Well, I left off blogging a year ago yesterday. I did continue to make notes, and organize my photos, but walk plus work plus a change from solitude to company in the latter half of May and then June 2019 meant little time left for this.
A brief synopis, then, of the past year:
I completed the first half of the pilgrimage as planned, and found myself pretty much where I had hoped to be at the end of June. I left Europe as my Schengen visa was up, and traveled to Turkey, again as planned, to work on the little house we had bought the year before. With the plan to pick up the walk again in mid-September, reaching Bari for the feast of St Nicholas and Bethlehem/Jerusalem for Christmas.
However, things did not go as planned.
House renovations being what they are, this one, however humble, was true to form, and involved way more time and funds than I had anticipated. Way more. This coincided with a drop in my own professional workload, which was helpful for the time it allowed me, but problematic in terms of resources for the renovation, which also prolonged things.
As the summer wore on, it became increasingly apparent that September, and maybe even October, were going to come and go without my being able to return to Europe to start the walk again. November would really be too late, both in terms of weather and distance to cover to complete the pilgrimage by Christmas, even on the old calendar.
I reluctantly applied for a residence permit in Turkey, as my visa there was expiring, and decided that I would pick up the walk again in late winter/early spring 2020 and plan to be in Jerusalem for Pascha (Easter).
Work on the house was sufficiently – finally! – completed by mid-November that we were able to move in, although of course there were still things to do, but it was livable. Frustrated at not being able to walk for many more months, and having also realized that the new plan for the walk would mean that I would not be in Bari on December 6, I made a rapid decision to undertake a mini-pilgrimage there — walking for a week from Monte Sant’Angelo to Bari and was able to do so.
I returned again to Turkey in December, fully expecting and planning to pick up the Via Francigena, starting in the north of Italy, in February 2020….
In January, I learned that my work was going to involve some travel for consultations in Asia (China and elsewhere) and Europe, from late January into February. I would need to postpone my pilgrimage departure but it still appeared that it would be possible to reach Jerusalem in time for Pascha, and since it would also be Passover and likely crowded, I reserved a BandB in the holy city…
The best-laid plans and all that.
We converted the travel to videoconferences in early February and later in February, I decided that since it was looking increasingly less likely that I would be able to walk in Europe, I got a ticket to be home in California with my parish community for the latter part of Lent and Pascha. My flight was scheduled for March 18th. On the 14th, Turkey suspended flights to Europe (mine had a stop in Paris) and the day before my flight (if it were in fact to depart, as there was some lack of clarity around that) the Bay Area began to shelter-in-place, and the churches were closed.
The rest…, well, I am still here in Turkey, still sheltering-in-place as are so many of us. I am so grateful to be at home safe with my son and that so far we are healthy and I am still able to work. I am so grateful to have the St. Nicholas livestream, which allowed me to celebrate Holy Week and Pascha with my community even though we could not all be together in the flesh.
I started to look through my photos, with longing, and also much enjoyment to see the wide open spaces and the endless paths going ever onward. And it occurred to me that maybe other people, especially those of us enclosed with little to no view of nature, might enjoy seeing them, too.
So I thought I would pick up the blog again. I have notes for a few days into May of last year, that gradually get shorter and shorter. So this may change from some storytelling and photos to an all-photo story, or I might just move to instagram. I don’t know…
But at least I will start here, one year ago today, on May 1, 2019, picking up where I left off, and see how it goes from there.
This was theoretically a very long stage, because I had not quite made it to Bapaume the day before so a few extra kms were added on to make it a total of 28 km. Before setting out, I realized that I was still carrying too much on my shoulders the day before, so I got rid of the front pack I had been using and loaded everything onto the chariot, using only a small waist pack I had bought in Amsterdam. I put the water reservoir in the chariot but wasn’t quite sure how that was going to work out, since I would need to stop and pull out the tubing to drink… To be revisited.