Days 19 & 20 – Colle di Val d’Elsa to Ponte d’Arbia, Italy – 62km
Lots of questions come up on pilgrimage. Where is the bathroom? Where is a fountain? What happened to the route? Why do my shoes smell like this? Is breakfast gelato appropriate? Here’s another one: how, exactly, does one find God on pilgrimage? Years ago, I found myself having this conversation with Father Brian, an American […]
Day 18 – San Miniato Alto to Colle di Val d’Elsa, Italy – 47km
The walk from San Miniato to Gambassi Terme is one of the emptier stretches of the Via Francigena through Italy. There’s a bar in Calenzano, 3km from the starting point, but I passed through too early to take advantage of it. (Years ago, in anticipation of a long, hot day, we arrived in Calenzano at […]
Day 17 – Lucca to San Miniato Alto, Italy – 47km
One of the things I’ve learned over the years that would have surprised younger me is that I’m an optimist. It’s nearly unshakeable at this point. (I mean, if the last handful of years hasn’t shaken it, what could? Don’t answer that.) It’s what keeps me going strong in the face of dire, looming issues […]
Day 16 – Pietrasanta to Lucca, Italy – 33km
At the end of a day, at the end of a life, what is remembered–and how much of that is actually real? I often find myself going back to Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried. That happens for a lot of reasons–it has probably happened in at least one of these daily trip write-ups at […]
Day 15 – After Sarzana to Pietrasanta, Italy – 44km
I’m well used to seeing mountain peaks around me by this point. Throughout the walk, the Swiss Alps, the Ligurian Alps, and the Apuan Alps have consistently framed one side of the horizon, typically blocking out sunrise for an extra hour or so. Today, though, those mountains suddenly looked very different. They appeared to be […]
Day 14 – Levanto to after Sarzana, Italy – 49km
It sneaks up on you. You spend years cultivating a sense of self that positions you as different, as considerate and other-aware, as grateful for the services and care you receive, and you recognize that even if you’re still a tourist in the end, at least you’re not one of those tourists. Until you are. […]
Day 13 – Sestri Levante to Levanto, Italy – 30km
And on the 13th day, Dave rested. Sort of. I slept in, all the way until 6:44am! My alarm was set for 6:45, so it was with particular mirth that I read the time on my phone after returning to life this morning. I’d spent the previous evening with the proverbial angel and demon propped […]
Days 11 & 12 – Genova to Sestri Levante, Italy – 53km
We don’t know much about the older generations of the Giannini family. They hailed from an isolated corner of Liguria, the gorge of the Fontanabuona, the village of Favale, cut off from the populated coast and a challenging place from which to eke out an existence. Not until 1892 was the road to the Lavagna […]
Days 9 & 10 – Bobbio to Genova, Italy – 75.5km
We are standing on shoulders, but contrary to the expression, those aren’t the shoulders of giants. If the view is commanding, if the heights are dizzying, that’s not evidence of gargantuan presence, but simply a long historical record–millennia of feet affixed to matching shoulders. My hike over these two days felt every bit as intimidating […]