by Timothy Egan
Next morning, after staying in minimal comfort in minimal quarters, I’m ready for the summit. I’m walking before sunrise, which is 6:57 a.m., in the dreaded backwash of the season, when big blocks of precious daylight slip away every day without saying goodbye. The sky is muck, temperatures in the lower 40s. Bourg-Saint-Pierre is eight miles away, a four-hour walk uphill. I cross the river on a footbridge, keep a steady pace on switchbacks that rise in the forest and pass clusters of cabins, taking my time in the openings. The clouds part on a whim of unpredictability, providing views of green pastures and bone-white rock, all of it a tease. I meet only two other hikers, a couple who just finished a month of wandering in the Alps. Midway through the morning, the trail joins the road and enters a toy village of a few hundred people, named Liddes, with a café for coffee and calories. Fueled up, I’m back on the street that runs through the village when a kid in a van slows next to me, rolls down his window, and asks where I’m going. He’s going there as well. I’m in Bourg-Saint-Pierre before noon.
Now, a decision: Do I press on to the pass, and put my Napoleonic misery behind me? Or find a place to sleep and start fresh at dawn? It’s eight miles or so and 2,700 feet of vertical to the col. Even though I’m in the ancestral home of the jowly, selfless, oversized Saint Bernard dogs, I can’t expect a canine rescue. That’s not what the big guys do anymore, though they summer at the pass and winter just below me in Martigny. There’s no cell phone coverage either. I feel strong, and the tug of Great Saint Bernard is irresistible. Au revoir, Bourg-Saint-Pierre.
It takes longer than it should to leave town. That’s because the Bourg is a curious place with much to be curious about. The older, timber-framed, nonpainted houses—I’m guessing they’ve stood for five centuries or more—are built on stilts of stone. You can tell how much snow they get here by the entrances, some of which are six feet above the ground. The homes have a winter doorway and another for the warm season. The newer residences certainly look prosperous, in that Swiss, not-a-shingle-out-of-place way. But nobody is home. Anywhere. It feels like the entire town has left, or is hunkering down in their cellars, the shutters closed and locked. The place is clearly still inhabited, judging by the obsessive-compulsively stacked firewood outside most homes.
At the high end of town I find the V.F. sign and start to track up through the mountains. It’s gradual, though fairly steep. I see farm buildings, huts, cabins, all of which look to be abandoned in keeping with the Twilight Zone vibe of the day. I’m following a path that roughly parallels what is known as the old road, since the new one is a tunnel that bypasses the mountain challenge altogether. “In bad visibility,” the guidebook advises, “go to road instead.” I can see to the next opening in the forest, maybe eighty yards, so I decide to stay on my chosen trail. After an hour and then some, the temperature starts to plunge. I’m wearing three layers: a long-sleeve, wick-away-the-moisture top, my down vest, and a raincoat, and still it’s hard to stay warm. Hiking in the Pacific Northwest, you’re always ready for a summer day to turn to January. The Cascade Mountains prepare you for anything. So I tell myself. I’ve been lost in a whiteout on Mount Rainier, and hypothermic next to a half-frozen alpine tarn in the Enchantment Lakes country. I can handle this. The rain had been slashing and horizontal. But now it’s something new: wet snow. I keep my head down and move ahead, on ground that is increasingly slippery. I should stop and put my fleece on, but that would expose the other layers to the attack of precip. I’m not carrying a tent. If I fell, or snapped an ankle, I’d be prey to the storm.
The forest thins, the trees getting smaller as I approach timberline. Ahead, appearing in and out of the rage of clouds, are waterworks of some kind from the dam that backs up La Dranse. The image disappears so quickly that I question my direction. Did I let my mind slip from the task at hand? Did I miss a step? Julius Caesar, Hannibal, Napoleon, innumerable medieval pilgrims and primitives from the Bronze Age trod this very path, with much less sophisticated gear. Their footwear had to suck. Napoleon’s men carried packs weighing sixty to seventy pounds, driven onward by drumbeats. Bonaparte rode a mule, bringing up the rear, not a white horse as depicted in the famous Jacques-Louis David painting.
