The Second

I’m standing in the middle of a rice field somewhere between Santhià and Vercelli, and I’m crying. The app on my phone that’s supposed to tell me where I am in relation to where I’m going has stopped working and refuses to reload. I haven’t seen a trail marker in a while, and, given that rice fields pretty-much all look the same to me, I have no idea what to do. It’s only 8:30, and it’s already getting hot. And so, out of solutions, for the twentieth time in the last week I scream aloud, “What the actual fuck am I doing here?”

Such is the life of the pellegrino.

Last autumn I decided to walk the Via Francigena, an ancient route that connects Canterbury to Rome. I started a few days ago in Aosta, Italy and, if I can ever figure out how to unravel this rice field, I should arrive in Rome in the beginning of June. 

On one hand, it doesn’t make sense that I’d be doing this. I’m not Catholic. I’m not religious. I don’t get excited when I pass churches. I don’t even check “spiritual but not religious” when filling in demographics. But on the other hand, I suppose it makes perfect sense. After nine months (and a lifetime, if I’m perfectly honest) of wandering around with no real purpose or direction, it seems inevitable that I’d be enticed by something that puts a clear destination in mind.

That said, like most things in my life, my decision was a bit spontaneous. I haven’t had a lifelong dream to walk across Italy (in spite of the easy access that gives me to wine, bread, and cheese). No, while in Paris I read The Worrier’s Guide to the End of the World, a book recommended by Adventurous Kate, a travel blogger I follow, and in the book the author and a friend walk a section of the Via Francigena together. On about page ten I said, “Hmmm. That sounds cool. I want to do that.” 

And so here I am.

It’s kind of overwhelming, walking almost 1000 kilometers (for my American friends that’s 600 miles) by myself, on a route most people outside the area have never heard of, in a country where I don’t speak the language. 

The first day was horrible. Literally one of the most physically challenging days of my life. I hiked about 30 kilometers in the Italian Alps, lugging a pack that was too heavy, much of the day in the direct sun (because of course Northern Italy was going through a freakish heat wave). I almost quit countless times and only decided to keep going because the guest book at the tiny hotel I stayed at in Châtillon had a comment from a woman eight years ago that said, “I’ve been hiking since Canterbury and by far Aosta to Châtillon has been the hardest day.” That made me feel like less of a loser for being such a saggy, weepy puddle.

When you walk in solitude for hours at a stretch, you do a lot of thinking. I spent a lot of time those first days thinking about what makes a person keep going. A lot of people say that getting started — that first step — is the most difficult, but I don’t find that to be true. While a person should be proud for starting, remembering that most people never even tie their laces, I find that the first step of a challenge like this is pretty easy, even exciting, as it’s on the heels of weeks — if not months or even years — of preparation.

Yes, there’s typically an anxiety that surfaces at the starting line, but that anxiety often manifests itself in a burst of energy. The problem is it’s hard to know how to keep going when that energy dissipates, when the reality of the long haul sets in. This is one of the reasons why gyms are packed on January 2nd but empty on February 2nd. Or why long-distance runners burn out midway through a race; they start out running faster than they usually do, fueled by coffee and adrenaline, and hit the wall a few miles in. 

A few years ago, I completed a triathlon. It was only a sprint, so not a tremendous distance, but the swim leg took place in the San Francisco Bay. If you’re not from SF, you probably don’t realize that swimming in the Bay isn’t like Baywatch. It’s dark, choppy, and very cold. Normal people don’t just go out and swim in it. But there are a couple of places for swimming where crazy types jump in while wearing wet suits (usually) and loop around a series of buoys. 

I had been training in a pool for several months and could swim over a mile, no problem. But the Bay, the Bay was something else entirely. The string of buoys is only a quarter of a mile course, but I couldn’t even make it to the first buoy without having to stop. The water was so cold, and so dark, and not being able to see the bottom was terrifying. At each buoy I stopped and clung to it, worried I was going to have a panic attack. I did one loop, and immediately got out.

Am I proud of myself for swimming in the Bay? Abolutely. But I’m more proud of myself for going back the next week for a second training session, for getting back in the water when I knew how horrible it was. This time I brought a friend who sat by the water and took me for breakfast later, and I found that singing in my head calmed me down (if you’re in a similar situation I suggest “My Favorite Things”). It was still awful, and I still had to stop at every buoy, but I managed to control my panic.

So while I’m proud of day one on the Via Francigena, I’m even more proud of day two (and three, four, five, and on and on) because these days came after that first grueling day. These days came after the reality of long-distance, solo trekking hit me. It isn’t willpower that keeps me going; that implies that there’s some sort of magic involved. No, it’s a matter of making a conscious decision to keep going, to break down the trail into manageable bites — to at least keep going this day, this hour, this mile, sometimes even this single step.

I am a runner, and I often bring this into my teaching. On one of the first days of class I’ll ask my students how many of them want to pass the class, and of course they all raise their hands. I make a mark at one end of the board and tell them that mark represents the first day of class and then a mark at the other end of the board and tell them that represents the finish line; it represents passing. Then I ask them what the problem is with the board. 

Someone usually gets it: there is a lot of white space between the two marks. What do we do with all of that space? I tell them that when I first became a runner and decided I wanted to run a half marathon I didn’t just go out and run 13.1 miles. No, I would have hurt myself. Starting running means completing a series of run-walk intervals, slowly increasing the amount of running and decreasing the amount of walking. Learning to run a half-marathon required a lot of training, a lot of patience, and the ability to troubleshoot when problems arose (injuries, illness, bad weather, bad sleep, hangovers, boredom, things more exciting to do than running). I tell my students that the first step is almost-always easy. You need a concrete plan to help you get you through the second and beyond.

So as I keep walking across Italy, while I might have my eyes toward Rome, I have to remember that while Rome might be the final step, there are several hundred thousand steps I need to take before then. And the one that matters the most is this one.

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