LITMIR.BIZ

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couldn’t Google my problems or distract myself from them with a mind-numbing screen, which made it harder to cover over my misery. Eventually, inevitably, it started to rub into Eric’s good mood.

      We both were tense when we arrived in Finieyrols, a cluster of houses too small to be a town, set dramatically in the middle of nowhere. Eric left me slumped on a bench outside while he got us checked into the gîte’s dortoir. After a few minutes of rest and foot massage, I rallied and plowed through my chores. Then I collapsed again on a boulder outside, soaking the late afternoon sun into my bare feet and letting myself imagine everyone’s reactions when I went home and confessed that I’d quit the Camino.

      Because, obviously, I wasn’t up for this.

      That was my mental state when Eric found me and tried to talk about how far we should go the next day. The towns were still sparse, and we either had to stop after fourteen kilometers again or push through our first thirty-kilometer day. Eric was leaning toward the latter, because it would put us in a better position for future stops.

      Thirty kilometers wasn’t an unreasonable number. But when I tried to imagine walking for three hours longer than I had that day, I cracked.

      “I can’t do it,” I snapped. And maybe I said some other things.

      The muscles in his jaw twitched, or maybe I imagined that. I was sure I could see what he didn’t say. But Eric doesn’t like to argue with me, so he acquiesced. “Fine. We’ll stop in the closer town.”

      Eric’s “fine” gets me every time. Guilt flooded over the pain. I hedged. “Well, maybe I can do it.”

      My indecision annoyed him even more. “I don’t know what’s wrong,” he said, “and I don’t know how to help you.”

      All I could come up with was, “I don’t know how to be helped.” Eric went off to scrub his clothes while I stayed on the rock and sulked.

      People we met on the Camino often expressed playful surprise when they found out we were married. “You’re walking together every day for three months? And you’re still married?” I always wanted to say, “No, actually we filed divorce papers at the mairie (city hall) in the last town,” but I never did. Sarcasm is hard to get across to a nonfluent speaker.

      We weren’t the only married couple on the Camino, of course. But we met plenty of pilgrims who were married but walking the Camino alone. A long trek like this doesn’t appeal to everyone, and the general consensus was that it was better to leave a partner at home than to try to walk across a country with someone who didn’t want to be there—a thought I suspected Eric was having in Finieyrols while I sat stubbornly on that rock.

      Did I really want to quit? I’d known, intellectually, that this would be hard, but it had never occurred to me that I would have to stop. That I would want to stop.

      That thought jerked me out of my sulk. Did I want to stop?

      I dragged myself off the rock and down to the main building, where I bought a local beer appropriately called Antidote, tucked myself behind a picnic table, and finally looked around. It was stunning. The late afternoon sun cast warm light over hills that went as far as I could see in every direction. I watched two kids hanging over the fence at the edge of the property, trying to pet a couple of shaggy horses.

      Yes, my feet hurt, but that didn’t change the crazy beauty all around me. We were in the middle of a remote area that few French citizens see, let alone two American tourists. I’d walked here, and unless those horses were tamer than they looked, I was going to walk out of here, too. We had good weather and new friends. Surely my feet would get better. I would get stronger.

      Eric joined me not long after I started to believe my personal pep talk, and I bought him a beer as a peace offering. Without talking, we leaned toward each other and watched the kids play. We both wanted to be here. We would tackle tomorrow together.

      At dinner we sat with Eugene and the Eight Walkers. We’d crossed paths with the boisterous group once or twice a day, and they always welcomed us to chat or share a snack. Michelle, the English speaker, explained that they were a walking club from a small town in northern France. They got together for weekly hikes and an annual week-long excursion. The husband of one walker drove a “camping car” with one of their dogs and all their luggage, which explained how they got away with such lightweight day packs on the trail.

      Odette, a septuagenarian in the group, took particular delight in Eric, giggling and batting her eyes across the table at him. To my delight, Eric flirted right back. Michelle told me quietly that Odette’s husband died earlier that year, and it had been difficult to convince her to come on this trip, to get away from her grief. Now she was beaming.

      I thought the night couldn’t get better, but then our host brought out the aligot, the regional dish of Aubrac. Take a bowl of mashed potatoes and add garlic and a soft, rich, local Cantal cheese. When it’s mixed together, it stretches like dough and has to be cut with a knife. It is as rich and delicious as it sounds.

      When our host placed the aligot on the table, we all oohed and aahed appropriately. When she added a bowl of steaming, fragrant cubes of local beef, Eric melted with happiness.

      In the glow of the morning light, L’Aubrac stretched toward the horizon in a photogenic landscape, treeless and wild. One of my photos from that day shows Eugene standing on top of a small rise, his enormous red backpack the only bright color on a monochrome field of brown. His back is to me, his hands on his hips, as he surveys what comes next.

      For four days we’d shared stories as we walked and communal dinners every evening. I knew about Eugene’s adult children, whom he adored. His divorce, which he regretted. His curiosity about everything from military history to space exploration. I knew his knee caused him more pain than my feet caused me.

      As Eric and I passed him that morning, I casually said we’d see him at dinner, if not before. But we never saw Eugene again. I later heard that he’d stopped for the day, aching and tired, in the town fifteen kilometers behind us. As we moved forward in subsequent days and weeks, we heard stories about him sometimes, but he never caught up.

      I was surprised to lose Eugene, but he must have seen it coming. He’d asked me to exchange email addresses the first day we met, and by the time we got back to Seattle he’d sent a message. All told, he walked for about five hundred kilometers, but his inflamed knee kept getting worse. A French doctor told him that he needed to rest for at least three months, so he flew back to Australia early. Eric and I have an open invitation to visit him there.

      As an American, I’m used to landscapes that take days to drive across. But in southern France, a day’s walk—what I could easily drive in less than half an hour—often carried us through two or even three distinct ecosystems. Every hour was worth paying attention to, because by the next we might be in a totally different environment.

      By midmorning we’d passed out of the rocks and away from the wild horses, only to find ourselves on something better: turf. Eric commented that Tolkien would have called these springy meadows—a cross between grass and moss—“the downs.” In mid-April they were bright green under a blue sky. Early flowers bloomed and the air was warm, although lingering patches of snow made it possible to imagine the sudden storms that could descend, even in spring.

      L’Aubrac seemed to understand that we were physically battered and still culture-shocked, and she put on her best behavior to welcome us. Well, at least nature welcomed us. Some of the people had other ideas.

      We descended around lunchtime into a town that was also, confusingly, called Aubrac. We needed water, a bathroom, and a place to eat our lunch, but Aubrac the town was, of course, fermé.

      Our first stop was a visitor’s center that advertised a cafe and a patio overlooking the valley. The sign on the door said they were open from Easter to October, but the employees eating lunch on the patio, complete with espresso shots and a glass carafe of water, ignored us. When Eric tried to talk to them, they shot a barrage of French that came

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