Every Journey Begins with the First Step

Le Pont de Valen­tré, a vista along the Chemin du Puy, or Via Podi­en­sis, an ancient pil­grim­age route

My friend Jane is plan­ning another self-guided walk­ing tour in south­west­ern France, and wants me to join her on a two-week trek along the Chemin du Puy-en-Velay, a branch of the Camino San­ti­ago (or the Way of St. James). This has been a beloved pil­grim­age route for more than a thou­sand years.

Jane hiked the Chemin du Puy for two weeks last fall, and plans to walk a com­pa­ra­ble 150-mile seg­ment this Sep­tem­ber, con­tin­u­ing in the foot­steps of long ago pil­grims.

Undertaking this Journey

Should I join her on the trek this year? Can I? And if not, why not?

It’s a big under­tak­ing, both phys­i­cally and finan­cially.

For­tu­nately, we’ve both trav­eled in France before, includ­ing self-guided tours off the beaten track, so we’re not intim­i­dated by the travel logis­tics of get­ting to our start­ing point.

And then there are the cul­tural aspects of prepar­ing for the jour­ney. To truly appre­ci­ate these out-of-the-way places means brush­ing up on French lan­guage skills, reac­quaint­ing myself with high­lights of France’s medieval art and his­tory, and the sto­ried his­tory of the region we’d be vis­it­ing.

The over­all jour­ney, as it unfolds, is more reward­ing than any spe­cific des­ti­na­tion, so under­tak­ing this tour with some appre­ci­a­tion of its his­tory and cul­tural con­text is by far the best way to savor its delights.

The jour­ney is costly. Even with a 2-week self-guided walk­ing tour (one that doesn’t require us to com­pen­sate pro­fes­sional guides or a tour­ing com­pany), the price tag is higher than a month’s mort­gage for many peo­ple.

Hik­ing boots will need to become my new best friends

Train­ing for the long walk will require a sig­nif­i­cant time com­mit­ment, hun­dreds of hours of aer­o­bic exer­cise between now and then.

Despite being a reg­u­lar walker, one who can do 10,000 steps on a rou­tine basis, prepar­ing for this trek will require me to dou­ble or triple my usual walk­ing reg­i­men.

Regain­ing my French speak­ing and com­pre­hen­sion skills will require another big time com­mit­ment. Hun­dreds of hours again.

But these are things I love to do, and exer­cis­ing these skills will lead to indi­rect ben­e­fits and last­ing value in their own right, such as improved health and well being.

The Journey Is the Reward

My yoga prac­tice sug­gests set­ting an inten­tion for this under­tak­ing. So what should the theme be?

At Apple, I first learned that the jour­ney is the reward. For lots of rea­sons, that will be my theme for this walk­ing tour — the jour­ney of the trek itself, and the multi-month jour­ney to get ready for it.

I look for­ward to the indi­rect con­se­quences of prepar­ing for the jour­ney: a stronger and health­ier body, a nim­bler mind, thanks to the men­tal stim­u­la­tion of relearn­ing French, and a qui­eter mind, thanks to the med­i­ta­tive aspects of the jour­ney­ing.

The Training Régime

We’ll be hik­ing 10–18 miles each day, across some rugged or hilly ter­rain, so the trek requires a level of phys­i­cal fit­ness and sta­mina that is well beyond my cur­rent capa­bil­i­ties.

Before start­ing a seri­ous train­ing régime, I’ll need to recover from a knee injury. That said, with a dis­ci­plined effort, there’s plenty of time to build up the nec­es­sary strength and sta­mina for those chal­leng­ing day hikes between now and Sep­tem­ber.

Jane rec­om­mends at least 2–3 months of dis­ci­plined train­ing before we leave for France. That means a long walk every day, plus one or two hikes up hilly ter­rain every week­end. Those long hikes should tar­get ≥5–8 miles total dis­tance, includ­ing ele­va­tion gains.

Rain or shine. Given Seattle’s typ­i­cal rainy weather between now and early July, that’s no small com­mit­ment…

Parlez-vous français?

We’ll be pass­ing through small ham­lets, stay­ing in tiny inns or guest rooms out in the coun­try — places that lack sophis­ti­cated tourist ser­vices or large num­bers of Eng­lish speak­ers. We’ll need to be self-suf­fi­cient en français.

Because we will make the book­ings and man­age the walk­ing tour on our own, with­out any pro­fes­sional guides, French lan­guage pro­fi­ciency will be every bit as help­ful as our walk­ing sticks.

After pok­ing around at online resources about le Chemin du Puy, it’s clear that I will need to brush up on my French just to make sense of what those web­sites and blogs have to offer.

Today’s First Steps

So here’s what I’ve done today, in tak­ing the first steps on this jour­ney:

• Ordered some French-lan­guage learn­ing resources
• Ordered a Miche­lin guide for GR65, le Chemin de Com­postelle
• Browsed a few pages of a 15-year-old travel guide for south­west­ern France, and read about a few of the places we might visit
• Ordered some sum­mer-weight hik­ing shoes, with enough sup­port for long day hikes, but with­out the extra weight of my trusty hik­ing boots
• Had a long con­ver­sa­tion with Jane, to agree on start­ing prin­ci­ples, expec­ta­tions and val­ues — and some early con­cepts for a plan
• Began a tour of online resources to learn what’s in store
• Went out for an hour’s walk, up some hills, about 7000 steps total — and am happy to report it did not harm my knee
• Joined a closed Face­book group of past and future walk­ers whose feet have trod­den the Chemin du Puy

May the jour­ney begin.