LITMIR.BIZ

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only market in town was inexplicably fermé, but we found an open bakery. Eric went to the counter and, uncertain of the protocol, pointed to a baguette. The shopkeeper rattled off a question neither of us understood. We looked at him, hoping for some physical gesture that would give us a clue. The shopkeeper asked the same question, more sharply.

      Je ne parle pas français. And then the other French word I’d learned that day. Désolé. I’m sorry.

      The baker did not attempt to hide his contempt. He shoved the bread across the counter and scratched something onto a paper. Two euros. He continued to scowl as he took our coin and turned to the next customer. The encounter left us both cringing, reminded that not everyone would be gracious when faced with our lack of French.

      We found fruit and cheese in another shop and bought them without incident. There were still two hours until dinner, but the strain of taking care of our basic needs in another language left me with little mental space to admire the architecture. We walked back toward the gîte, prepared for another quiet night, but as we passed a side street I glanced down and saw Eugene sitting alone outside a tiny bar.

      The lure of beer and easy conversation redirected our steps, and we joined him. Despite the challenges of an old knee injury, Eugene was enthusiastic about absolutely everything Caminorelated, and the conversation flowed smoothly. We told him about Seattle, and he told us about his home on the southern coast of Australia. He planned to walk to Santiago and started in Le Puy because he had family ties in France and a passion for history.

      Our cheery table attracted attention. The Brothers Grim stopped by, and I got them to smile again when I showed off my counting skills. Virginie and a Frenchwoman we’d seen the night before in Saint Privat pulled up a couple of chairs, and Eric poked around the edges of the language with them.

      Just as they were stuck on a difficult phrase, a thin, weatheredlooking man passed by, and he stopped to help. Gabriel was fluent in French, English, and Spanish. We bought him a beer, and he told us he was walking GR65 backward, from Santiago to Le Puy, and then perhaps he would go farther. He’d walked all over the world, he said, as far away as Nepal. I noticed his clothes were ragged and his boots worn. He spent almost no money, camping by the side of the road or sleeping in the free rustic pilgrim huts that still occasionally dotted the Way.

      The time passed quickly, and before I knew it we were hurrying back to the school/gîte for dinner. For reasons that weren’t clear, a few dozen teenagers also appeared to be spending the night, and their happy voices surrounded the two tables reserved for pilgrims. The Brothers Grim gravitated to a group of French pilgrims, and we joined Eugene and Virginie at the second table, where we could chat in English. Our conversation drifted to the common Camino question: Where will we walk tomorrow?

      Virginie was horrified that we had no firm plan. “You must make reservations in France,” she told us. “Especially on weekends, when others also travel.”

      As much as I wanted my Camino experience to be unstructured and spontaneous, her warnings sounded dire, especially after the past two days of what felt like close calls.

      Our new friends were all going to Le Sauvage, a historic gîte de pèlerin that had been a hospital for pilgrims centuries ago. The Frenchwoman from the bar offered to call and arrange beds for us, and we accepted. But after some chatter in French, she hung up and shook her head.

      “C’est complet.” Of course it was.

      Guidebooks in multiple languages appeared from pockets and bags, and everyone went to work. Where else could the hapless Americans and the Australian go? We were in a remote part of countryside, and it was generally agreed that we had only two options: we could stop in a town just fourteen kilometers away, or we could continue past Le Sauvage to the next town, which meant walking more than thirty kilometers.

      I did the quick math. Eight miles or nineteen? My body, rested and numbed with wine, still shuddered. I looked at Eugene and thought about his knee.

      Eric and I did the married-people-mind-reading thing across the table, and he asked the woman to call the closer town, Chanaleilles, and make a reservation for two Americans and an Australian.

      Eric and I had left Saint Privat alone, but after a simple gîte breakfast we left Saugues surrounded by friends. The bite in my calves told me we were still gaining altitude, and most of our companions outpaced us by the edge of town.

      We walked into a steady wind, which did no favors to our baguette. We’d unwisely left it whole, sticking out of a side pocket of Eric’s backpack like a flagpole. I liked the aesthetic, but the bread was dry as a crouton by lunch.

      We meandered along slowly with Eugene and still arrived in Chanaleilles at noon, long before most gîtes opened. The village was tiny, though, so it wasn’t hard to track down our host—a sullen woman who also managed the local bar. She spoke no English but took our money, stamped our credentials, and wordlessly pointed us to a room with a dozen twin beds.

      Eric and I took two beds in a corner, and Eugene spread himself out on the other side of the room. As he unpacked his giant bag, I saw batteries, a pharmacy’s worth of medicine, and piles of clothes. No wonder the poor man’s knee hurt.

      It took about ten minutes to explore the town, which was set deep in a valley and seemed to have more cows than people, and then there was nothing to do with the long hours of the afternoon except explore my doubts. Should we have kept going, pushing ahead another twenty kilometers? It was hard not to feel like a wimp as I watched people continue to trudge past while I cooled my tender feet in a frigid stream.

      I tried to remember that we were pacing for a marathon, not a sprint. Many of the people we’d met, like Virginie, were on short holidays, but Eric and I weren’t flying home until July, regardless of when we reached Santiago. There was no need to rush. When that didn’t help, I reminded myself that this wasn’t a race at all. I would probably never again be in this particular corner of France, and if I moved too fast, I could miss something lovely. That helped a little.

      Late in the afternoon, three other pilgrims—athletic French walkers who’d started a day after us and had already caught up—breezed in with easy-looking efficiency. One, a woman our age named Gwen, spoke some English, and the six of us passed a pleasant evening, despite the suspicious stares of the locals in the bar.

      Eric listened intently to the French conversations. His accent and vocabulary improved by the hour as he peppered our fellow pilgrims with questions. What is the word for this? How do you say that? He was fearless about testing phrases and seeing what people understood. Within days he could ask basic questions so smoothly that shopkeepers and gîte hosts would rattle back complicated sentences, assuming he was fluent.

      No one ever assumed that about me.

      The weather the next morning was damp as the six of us climbed steadily into the wild and remote Aubrac. Cultivated farm fields gave way to rocky pastures, populated only by a few furry horses with tangled manes. The trees were bare, the breeze was sharp, and there were still small piles of snow along the trail. Spring, it seemed, was in retreat.

      Our new French friends slowed to our pace for the first hour or two, but in late morning broke briskly away. They were bound for a destination twelve kilometers past Les Estrets, the town where Gwen had kindly phoned a reservation for us. By car they would be less than fifteen minutes away from us, but on foot the distance was insurmountable. As we parted, I knew we likely wouldn’t see one another again, given our—well, my—leisurely pace. And we didn’t.

      Eric and I walked with Eugene for much of the morning, but eventually his bad knee protested, and he stopped in a sheltered field to rest. “Don’t keep waiting for me,” he assured us. “I’ll make it in time for dinner.”

      Eric and I wound on together through towns that seemed deserted, even on a Sunday. In Saint Albans, where we planned to have lunch, the cafes and shops were fermé. I started to wonder if anyone actually lived in this corner of France.

      Then, with ten kilometers still to go, something unexpected happened.

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