What on Earth? A Pilgrimage?

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For the uninitiated, The Story:

In the winter of 1995, having turned 78, Mom announced out of the blue that she was inspired to undertake the pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela. Her sons and her estranged husband looked at her blankly until she explained that this was an historical trail across northern Spain, from southern France westward to the shrine of St. James in Santiago, that penitents had traveled on foot for over a thousand years. With increasing panic, her family realized that this was a trek of four hundred miles, that it involved great variations in elevation, that it included long stretches of terrain for which “desert” might be a more apt description than “rural,” and that she was planning to do it all alone.

In vain we suggested that A) she had nothing we knew of that merited such an atonement; B) it was too dangerous for her health; C) it was too dangerous from a point of view of personal security—from predatory animals as well as criminals; D) it was too dangerous for anyone’s mental stability; and E) if she really had her heart set on a pilgrimage, the hundred-mile trek from London to the shrine of St. Thomas à Becket might serve just as well! Naturally, we could have saved our breaths.

In April 1995, she flew to Madrid. She took trains to Pamplona—Hemingway’s running-bulls town—and then buses to Roncesvalles, a tiny hamlet in the Pyrenees Mountains a couple miles from the French border, where she officially commenced the pilgrimage. She had lots of ups and downs, but when she called home on May 15th ... she learned that Dad had passed away six days before. She aborted the trip and flew home in time for the memorial service.

Eleven months later, she returned to the very spot where she’d stopped, and proceeded to finish the trip with another six weeks of hard walking! She got rained on, caught colds, slept in barns and dormitories, met fellow pilgrims from all over the world, fell and broke her tooth ... but she completed the pilgrimage, providing a great source of inspiration to us all.

We have only a couple photographs of Mom on the pilgrimage because, of course, she was traveling solo. She was also carrying everything in her backpack, and she ditched items far more essential than a camera, to spare herself the weight. A couple fellow pilgrims—usually European college students bicycling the route—took pictures and e-mailed them to her sons or mailed them to her address. She carried no cell-phone, no GPS—only a whistle, a rudimentary map, and her pilgrim’s shell.

Back at home, Mom holds up her pilgrim’s scallop shell (which was dutifully interred with her ashes). Iconically associated with Saint James (Sant’ Iago), and thereby with all pilgrimages, scallop shells are prominently worn by all persons on this trek. [Did you ever wonder why on earth a company that produces gasoline would name itself Shell?] (The picture is copied from a Martinsville Bulletin article of March 17, 1996.)