LITMIR.BIZ

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deck and ate our dry bread and dwindling supply of sausage while the cheerful party continued. When I asked if I could use the bathroom just inside the door, they waved me away to the center of the village and a locked public toilet.

      I was getting used to things in France being arbitrarily closed, but this was the first time a bathroom failed me.

      Before I left for the Camino, I worried a lot about bathrooms. If I was going to be outside, walking, for eight or ten or twelve hours a day, where would I, well, go? I couldn’t find consistent answers anywhere, but when we arrived, I happily discovered that almost every town in France, regardless of size, had a public water closet, or WC. They varied widely in cleanliness and modernity, and I learned to always carry a few squares of my own toilet paper, but still, WCs were always there, saving me from the embarrassment of the alternative.

      As I’ve mentioned, I don’t camp, which means I never had to master the art of the female squat. As an adult, I learned an awkward variation, which required holding on to a tree. That’s probably too much information, but it’s relevant here because Eric and I had just spent five hours walking across soft, green, bare landscape. It was all very exposed. And now we were in a fermé village full of people, including nonhospitable visitorscenter workers who were happy to watch tourists wander in circles around locked buildings.

      My temper rose with the tension in my bladder, but the visitorscenter workers just went back inside and locked the doors. The only other way to get access to modern plumbing was to go to the only restaurant in town and order cafés we didn’t need. Which meant, of course, that in half an hour I would need another WC.

      Fortunately, after Aubrac, the trees came back. For ten kilometers, we wound steeply downhill through a forest of oaks and chestnuts. The older pilgrims around us groaned and pointed at their knees, but I was much happier walking downhill in the shade than uphill in the sun. When we arrived in Saint-Chelyd’Aubrac, deep in a valley and spread over a stream, we’d walked thirty kilometers, and I hadn’t felt as good in days.

      Such is a paradox of the Camino: often a “good day” or a “bad day” happens despite the distance, not because of it.

      The previous night Michelle had made a reservation for us at a private gîte on the outskirts of town. There were only three other pilgrims there that evening: a pretty young Parisian named Stephanie, who was fluent in English, and two stern-looking older Frenchwomen, who were not.

      As we gathered around the dinner table, I noticed that one of the older women had a bandage on her hand and a deep bruise forming on her face under her glasses. She looked shaken. As our host brought out thick vegetable soup and a casserole of potatoes and duck confit, she told her story, which Stephanie translated.

      Apparently, as the two women descended the last steep hill into town, the injured one tripped and started to fall forward. Human instinct would have had her put her hands up to catch herself, protecting her face, but the woman was using walking poles, and in her panic she didn’t let go of them. She face-planted onto a rock, bruising her eye but somehow not breaking her glasses.

      The woman still seemed upset, but she mimed her fall and the impact of hitting the rock so well that Eric burst into laughter.

      Now, my husband has a big, rich, loud laugh that fills a room. Usually, it’s wonderful, but that night I froze, trying to read the change in the air. Did he seem rude? Would she be offended?

      Not at all. The injured woman smiled for the first time, and then she laughed. Eric had another fan.

      Wearing sandals had relieved the pressure on Eric’s Achilles tendon, but as he got ready the next morning, we realized that it had caused another problem: the dreaded ampoule finally struck, and in an awkward place between his toes.

      We stopped to buy supplies at a market that was miraculously open, and when Eric sat down outside to adjust a bandage over his blister, he was immediately surrounded by concerned pilgrims. The two women from dinner offered their antibiotic ointment. A Frenchman we’d never seen before waved away our American adhesive bandages and whipped out his own (presumably superior) supply. Others paused with opinions.

      When we finally got on the road, we joined the Eight Walkers for a while along a wooded path, teasing them and being teased in return. Odette continued to make eyes at Eric. As we joked, I noticed our language barrier seemed to be shrinking. Maybe I understood a few more words, but I was also getting better at paying attention. I couldn’t think about other things while also miming my way through Frenglish. I had to stop worrying about whether my floppy sun hat made me look dumb, or about how my left toes were starting to ache again. These conversations needed my full attention.

      We split with the Walkers when they stopped to wait for their camper car and lunch. The trail continued to run perpendicular to rivers and streams, and as the morning wore on we climbed and descended several times through forests full of chestnut trees. Despite the hills, I loved the woods and the soft, padded ground. I loved the shade and the way the trees framed pastoral valleys and lonely stone cottages.

      Eric, it turned out, was not having the same experience. Wearing sneakers protected his blister but ate into his ankle. Wearing sandals protected his ankle but rubbed the blister on his toe. He soaked his feet in an icy stream when we stopped for a break, but found little relief when we were moving.

      Two days earlier, my feet had beaten me. Today, his were winning. “I have one job to do, and I can’t do it,” he said in exasperation.

      Fortunately, we were past the most remote portion of wilderness, and we had more options. When we saw the spires of Saint-Côme-d’Olt rising in front of us, we tossed the plan to walk another ten kilometers. According to the guidebook, there was a gîte communal here, and the book even indicated that the hosts spoke English. If they had room, we agreed, we would stop. I repeated what was becoming my mantra: We weren’t in a hurry, and this wasn’t a race.

      That spontaneous decision, driven by the only blister either of us had on the whole Camino, led to one of my favorite afternoons in France.

      The twelfth-century heart of Saint-Côme-d’Olt is walled and medieval. To enter, we passed through a narrow gate and discovered the kind of twisted, cobblestone streets that could never support modern technology or cars, but even as I thought about the impossibility, a tiny French hatchback zipped by.

      The gîte was as old as the town. A door right in the thick city wall led us up steep stone steps, deeply rutted by the thousands of feet that had passed the same way. In a long, narrow common room a man introduced himself as Sylvain, from Montreal, and welcomed us in English.

      “You’re the Americans! I heard you were coming!”

      Wait, what? “We didn’t know until ten minutes ago that we would be here,” I stammered. “How did you . . . ”

      He laughed and waved us to rest at the table. “It is Radio Camino,” he explained. “There are no secrets along the Way.” Someone who had met us, perhaps Gwen, had stayed here the night before. It was natural to tell the Canadian host about two other English speakers on the trail.

      Sylvain led us up another flight of stairs to our low-ceilinged room. Four bunk beds stood on a rough wooden floor, but Sylvain said that so early in the season we’d have the space to ourselves. The walls were stone, and casement windows opened out to a view of tiled roofs and the uniquely twisted steeple of the town’s church.

      Every quirky corner and dark beam here made me happy. Eric could have the wild country. This was my kind of fairy tale.

      I left Eric sitting in the sun, doctoring his feet, and went out to explore what the guidebook said was one of France’s most beautiful villages. Streets jutted at odd angles and wove in circles, with arches and unexpected staircases turning every alley into a postcard-worthy picture. The sixteenth-century church—practically modern history for France—was unlocked and deserted, and I explored it slowly, taking in the statues of the saints and the way the late afternoon sun glowed in the stained-glass windows.

      I reveled in the chance to linger and study

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