I have been cold for two months now. Not so much during the walks; my body heat usually takes care of that for me, after just a half-hour of exertion in the early morning. No, it’s in the accommodation each night, where heating is non-existent or applied judiciously. The stone walls have spent the past six months soaking up the winter and they horde it protectively now, even as the calendar approaches mid-April. There’s always a radiator on the wall, of course, but it’s usually as chilly as everything else. It’s hard to blame a donation-based operation; funds are limited and you can always throw another blanket on.
Along the way, I’ve stayed in all kinds of different places. Many are current or former religious buildings–monasteries, convents, parish houses–with bare-bones dorm rooms, typically featuring mattresses, pillows, a small stack of blankets, and a cross on the wall. I’ve slept in people’s homes, often in a special room or mother-in-law unit specially designed to hold pilgrims. I’ve stayed in B&Bs; those usually enjoy more robust heating.
Tonight, though, in Montecasale, I’m staying in a place that perhaps bests them all in terms of authenticity, tradition, and the legitimacy of that cold stone underfoot. I’m staying at the old Eremo, or hermitage, one of the many caves where Francis sought isolation, but also the site of another colorful story from his life. It’s said that three thieves conspired to rob Francis; indeed, a door here is labeled as the site at which those thieves confronted the saint. How could he not find the humor in these thieves having decided to rob the man who famously abandoned all wealth, all property, claiming that only by doing so he could live peacefully, having nothing left over to protect. He didn’t merely send off the thieves disappointed, though; he engaged them in dialogue and ultimately converted them. The skulls of two of the three men remain here in the hermitage today, in a glass case in the room where Francis sought seclusion and prayer.
The friars here don’t actively court pilgrims, but their website notes that any pilgrim who shows up can sleep on the floor in their pilgrim room–a long space filled with tables and chairs, with a shower across the way. It also indicates, though, that they have one room with one bed, available to a pilgrim who communicates in advance. And so here I am, alone in the hermitage for the night, shivering in my small cell, just like Francis.
On most nights of this trip, I would be sitting outdoors, savoring the remarkable view that I earned through a short but fierce ascent, climbing a trail up past a surging river, made flush with two days of heavy rain. The trail was already saturated, pooled over in places, difficult to grip in many others; my cheap Asics never had much tread to begin with. Alas, the driving rain continues; I hear its persistent patter as it crashes into the cloister, through a door to my right. There’s little to be seen of that view, and nowhere to remain dry when making the attempt.
These past two days were spent racing against that rain. On Palm Sunday, I hustled out of Pietralunga, after a quick pit stop at the wonderful bar that somehow opened at 6am. Once again, the Via di Francesco offered little in the way of services on this stage, especially since the pilgrim hostel some 10km in hasn’t yet opened for the year. But, given that the forecast called for the rain to arrive by 1pm, I was fine to fire up the engines and push hard through the hills. The vast majority of the stage followed paved roads, which isn’t ideal walking, but it does facilitate a speed-run.
Today, meanwhile, the dry window was even narrower, with the forecast calling for heavy rain to arrive sometime between 9 and 10am. As such, I even sacrificed the morning coffee, pushing hard to chip off as many kilometers as possible from the 39 I had ahead of me. 20km of downpour is annoying; double that is pretty miserable. While the elevation profile didn’t feature any sustained, intimidating ascents–aside from that final climb to Montecasale, of course–I didn’t appreciate just how many smaller ups-and-downs there were, and how tiring those would prove to be when tackled at full speed. Still, I accomplished my goal, reaching Citerna, almost 20km into the walk, in total dryness, and earning almost another full hour sans rain to boot. I rewarded myself with a coffee.
A few kms before Citerna, I realized that I was finally encountering the pilgrims who stayed there the night before, meaning that I already had something like 16km in the bag, compared with their two or three. I was pushing a good pace, but this was mostly a byproduct of departure time, as they must have set forth at least 2.5 hours after I left Citta di Castillo.
It’s funny–I’ve been doing this for 23 years now, and I still can’t help it. In these moments, I automatically begin comparing my approach to the one followed by others. It began as surprise, with me wondering why people would choose to burn the only dry hours of the day, when they could have set out a little earlier and set themselves up for an easier walk. Most people out here are going at a slower pace than I am–probably due both to preference and capacity–so they couldn’t have completed what I suspect was a 20km stage before the rains came, but they might have aimed for the same kind of 50/50 split that I did.
