…THE DESERT…

Stage 60 / Thursday 25 June / From Burgos to Tardajos / 11 km

 

I forgot to cite another absurdity of my stage yesterday: one must buy an entry ticket to go and pray in the nave of the cathedral of Burgos! My Protestant pilgrim companions found that scandalous, and I protested with them! But today, I sense that I’m going to get rid of all this absurdity caused by human exploitation! For I’m going to enter the plateau north of the Meseta! The scenery there is characterized by limitless horizons that nothing interrupts. Here and there, a village in earth-tones, piled around their castle-fortress, between the barely visible lines of the limestone heights devoid of any vegetation: it’s the desert, or almost! My stage will be short, but purifying!

 

Oh happiness of the silence of a nature suddenly arid and nearly naked! That is what will certainly bring my own spiritual nudity to the fore, what I am battling with since I want to reject even the word God! Desiring to do like little Johnny, wanting to decide to believe in the non-existence of all divinity because nothing gives evidence of it, that denudes, yes, and the silence itself is then beginning to make a lot of noise! That of my deaf steps which are now raising a cloud of plaster dust! My breathing and even my heartbeats which become audible as soon as I stop to listen to the smallest bird in these treeless stretches! I imagine noises, in fact, more than hearing them, and I think I’m seeing suspended ridges above the horizon: these are mirages, accentuated by the cooking heat which is increasing as the sun rises on my left.

 

It is especially in the desert places that were built the mystical life forces of the great middle-eastern religions. Silence, destitution and solitude there have been propitious to simple, fundamental questions. One should add the presence of death, more palpable in the drying up of cadavers or the blanching of bones encountered here and there. The inert renders more pleasant any forms of life that one encounters, from the rare 3-toed skink (which resembles the garter snake) to the strange rhinoceros scarab-beetle.

 

The desert seems to make you more respectful and grateful to be alive. These are no doubt the reasons why the ascetics and hermits of all time have withdrawn there to lead a life more conformed to their desire for holiness. They confronted more easily there the objects of their fears, which they called demons. All the while rejecting these natural anguishes, they become more open to the love of the few things which bring life: the water source, the prickly pear cactus, the sparse grass which can nourish your goats and the partridge egg which seems to you a festive meal! The desert also makes you more observant: the first pictograms were found in deserts, as well as the first cuneiform incisions or the hieroglyphs that then served to build the first alphabets.

 

The desert thus encourages a meditative attitude. It accentuates our rough fate, exiled that we are on this earth, stuck into a life of effort and sweat. The desert also greater appreciation of the reward of a swallow of cool water to quench a thirst, even if it means sharing what’s left in your canteen with another unprepared pilgrim. From generosity flows pardon! And the rugged nomad is known for his sense of hospitality as much as for his deep wisdom: the foolish do not survive long in the desert! Nor does the selfish greedy person!

 

Blinded a bit too much by the light of the desert fathers, I compare it to the shade of my mountain folk origins. I tell myself that my hardy ancestors in their Alpine lands also experienced their natural terrors and demons. They too were confronted with the necessity of hospitality and helping each other. And in their more lavish forests, in their more contrasted climatic conditions, they learned how to bandage their ills better than through resignation turned to prayer and the promise of a hypothetical salvation.

 

In the desert, there is almost nothing for surviving. It is there where one knows too well hunger, thirst, the dazing heat of the day, the glacial contrast of the night. It is also easier there to hear a voice whispering to you: “Leave all this and follow Me!” This invitation is more inaudible in the most complete munificence undercover of a forest gorging with resources, in the gratuity of seasons which allow reproducible growth of walnut or chestnut trees, vines and greatly varied medicinal plants! Thus am I spared the abrupt religion of the desert and the generous cultivation of the alpine forest (figuratively as well as literally).

 

Myths spring up in the desert. Those of the Garden of Eden were born there. While in the mountains, more or less wooded sunny or north-facing slopes drive people to research and seek explanations. Science is developed there of greater necessity than where the inert takes precedence over the vegetal, to such an extent that it could give to those who practiced it or those who used their discoveries an impression of self-sufficiency that wouldn’t need religion. Hitler concocted his plans for conquest from his eagle’s nest in Berchtesgaden, in the middle of the Bavarian Alps, where the sciences of chemistry and energy had made impressive leaps forward. He admired the breath-taking scenery, and there he signed the decrees for the extermination of the Jews, certain that he was contributing to the progress of the human race: what horror!

 

Two thousand years earlier, John the Baptist, a Hebrew, had withdrawn to a corner of the desert crossed by the Jordan River, to preach repentance and prepare the way for someone who would open the door to Heaven: what joy!

Desert emptiness and certainty of the absolute versus the Reverse side and the Right side of our worrisome mountains? In which lost corner is it better to be born, or on which flank of our mountains? As if we had a choice! … There is undoubtedly one absurdity too many!

 

Is the Meseta sun overheating your head, pilgrim Pierre?