My feet feel clammy; the rain has found a way inside because I’m not wearing gaiters. The pack deflects water but it’s off kilter, and the cover flaps like an errant kite. When I planned this trip, I envisioned the top tier of the Via Francigena as a heavenly walk through alpine meadows, a wildflower show at the peak of its ostentation, marmots whistling in chorus, with maybe a glimpse of Mont Blanc, the highest peak in the Alps, showing some part of its albino essence. It’s a mere ten miles away. I didn’t envision a struggle in a place that has the colorless feel of an anxious dream. The winds lash and whirl. They are almost strong enough to knock me down. Wet snow, zero visibility, body temperature dropping. It makes no sense to continue on today. In defeat, I turn around.
* * *
—
BACK AT BOURG-SAINT-PIERRE, there’s no letup from this mountain rage. The town is still lifeless. If only I could find an unlocked door, a public place. What did Napoleon do? He pillaged, his troops raiding wine cellars and pantries, though vowing to reimburse. “We are struggling against ice, snow, storms and avalanches,” he wrote in 1800. This town still has a promissory note from Napoleon. And when French president François Mitterrand paid a visit nearly two hundred years later, residents reminded him of the outstanding bill—for twenty thousand bottles of wine, a half ton of cheese. I’m drawn to the church, because surely its doors will be open. Only one church has been closed to me during this entire journey, the cathedral in Calais. The église of Saint-Pierre was built over the foundation of a tenth-century house of worship. Out front is a little graveyard in a tiny terrace, topped by a large crucifix twice my size. What a pitiful sight: the left arm of Jesus has broken off, lopped at the shoulder. It hangs downward, held to the cross by a nail through the hand. The arm-severed Christ is jarring, appearing as it does in this storm, and so sad. It’s the only time I’ve ever seen Jesus with an amputated limb.
The door pushes open. Reprieve. Instead of wet, horizontal snow, it’s soft light through stained glass and an escape from the elements. I hear a repetitive sound from outside: the creak of the swinging arm of Jesus. I remove my wet coat and set it on the back of a pew, take off my hat, gloves, and shoes. My fingers are white and there’s no feeling in my toes. I walk up a staircase to a choir loft, to study the stained glass. It’s an image of the same saint my high school was named for—Aloysius Gonzaga, the original Zag. It’s not that I recognize him, this Italian son of Renaissance aristocrats, like me one of seven kids, but his name is emblazoned in the colored glass. He could have been a prince, but he renounced his inheritance and title to become a Jesuit and work with the poor. When a plague hit Rome, he nursed the sick, which cost him his life after he caught the disease. Dead at twenty-three, he’s now the patron saint of students and, more recently, people with AIDS and their caregivers.
I sit in the pew and try to read the Bible in French, which is futile. I switch to my dog-eared V.F. guidebook, looking for pilgrim refuges nearby. There’s something here I missed: a bus passes through Bourg-Saint-Pierre late in the day, on the way to the pass. I lace up my boots, wrap myself in the half-dry shell of Patagonia’s fine rain gear, and step outside. The arm of Christ still swings in the wind. He looks forlorn, a stark image of the message of his death, the message of Gonzaga’s death as well—sacrifice.
Late in the afternoon, a bus stops on the road through the Bourg. The driver looks at me as just another wet, pathetic casualty of overreaching ambition. I hop on, happy to be moving again. We pass from rain to sleet to blizzard of heavy snow, above timberline, above the dam, past slabs of glacier-cut talus and heather. We slow at hairpin turns but never stop until there is no more road going up, until we crest the Alps and arrive at Great Saint Bernard Pass, at 8,114 feet, and a refuge of stone and lore.
Italy is 300 yards away. Rome is another 594 miles.
