The Stairway

*Climbing the stone stairway through the pass. Photo by Sandy Brown*

Bourg St-Pierre to Col St Bernard

Via Francigena #11 of 20

Today we start the long anticipated trek up to the Great St-Bernard Pass. This is why you start 5 days before in Lausanne. Why you get your walking legs under you, condition your feet, and work out your jet lag. It’s so when you come here, to this singular place, you are completely unencumbered, on every level.

A sense of well being permeates me which at first I chalk up to endorphins. But as the experience grows, it’s clearly more than that. It’s the palpable presence. It’s the breathtaking wonder coming in and taking up residence in your psyche. It’s the desolate beauty having its way with you, and it wants you to know awe. It is enthralling.

The Subconscious FM Radio Station in my head has been lurking for days. It kept popping up with “The Mother Superior Song” (aka, Climb Every Mountain) which I warned it back in Seattle to forget. It was also trying to slide-in “High on the hill is a lonely goat herd” which also gets the thumbs down from me. Then it comes out of left field and before I know it I’m singing away:

Rocky Mountain High, Colorado!

Subconscious FM Radio Station rolls with John D for awhile but starts funning me and begins to free associate:

I’m a, tree top flyer, sole survivor . . .

Rapidly followed by:

Up on the roof tops the reindeer pause, out jumps good old Santa Clause!

I scrabbled up a vast, rock strewn field, stone steps cut into the green embankment, and with a lump in my throat it starts playing “Stairway to Heaven”. So corny, yet so well played.

Not content to let me tary too long there, it whips out the Gorllaz “Feel Good Inc” as soon as I drop to my hands to the ground as physics demands.

I don’t know what it is about desolation that I find to be so moving, or why it seems so profound. By the time we get to the top, I have to cry.

See below for photos that I hope speak for themselves.