Paris to the Pyrenees: A Skeptic Pilgrim Walks the Way of Saint James by David Downie Page B

would’ve been easier to hike with everyone else on the mainline route, I agreed, but that wasn’t what we were after. The Frenchman heartily endorsed non-religious walking, and for a moment waxed philosophical. “Admittedly, technology isn’t always the answer. The car, for instance, appears to have given us freedom,” he said. “But it has destroyed sociability. It has left villages like this one empty and ruined the small, provincial merchant class. Everyone drives to a shopping mall on the outskirts of town.”
    “Just wait until Wal-Mart gets up to speed,” said the Swiss man snippily. “We lived in America for two years. Plenty of giant churches and tele-evangelists, but no more unions, no more holidays, and taxpayers subsidize the corporations.”
    The evangelization and Wal-Mart-ification of the world provided plenty to hash over, and however much I sympathized with our fellow guests’ points of view, I refused to go down that road. It wasn’t just my profound desire to remain positive, or the negative, preachy tone the Swiss man had adopted. The walking, wining, dining, and talking was making my head spin. When the apple pie arrived, I saw pillows as the happy aftermath. Alas, our tablemates had no intention of letting off their captive American audience, who must be made to reckon for the failings of the American Dream. The philosophical Frenchman turned twinkling eyes upon me. “And how did you wind up in France, if I may ask?”
    “You may,” I said, “but it’s a long story, and past our bedtime.” The tale threatened to add a Wikipedia-style coda to what was already a long day.
    “Oh, we’re in no rush,” he insisted. “It’s early. We won’t let you go until you tell us something about yourselves; it’s a tradition at chambres d’hôtes. ”
    Since Alison routinely balks at the inevitable question of roots, and since they weren’t letting us go, I dove in, explaining that I was a native of San Francisco, had lived in Rome as a child, and, having finished political science and Italian literature degrees at UC Berkeley and Brown, in the early 1980s had moved back to Rome and from there to Milan. After two years and a failed marriage, I’d headed north to Paris to start over again. That’s when I’d met Alison. I’d stayed on, an accidental Parisian. “The rest is mystery,” I concluded.
    “And y important stopover or starting point on fa nou?” asked the pink-cheeked Swiss, turning to Alison. I couldn’t help thinking of the Helvetii and the pope’s Swiss guards. The Swiss couple may well have been descendants of survivors of that horrific battle and so, perhaps, were we all.
    Alison remained silent, suffering as she always did when the center of attention. A child of the foreign service, she had happened to be born in Paris and brought up there—plus Ankara, Karachi, Washington, D.C., and Rome, then Paris again. You never knew which origin myth she’d choose. Sometimes she came from Little Rock, her father’s birthplace. Sometimes from Montreal, her mother’s. And sometimes from San Francisco. Never from Paris. That’s because, despite her French citizenship and passport, and decades lived in France, the French consider her a foreigner. Wisely, she prefers to view herself as an individual without national affiliations.
    “I’m from Arkansas,” she said at last, and then skillfully changed the subject to beddy-bye.
    THERE OTTA BE A LAW
    Crottefou is the name of a hamlet in the Cure River Valley, our first stop a few miles south of Marigny. The name means “mad dung” or “crazy droppings”—presumably of horse, cow, or mad dog. Happily the restored houses we admired held little resemblance to the place-name. Chainsaws whined in the distance. They approached and were, of course, not chainsaws but dirt bikes. Several flew past at breakneck speed. I silently hoped the riders would indeed break their necks, pronto. It was not a charitable, pilgrim-like thought.
    Tacked