16 miles, 9 hour day, 4000′ gain and then a hard, steep 2.5 mile descent to finish. No gradual entry into the Camino, just begin with one of its hardest days. But my training paid off, and I never ran out of gas. Knees severely tested on the descent but everything held up. Everyone who made it to the marvelous monastic hostel at Roncesvalles feels very grateful tonight. The soaking drizzle that made the first two hours this morning a trial finally let up, and all the pilgrims who had crowded into a mountain cafe to dry out poured back out onto the trail. No great views today, but the summit where France turns to Spain was a brooding cloud of unknowing where we walked by faith not sight.

This flaneur strolled 12 miles around Paris today – last training before the Camino. A highlight was the courtyard in the Marais where I have always heard birds singing on one vine-covered wall. The vines were still bare of leaves today, but the songbirds were as tuneful as ever. It was the second avian blessing of this journey (preceded by the first goldfinch of the season appearing in our yard an hour before I departed). Tonight I visited a sensational exhibition at Grand Palais of Bill Viola’s transcendent video art. Among the many works I hadn’t seen was the “Ascension of Tristan,” where a motionless man on a slab comes to life and begins to ascend in slow motion (it took 10 minutes on a 20 foot vertical screen) into the full force of a waterfall – stunningly persuasive iconography for returning to the divine. It turns out that not all the art in Paris is old!

Flew over American desert, Canadian ice, and the great night sea, and voila – Paris! Slept off jet lag in a room behind Shakespeare & Company before a blessed evening at the Louvre – a pilgrimage of its own to see old favorites. Strolled back along the Seine to find a small marching band playing raucous versions of Taize chants by Notre Dame.