LITMIR.BIZ

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basically our pilgrimage passports. The Camino credential is a multipaneled cardboard sheet that’s stamped each day by a hostel or pilgrim office in order to prove that a person is a pilgrim moving forward. The donativo gîtes like this one and municipally run hostels only accept guests with credentials, to prevent tourists from taking advantage of the free or well-below-market rates. Many churches and even restaurants add their own stamps, and as weeks pass, a Camino credential becomes a memento and visual story of a person’s unique trip. Most pilgrims consider their tattered, colorful credentials the most important souvenirs of their experience, and so it was a big deal when Isidore signed his own name to verify our acceptance to the Way of Saint James.

      Most gîtes let pilgrims stay for only one night. However, Isidore explained/pantomimed that since we had traveled so far and were still probably jet-lagged, Eric and I could spend two nights here with them.

      I met Eric’s eye and tried to read his mind. We weren’t in a hurry. Our return flight to Seattle was three months away, which gave us more than enough time to reach the Atlantic. But we’d been anticipating this for, literally, years. And now we were here.

      Eric shook his head, just a tiny bit, at the same time I did. After almost fourteen years of marriage, we did stuff like that. “Non, merci,” he told our hosts. We would begin our Camino the next morning.

      Isidore nodded, his expression unreadable. His partner led us up three flights of stairs, where she assigned us each to a small cubicle in the dortoir, the dormitory. The Friends of Saint Jacques eased us into communal living by giving each person a partially walled area with a cot, a chair, a lamp, and a wooden cupboard. The entrances were even covered with curtains.

      Eric and I unpacked and spent the next two hours wandering through Le Puy, taking in its steep angles and red roofs and black rock. Our meandering path brought us eventually to the Cathédrale Notre-Dame du Puy.

      The church was unlocked, dark, and mostly empty in the quiet of midafternoon. We tiptoed through the echoing stone sanctuary and studied the elaborate altar, where the small face of the cathedral’s Black Virgin looked out from above a stiff, conical robe of gold brocade. There were ebony statues like this of Mary and the Christ Child scattered across central Europe. Most dated to medieval times—the Black Virgin in Le Puy is a replica of one given to the church by Louis IX as he returned from a Crusade in 1254—but the symbolism behind their appearance has been lost to history.

      We stopped in the cathedral gift shop to get our second credential stamps, and Eric picked out a French-language guidebook with detailed information about gîtes and other services along GR65, the French Grande Randonnée hiking route for the Way of Saint James between Le Puy and Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port. That book, Miam Miam Dodo (which translates to something like baby talk for “yum-yum sleep-sleep”), became our primary reference all the way to the Spanish border, despite its silly name.

      From the cathedral, we climbed toward the most visually familiar icon of Le Puy, the chapel of Saint-Michel d’Aiguilhe. The tenth-century structure rises improbably out of an almost vertical needle of volcanic rock three hundred feet—I mean, eighty meters—high. At the base of the 268-step climb, a ticket collector warned us that the site would close in fifteen minutes. We could probably make the climb to the top, he said, but we wouldn’t be able to linger. And yes, we’d have to pay full price for the tickets.

      Eric and I thanked him, but decided to pass, a decision I’ve regretted ever since. Instead, figuring we needed all the help we could get on this adventure, we wound back to the pilgrim welcome center, just across the street from the cathedral, in time for the daily information session.

      We found about a dozen people already there, sitting in an awkward circle in front of a fireplace. The volunteer hosts, who of course spoke only French, asked a question that set off a round of what seemed to be introductions.

      When I told the group that my name was Beth, I saw a lot of furrowed brows. “Bett?” The host’s mouth twisted, as if he couldn’t quite get the syllable out. I remembered that Isidore, too, had trouble with my name.

      “Elizabeth?” I offered.

      Everyone relaxed and smiled. “Ah! Elisabet!” And just like that, I changed my name. For the next thirty-five days I was Elizabeth, a name no one but my immediate family had ever used before.

      Introductions over, Eric and I smiled blankly and watched the room while others chatted. My first impression was that everyone was older than us by at least a decade. About half the group seemed to be traveling together, and one of their members, a friendly woman named Michelle, spoke enough English to introduce herself.

      She asked where we were staying the next night and seemed surprised that we didn’t have reservations. I was surprised that she did. The Camino literature I’d read never mentioned reservations. A person could just walk into town and trust that there would be a place to stay. Traveling with a large group must be different, I thought.

      The conversation lulled, and I was starting to get antsy when a new person came in. The volunteers greeted him, and after a few seconds I saw them light up. “Canada!” I heard, and then they pointed to us: “American!” We were from the same hemisphere, so therefore they assumed we would have things to talk about.

      The Canadian, who looked about our age, made his way over warily. “Hello, I am Remi.” His words were hesitant, his accent strong. Remi was from a small town in Quebec, and French was his native tongue. He rarely spoke English.

      Rarely was better than never, though, and we pieced together our stories. This was the first time Remi had ever left Quebec. A devout Catholic, he always dreamed of walking the pilgrimage of Saint Jacques. He’d been planning to come in five years, when his children were older and his job was more stable. He patted his belly. “And when I have time to lose this.”

      But then, the week before, something happened. Remi didn’t go into detail, but the upshot was that he suddenly had a month off work. His wife told him it was a sign from God to begin his pilgrimage. So he bought a plane ticket and a bunch of trekking gear, and he flew to Paris.

      I’d been planning this trip for years, I realized, and this man didn’t know he was coming until eight days ago.

      We asked if he was going to the pilgrims’ mass the next morning. Remi sighed and touched his cheek. He’d cracked a tooth and had to get it fixed before he could begin walking. There were no dentists open this late in the afternoon, so he would deal with it tomorrow and start on Thursday. As we said our goodbyes, I hoped he would be a fast walker and catch up with us, but he never did.

      Back on the street, Eric and I set out to find dinner. It was too early for most restaurants to be open, but we found a cheerful cafe that seemed to cater to Camino walkers. Michelle’s group was already settling into a big table up front, and I also recognized the two thin, serious-looking men at the other occupied table. They’d been on our train from Lyon, and I’d spent a fair amount of time covertly studying them.

      They were enigmatic. They wore jeans rather than hiking pants but carried top-of-the-line backpacks and walking sticks. Obviously traveling together, from what I observed they barely spoke or even made eye contact with each other.

      “They’re brothers,” I told Eric.

      “They look nothing alike,” he disagreed. Eric is generally more observant about physical traits than I am. He can recognize a family resemblance in the turn of a nose, and he often describes someone by the shape of their feet or the way they walk. So if he said the two men didn’t look alike, he was probably right. But I’m good at watching how people interact with each other, and these two men didn’t act like friends. Yet they were traveling together, so I assumed they must be related.

      We continued the debate as we ate a simple dinner of lentils and sausage, the specialty of the region, filled out with fresh bread and a bottle of thick, dry local wine. When we left the restaurant, the streets were dark and quiet. We were back in the gîte well before curfew, and I fell onto my single cot in the darkness. When was the last time I’d gone to bed before 10:00?

      I

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