The train from Gare de Bayonne became a winding bus ride up the valley of the Nive River through lush-green forests to Saint Jean Pied de Port. Anyway the road hugged the single-track railway line. Then we saw the Pyrenees beyond and they looked daring and brooding below dary grey clouds that bellowed and clung around the highest slopes. There was a lot of pilgrims in an uphill line to the Pilgrim Welcome Office on Rue de la Citadelle. Rumours went around that the Napoleon Route to Roncesvalles would be closed tomorrow but when I came back to the Office later and the line of eager Pilgrims had shrunk to only a handful I found out from two dear old smiling lady volunteers behind the desk that the weather would be only as tempermental as today. Game on. Tomorrow I will take the high pass to Roncesvalles and over Col de Lepeder at over 1,400 metres elevation. Sure you are only old once. I first looked at rocks for clues to the ancient environments in which these unconsolidated sediments were deposited before being compressed and petrified. I also looked for clues as to the tectonic forces that buckled and distorted these rocks into folds and thrusts upwards to form mountains. Then for most of my carreer, to make a living and raise a family, I looked at rocks in a utilitarian sense and for the mineral deposits congealed within and the value that might be squeezed from them. Now,n on this Camino Frances these majestic Pyrenean rocks are not for what they can give materially but for what they spark in majestic solitude. A time alone in Nature.
To find the sacred in our lives in these Pyrenean Mountains on this very physical and spiritual saunter along the Way of Saint James.