Not a Valley, Not a Town, Not a Flower-Filled Field...

So here I am on the Chemin de St Jacques de Compostelle. At the moment I am in Conques, a town famous as a resting point for pilgrims on the way to Santiago, for the relics of St Foy that the church holds, and for the fact that the whole town is so well preserved that, in its entirety it is a historic monument. Like many pilgrims before me I am having a rest day here, partly because it is so absurdly beautiful and partly because I have a sore knee. Such is life!

The days spent walking here from my starting point in Le Puy (on the 11th of September) have been spectacular. The weather, always a matter of discussion and observation for the walker, has been fabulous, with only a day and a half of showers so far. The majority of my footfalls have been under a warm sun amid a spotless azure sky - an Indian summer, as they say.
The country through which the Chemin (path, way, track) passes up to this point has been tough, with many steep valleys into which one must descend (hard on the knees) and then climb out of (hard on the thighs). This is the high plateau of central France, the centre of which, for the Cemin, is Aubrac. This is the land of high-country beef, lentils, and aligot (a form of mashed potato so crammed with cheese that it can often be stretched like string). The Way itself makes its way through this land, passing by little towns (never more than 4000 ppl), that often have local gastronomic delicacies. I can now see why the French guide to the Chemin is Called Miam Miam, Do Do - loosely translated as Eat eat, Sleep sleep. For many of the natives this is more than a religio-cultural exercise, it is a gastronimic Tour de France!
However, the thoughtful quiet of the magnificent landscape that it is a part of more than make up for the small pains to one's legs. Even in just nine days of walking the occassions upon which I have stopped to look in amazement and chuckle, disbelieveing that this is my work-life, have been too numerous to count. But in the scheme of the project it makes quite some sense, at least in a post-Romanticism world.

Spending these days walking along side green pastures, the lazy ringing of the cow's bells and the crunch of foot and staff often the only sounds in my ears, I am reminded of the words of poet Thomas Gray who, after a day's walk in the Swiss Alps, wrote: "I do not remember to have gone ten paces without an exclamation that there was no restraining. Not a precipice, not a torrent, not a cliff, but is pregnant with religion and poetry." Gray was in search of the sublime in nature, places that stir the emotions beyond the adequacy of single words to describe. How do you put into words the emotion evoked by a valley, a town on a facing hillside, a field? A loose jumble of them, our usual response, is typically only partially adequate. These are places we call sublime.
But cows and aligot aside, I can confidantly say that this is a wonderful experience. Not a valley, not a town, not a flower-filled field goes by without my registering their sublime beauty, and my luck and privilege at being able to pass them by as a pélerin (pilgrim), an ethnographer (of sorts), and a lover of the world. In this event-space I am at home.