The Solitary Pilgrim and the Pilgrim Parade

Let’s say you have decided to go on a pilgrimage, that is, to take a sacred journey, with a purpose and some challenges.   Would you choose to go alone or in a group with other pilgrims?  

I usually go alone. 

People have gone on pilgrimages since earliest history (think “walkabout.”)  Virtually every world religion encourages or requires its members to take such a journey, as a way to give God praise, to make amends, to seek healing or, in modern spirituality, to help find one’s purpose in life.  Millions of people every year and in every land answer this call and, follow the words of Sir Walter Raleigh: 

GIVE me my scallop-shell of quiet,
My staff of faith to walk upon,
My scrip of joy, immortal diet,
My bottle of salvation,
My gown of glory, hope's true gage;
And thus I'll take my pilgrimage.

The most common image of pilgrims is a massive crowd, millions in Mecca or on the banks of the Ganges, the long trail of thousands of seekers walking the road to Compostela in Spain.  But solitary pilgrims dot the landscape and literature as well: in my Christian tradition there is the solitary Thomas the Apostle, who walked to India in the first century, and Eregia, the Christian pilgrim (4^th century) who wrote the first pilgrim guidebook based on her trip to the Holy Land.  Later the Irish saint Columba and John Bunyan’s protagonist in Pilgrim’s Progress braved storm and hardship to complete their journeys.  The modern “Peace Pilgrim” aka Mildred Norman, walked 25,000 miles promoting peace.  (I doubt any of these pilgrims were completely alone, but unlike the pilgrim masses, we know these folks by name, can read their own accounts, or find them on the pages of history.) 

When I go on my sacred journeys I do hang out with other pilgrims, for example at hostels along the route, but I like to do the actual walking on my own.  This fall I stayed a couple nights at a pilgrim hostel, the Grande Seminaire, an imposing three story building high on the hill in Le Puy en Valey, France, which is an important starting point or stop on the way of the ancient and popular Camino St. Jacques road to Compostela.  

I checked in to my spare single room with a bath down the hall and easily felt the centuries of priests who had studied there, slept in that room, and even the soldiers who had trained there during both world wars.  But as the world and the church changed so did the Grande Seminaire, now doing a pretty brisk business providing cheap and simple rooms and meals for seekers, churched or not.  

In the large dining room 100 or more pilgrims gathered for a simple family style dinner.  This solo pilgrim at first felt like the only one on her own; everyone was laughing and passing around wine and soup and bread and of course the cheese course and seemed to know each other.  One group of middle aged men and women were clearly a group, identical day packs and a cheerful leader reminding them to go to the pilgrim’s mass the next morning at 7 before setting out.  But some kind Canadians encouraged me to have a seat and we shared our amusement at how the French seemed horrified when we asked if they have visited North America and eventually the conversation turned to how far people were walking.  And of course I soon found out I wasn’t the only solo pilgrim – a woman from Denmark and a guy from Germany were sharing tips about hostels across the table.  Would they go to the pilgrim mass in the church they next morning – neither was quite sure. 

I always read a lot before going on a trip and this time I found a couple narrations of guys who had walked alone on some of the same routes I was taking.  One was Robert Louis Stevenson who walked for a couple weeks in the Auvergne, even today a rough volcanic rural region, but 130 years ago even more so.  Another was Ezra Pound, who walked much the same route as Stevenson, going north however instead of south, also as a young man, in search of troubadour songs.  And the third was a curious account by an American food writer who has long lived in France, eating and drinking himself into some health problems with his weight and liver, and challenged himself to get in shape by walking from Paris through Le Puy and into Spain.  He is the most explicit about it being a spiritual quest as well; the earlier guys pretend it’s more a research trip, but they too are challenged and changed.  All three run into trouble, in part because of their young male hubris, not stopping before nightfall or carrying too much stuff.  All learned humility, like Stevenson learning from the donkey that he grudgingly acquired to carry his stuff that she would walk at her pace and her distance, not his.  And all learned more about themselves than about their planned project or destination. 

I feel some shame in revealing that my 21^st century American style pilgrimage involves advanced hotel reservations and some travel by cars and trains as well as a lot of just plain walking.  It is for mostly selfish reasons that I walk solo and not in a group. I want to set my own pace, eat when I want, and stay in my single room, not the really cheap pilgrims’ bunkhouse rooms.  I’d rather not listen to other people all day.  It’s enough to be together at dinner and then I can escape. On my own I can also slow down and pay attention to the countryside or the little church or my own inner dialogue and prayer.  

One reason pilgrims travel in groups is for safety.  Indeed in the Middle Ages that was the only way to go on pilgrimage for women.  Last week I wrote about Margery Kempe’s remarkable decade of travel in the 1420’s, thousands of miles, which she could only have done in the protection of a band of pilgrims, safe from wolves and highwaymen.  Like the Canterbury Tales, a very disparate group of pilgrims, together on the road and in the taverns telling their tales.  I take some risks walking alone – what if I were to fall or break something.  My days of solitary walking may be limited as I age.  

Like those three solitary guys I write about my travels.  Pound’s account is just a rough diary, but Stevenson and the food writer published their accounts and presumably made some money off their pilgrimage.  I write compulsively while I travel, several times a day.  Another reason to go solo - the group doesn’t have to wait for me while I put pen to paper.  But I am unclear about the whole business of travel writing and spiritual writing, how to get beyond “Gee whiz, listen to this cool experience I had finding the church or the interesting person I met.”   What do I do with these journals, what could I do, should I do? 

If I had been in a group we could have reunions and tell stories of the dramatic or funny experiences we had, share our pictures.  I look at my pictures alone, hang my map in my study but no one else is really interested in it.  I walked alone. 

Copyright ©2016 Deborah Streeter