TWENTY-TWO
MONASTERY IN THE SKY
A bell summons us to supper in the dining room of a hospice that’s been welcoming followers of Sigeric’s trail for ten centuries. Outside, snow blows sideways, a river of white, lapping at the four-story spiritual sanctuary. Droopy-eyed Saint Bernard dogs, looking world-weary but not the least bit put off by the weather, pull their two-legged leash-mates through the first white stuff of the season. The place is nearly full, people scampering about in shorts and flip-flops as they dry their clothes. Earlier, I was greeted by an older man in a black robe who spoke good English to my Italian. He gave me a small room with a view of the blizzard and told me the rules, which boiled down to respect this place, it’s been here forever and seen it all. Oh, and the showers are set to a timer, so be quick.
Saint Bernard has been a safe space since well before that term took on its current meaning, shelter from the storm. Charles Dickens spent the night here in 1846. Napoleon was given two glasses of wine and a slice of rye bread by the monks when he arrived in 1800. I was told I could get the same across the street, at a small bar in a newer hostel, or wait for dinner here at the inn of the Augustinians.
The dogs have the run of this pass, staying in a well-tended kennel, with a museum devoted to their service. They’ve been bred for size and tolerance of cold, and along the way, they picked up personality traits that make them a delight to be around. They’re comically huge, weighing as much as I do, 170 pounds, with a tongue that looks like a pink sirloin steak, if meat could drool. Their equally huge paws act like snowshoes, allowing them to romp through a drift. They’re smart, sensitive, and sociable. They hate to be alone or to miss out on a party. They’re low maintenance, aside from prodigious food requirements. They don’t like hot weather or confined spaces. Over the years, Saint Bernards have rescued more than twenty-five hundred people, using their exceptional sense of smell to find lost souls in the snow. As selfless and likable as they are, they lead relatively short lives, eight to ten years. They no longer carry casks of brandy around their necks—it’s doubtful they ever did. Nor are they used anymore for rescues, most of which are done by helicopter. The dogs are just too heavy. In that sense, the Saint Bernards of Great Saint Bernard are living relics.
The hospice and the dogs are named for Bernard of Menthon, a bishop from the Italian side of the pass. Like Gonzaga, he was born into wealth and nobility, but balked at following the family path to prosperity. He jumped out the window of a castle rather than go through with an arranged marriage. After that, Bernard gave up a life of privilege to serve pilgrims and pagans in the land that reaches up to the sky, between the Valais on the Swiss side and the Val d’Aosta on the Italian. It was not just snowdrifts of forty feet that threatened people trying to walk over the mountains to Rome, but thieves and hostile Saracens, as raiding bands of Muslims were known. Bernard established this place about the year 1050, the start of an unbroken tradition of rescue and refuge.
At a communal dinner table, I meet a cyclist and his son, their faces sandpapered by the elements; three millennial-age women, exuding the spirit of a generation that isn’t afraid to try anything and post far too many pictures of it along the way; two French mountain climbers; a woman in her thirties from New York; and a psychologist from the Italian seaport of Piombino named Stefano. He is seventy-three and has been making a pilgrimage to the mountainous part of the V.F. every year for the past two decades. I try to block out the old joke about meeting shrinks—after you say Hello, he says, I wonder what you meant by that. Stefano is radiant with good cheer, as is everyone at the table. We’re all stranded, which nobody is complaining about. Where were these people on the trail below? Not on it, as it turns out. Most are starting their camino at the highest point of the V.F.
A soup course of zuppa di zucca, steam rising from the gold of liquefied pumpkin, gets us started. Carafes of wine, a Valais pinot noir made by monks, is passed around, and is wonderful as well. It’s good to be speaking Italian with Stefano, rolling the rrrrrs and punctuating the points with my hands. When our kids were very young, our family moved to Italy while I was on a book leave; we lived there long enough to fall in love with the language, the landscape, and the people. I can stay in most conversations, though my jokes often fall flat.
Stefano says he returns to the alpine monastery because it helps him see things clearly. He takes long hikes by himself, meditative strolls among the pyramidal peaks that neighbor Mont Blanc. The silence, the distance and space, is everything that the clutter of cities below are not. “I always discover something new about myself,” he says. I mention a story I’d read about Pope Francis just a day or so ago, that he saw a therapist for six months when he was a forty-two-year-old priest. His analyst was Jewish, all the better to avoid the clutter of doctrine. “I needed to clarify some things,” the pope explained.
