My journal entry for Day 3:
Refuge Orisson, France 9/27/2012
Finally walking. Uphill. Feels good.
Keep thinking about Pamplona.
Forgot about six-and-a-half plane ride in the dark over Ocean Atlantique.
Beautiful vista here of the east.
It is hard to believe Paris is over there.
Alice is winded and red-faced when climbing up. I’m not.
I like the way the clouds grace the mountains that face us.
I like the way the fountains give to the bottles that feed us.
And Iet go comfort zone gone.”
The next morning up and over the mountain we went. To Roncesvalle, Spain.
Coming down the steep in the late afternoon we could see it thru the trees.
The great monastery in the woods. Roncesvalle, where Roland the great Christian soldier was finally felled. What a magical feeling I got walking around the cluster
of buildings tucked away in the dense forest. I looked up when I was hanging up my just washed socks to see the clouds started to drop in from the top of the mountain to the east. This was our first big PILGRIM MOMENT. Everyone in one room. Maybe you remember it in the movie: The cold stone building with the high ceiling and hundreds of beds. It’s different now. Made better and I liked it. In the middle of the night, Alice, a woman after my own heart, opened wide the window that was nearest to where we were sleeping in our bunks. Then the rain came. Hard rain. A memorable moment, indeed. There we were, sleeping with 200 other pilgrims and all I can hear is….rain.
Here is my journal entry for Roncesvalles: Day 4 9/28/12
“Lay me down in a bed of birches Falling asleep with the wind in my ears Call me deep with John the Baptist Counting the walls how many years
Lay me down in a bed of birches
Falling asleep with the wind in my ears
Call me deep with John the Baptist
Counting the walls how many years
Slay me down with a knight called Roland
Dying to sleep with ferns in my hair
Bring me deep with the Virgin Mary
Show me the way to Roncesvalles”
Plus this self-composed chant:
“Climbing up, climbing up, climbing up,
falling down, falling down”
