the Benedetto did; the Y-axis doesn’t have the same degree of variance. But the shifting terrain is often relentless, and the trails often quite rocky. You earn your breaks on the Francesco.
There was less to capture my attention in the second half of the walk, aside from the Ponte Sambuco–a hulking Roman bridge in the midst of a grassy valley. Having done the calculations in Poggio San Lorenzo, I knew that I would arrive in Rieti around 5pm. Later than I would have liked, but nothing to be done about it at this point. And so, I just let me mind loose and took in the fields, the trees, the lazy stream trickling alongside me. A “good” walker, I have to think, is one who enjoys the entirety of the experience–or, if we can acknowledge that’s an impossible standard, than as close to the entirety as possible. I have better days than others on that account, but I’m making progress.
Strolling around Rieti–after checking in, after showering and washing clothes, after inhaling 500g of pasta–I joined the stream of locals descending the pedestrian Via Roma to the river, the quintessential view of the town, with snow-capped mountains looming behind the Franciscan church. I bought gelato and watched a pack of teenagers in their native habitat, gossiping. There’s a feeling that comes after a long walk–exhaustion, fulfillment, a sense of having employed your body as it was intended–that is the ultimate reward for all those kilometers, sitting right alongside the profound sensations that unfold as you visualize how far you came, how significantly the world changed through the movement of your feet. This, too, is part of the equation of a “good” walker for me. I want to feel strong and accomplished at day’s end; I want to feel like I have made a journey that is tangible and substantial. There was a time when 20km could afford me that sensation, but over the years I’ve needed to push farther to accomplish the goal.
Ultimately, I think the schedule I arrived at for this walk through Italy has afforded me the best possible combination for where I am as a walker at this point. Enough long days to quench that competitive drive, to fulfill my physical demand to stretch myself. And also enough shorter stretches to slow down, to enjoy the many other rewards of walking. It’s not a formula for others; it’s calibrated to my tastes and where I am in the arc of my walking “career.” It still won’t stop me, though, from getting pissed off every time I take a wrong turn.