“He should have come to Saint Bernard,” says Stefano. “When I leave, I never look at the world in the same way.”
The main course is a pork tenderloin with carrots and bell peppers, served with polenta. Everyone is ravenous. The woman from New York is taking a break from a management job in high-end retail. She flies 50,000 miles a year and doesn’t have the spare time to keep a houseplant alive, let alone nurture something so esoteric as her soul. She’s exhausted on weekends, too worn for anything but sleep. She hasn’t read a book off her professional topic in years. She’s lost touch with her friends. Downtime scares her. “I’m such a cliché,” she says. When someone suggested that she disappear, she thought it was rude at first, and then brilliant. Her research led her to the Via Francigena. She plans to walk for a week, unplugged. By dessert, a panna cotta with mountain berries, we all feel like family. Such is the fast fellowship that comes from being willfully stranded at a high pass in the Alps. We wish one another a hearty buon cammino, clear plates, and retire.
I stay back and ask the man in the black robe if I can talk to him about this place and his life. He’s happy to oblige me.
When my sister lost her son—murdered at the age of seventeen by a teenager with a gun—she asked me to do a eulogy at the funeral Mass. I hadn’t been to church in many years. My sister, like my mother, held on to her faith. After I arrived at my sibling’s parish in Spokane, I walked past the open casket of her only son. It brought me to immediate and uncontrollable tears. It had been just a few months since we’d played a game of touch football together at Thanksgiving. In the waning sunlight of November, my nephew slipped past me for a touchdown and did a cartwheel in the end zone. Now here he was—beautiful and lifeless. I kept my eyes down, to prevent people from seeing my tears, and there I caught sight of the sandals of a brown-robed Franciscan, the priest who would say the Mass. I forget his name. But his words at the service were comforting and stayed with me. More important, they stayed with my sister. The priest could not explain why her boy would be taken from her at such an age, or how a person who believed in a just God could find a place for an anvil of grief. But over time, he said, my sister would understand. She took that to heart, and in her search she eventually stopped questioning; she felt that God was protecting her son from some unknown evil to come. From that service on, I’ve tried to keep my suspicions in check whenever I meet a priest. I assume that the crimes of other clerics are not theirs.
Over tea, the man in the black robe formally introduces himself as Father John of Flavigny, a community of Benedictine monks in France, the same order that put me up in Wisques. He has bright eyes behind rimless glasses, with sprigs of short hair. He never intended to become a priest, he says with a burst of laughter. “God, no!” He was going to be a doctor. In his final year of medical school, he went on a spiritual retreat—a last diversion before jumping into the ardors of medicine. What happened next surprised him.
“They introduced me to the Ignatian Method. Do you know what that is?”
“I’ve heard
of it from the Jesuits. It’s based on their founder, Ignatius. That’s all I know.”
He explains the method, also called the pedagogical paradigm. It’s a spiritual exercise, more than 450 years old, that involves going through several steps to develop the conscience and give you the tools to be a better person. John tackled this as only a medical student who’d mastered organic chemistry could.
“‘Argue with yourself,’ they told me. Use contemplation. Repetition. Knock down your assumptions. So I drew up an argument, for and against my mission in life. I did it in a very intellectual, straightforward way. And the conclusion was: join a monastery.”
He laughs again. This time, I join him. It’s damn funny, actually: a guy on his way to one of the most admired and remunerative professions in the world decides to put everything on hold to take up a life of poverty and meditation with other ascetics in a cloister. And give up women as well. His family, who lives near the Basque country, was perplexed.
“It took me six years to become a priest.”
“Regrets?”
“No. I received much more and I can give much more.” That was forty years ago. He started coming to Saint Bernard because he got mired in doubt, and like the future pope, he needed clarification. In Father John’s case, he became deeply depressed in 1989.
“They sent me to Saint Bernard to rest. There are times when I felt . . . boxed in at the monastery. Here there is breathing room. It does wonders for me. I’ve been coming back every year. Will you join us for Mass tomorrow?”
