On the banks of Lake Annecy – spectacular! – I tried to make like the Europeans who clearly enjoyed life. Here they were, lazing away a Monday by resting on lakeside benches or strolling oh-so-slowly (often arm-in-arm) along the lakeside path where the views were majestic. The snow-fringed mountains of La Tournette, Mont Veyrier, Le Semnoz, and Parmelan, reaching 7,713 feet and mirrored in the lake, looked down upon their happy doings as if to say, ah, oui; pity ze poor peoples who can’t be French, or at least wish they were while visiting. Honestly, pity poor moi, who sat on a bench for maybe a minute – long enough to ponder the plight of swans, the pure-white beauties who in the lake’s shimmering waters swam slo-mo in graceful figure-eights. Swans mate for life! I marveled. But what if one in the pair turns out to be a philanderer or a fool, is the other one stuck? Such a gloomy pondering! Obviously, being not-French, I found the art of relaxing quite impossible, and rather than swan-watch I knew I needed to walk. Annecy the city, watery like Venice, is perched on three canals and the Thiou river, so a promenade here promised beauty and drama; its vieille ville – old town – dates from the Romans, a fact my AirB&B brought to life, being built, as the crumbling thing surely was, in the 10th century. Sights to see included the Palais de L’Isle, a 12th century castle on a tiny island in the middle of town, the Château d’Annecy, where the Counts of Geneva held court, and the 15th century Église Saint-Maurice, which was filled with gold French frou-frou, per the usual in historic cathedrals. All this was on top of what really called me: the fun French street markets, held every other day and bursting with a bounty of French street stuff – from mega-sized wheels of Brie to pure cashmere scarves on the cheap.
While the kitten napped in our comfy (yet crumbling) studio, I walked and walked and walked. It was weird. I could not stop walking! The Camino’s typical daily duty – 10 to 20 miles – seemed to have seized my spirit, and each footfall in Annecy corresponded to…well, I wondered. Time to pop into a café for Annecy’s famous Fondue Savoyarde, the three-cheesy bliss blessedly free of ham; for dessert I longed for a gorgeous slice of Gâteau de Savoie, the region’s signature spongy sugar bomb. There I could check my phone for field reports from the Way trekkers.
For one, Hawaiian massage therapist Angela Leslee was, in a common Camino experience, confronting her demons. Slogging along the French route to get over her second marriage to “an alley cat of a man,” as she reports in her memoir The Way of Love on the Camino de Santiago, she found herself walking with two married people – each married to someone back home, that is – who consummated their on-trail affair in the bottom bunk of her bed, while she “slept” above. Alber-goo life at its finest! “The shit hits the fan really fast on the Camino,” she reports. “Aaand the weirdness is back!” I wondered, over my phenomenal fondue, will Angela triumph over her discomfort and (after 500 miles) arrive in Santiago aglow with the “deep sense of personal transformation” the Camino promises, a woman at peace with her newly minted answers to who am I? and why am I here? I’m not so sure. The next night at dinner the alley-cat David – the man with a wife at home – puts his arm around Mary Jo – the woman with a husband momentarily out of mind – and lovingly says, she’s my Camino wife. Angela tries to rise to her better self, but it seems there is a way to go. “I think I just threw up a little bit,” she writes. “I try hard not to snort. Why would anyone want to get Camino married if it means you have to hand wash their dirty socks and underwear at the end of the day – no thank you.” Later she admits with some shame: “Oh, crap.” It’s true. “The Camino can tear you down and bring you to your knees, to face parts of yourself you are unaware of.
“I smell a learning here.” Angela’s musing reminded me that my own Camino, as off-trail as it momentarily was – since my walking-body was actually in Annecy – might still present some demons for unwelcome consideration.
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“Where’s my kitty?” My now habitual hello whenever I returned to our studio brought sleepy, disheveled Camino running from under the bedcovers to greet me with his now habitual hello: a full-body stretch at my feet, his round, spotty belly exposed. I flipped him up and held him to my face to breathe-in his irresistible kittenness, as now was our custom; his purrs filled the room, and my heart.
“Tell me, my love, are you happy in Annecy?” I couldn’t help but add with something of a snicker: “Do you smell a learning here?” I placed him on the futon and fetched his favorite twirly-bird on a stick. He leapt and pounced as I twirled the bird; then he paused. Mami, I could hear him say in every tilt of his handsome Spanish head, in every flick of his white-tipped, orange-ringed tail, in every twitch of his long and elegant whiskers, suenas loco. In Google Translate this means, Mami, you sound crazy. Is that what the Camino can make you?
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