But then, inevitably, my mind turned back upon itself, asking if, in my haste to beat the rains, I was robbing myself of some essential part of the experience–if I was approaching the day as something to be beaten or conquered or managed, as opposed to all manner of possibility. Why not view the rain as an opportunity, a change of pace, something to be celebrated in its own way?
This is where my practical voice kicks in. The more you get soaked, the greater the risk of it permeating your pack, and with no sunshine or warmth on the docket for days, that would be a headache. The more sodden the trail, the messier the march. The later you arrive, the chance of anything drying by morning–already poor–drops to zero. What might be a fun experience as a day-hike, especially one ending in the comforts of home, becomes a much bigger pain when you’re spending the night in a cold cell.
Of course, there are lots of pilgrims who do all of those things, and they seem to have a swell time!
I return to this post an hour later, having just attended Vespers. The friars observe Vespers in their own secluded space, behind the church altar. This meant that I was alone in the small church, listening to their voices coming through muffled. How many men were joined together in song? Four? Five? It certainly wasn’t anything near a full house, not that I would expect such a thing; every monastic community I’ve visited is well below capacity, with a small circle of dedicated monks, nuns, and friars holding on. Not many people want to live this way anymore. That, despite the fact that the Franciscan schedule is nowhere near as rigid or packed as the Benedictine. The day begins with readings at 6:30am, followed by mass at 7:30. From there, the friars are free until noon, when they have a short gathering before lunch. And then, once again, it’s wide open until Vespers and Compline in the evening, followed by dinner at 7:45pm. That’s it.
Benedict sought to provide a structured and productive way for monks to live. Francis aimed to bring back a model from the gospels for his Christians could live in the world. And I’m sitting here failing to be at peace with how to walk, never mind how to live. My actions are consistent; I’ve approached these kinds of stages in a consistent way for years. It’s my mind that churns, that raises doubts, that hears all the competing views about how to make a fulfilling and rewarding walk and forces continued reevaluation of my choices.
I’m sure there have been many Benedictines and Franciscans who have critiqued the daily schedule over the years, finding places where the hours could be better optimized, or customized to suit different monastic objectives, or diversified to offer a wider variety of experiences. Maybe there have been tangible reforms over the years; I haven’t checked. That said, the schedules remains, consistent and explicit, day after day after day. A recurring bass line, running through the lives of these men and women, providing the connective tissue around which the rest of their activities and reflections can unfold.
I think back upon this day, which began when I had a porcupine go lumbering across my path just outside of Citta di Castello. An hour later, a wet puppy sleepwalked his way into my leg and soaked up all the petting offer before I finally pushed forward. In Citerna, a piazza opens up to what must typically be a fantastic view, as the railing is adorned with one of those maps that identifies each of the visible peaks in the distance. I laughed, as the sky beyond was pure white, and then a few locals joined in when they say me taking a picture of the scene. I sheltered in McDonald’s for an hour in Sansepolcro, and then received the most sympathetic expressions of all time from the staff and patrons as I set forth once more into the brink. As I departed Sansepolcro, I encountered a few pilgrims who had just completed an arduous stage; as tough as the ascent was that I had ahead, I can’t imagine how miserable it was as a descent. There was a moment when my face probably looked as dour as theirs, and I suddenly burst into laughter, pumped my fist, and shouted, “andiamo pellegrini!” One of them thought I was mad, but the other two beamed. While the clouds robbed me of some visuals, the small river alongside the trail leading to Montecasale was swollen by these heavy rains, making for some surprisingly powerful waterfalls along the way. When I detoured to get a closer look, I discovered a tiny frog, the size of the last digit of my pinkie, hopping around in the dirt.
The point, in all of that, is that it hardly sounds like the summary of a forced march, or the reflections of someone who grudgingly pounded out a bunch of kilometers. It wasn’t nonstop joy; the slog into Sansepolcro itself was pretty damn miserable. But I grabbed joy where I could, and I’m of the belief that having that consistent sense of how to walk frees my mind up from such concerns, allowing me to focus my energies elsewhere. And perhaps that’s not all together dissimilar to the monastic schedule.
