Photograph of an J.F. Merifield Abandoned Garden

Dog Wanderlust

Jim Ross

I’d hiked to the small village Noailhac in the Aveyron, in France’s midi-Pyrenees, but nothing held me and said, “stay.” The restaurant was closed until Spring and it was now mid-October. I couldn’t even find the bed & breakfast for pilgrims and walkers. Perhaps I should have called ahead, but that ran against the grain. Moreover, for over a millennium, pilgrims had no means of making reservations. Trusting that The Way will meet your needs is integral to being a pilgrim—by definition, a self-imposed exile. Instead of trying to plan out every detail, I would surrender to The Way and let it work its wonders.

For most of human history, people died in or not far from the villages in which they were born. Not counting those who left their home countries to escape persecution or famine or as part of an invading army, true Wanderlust wasn’t really an economic or social possibility. Throughout the Middle Ages, however, people in most of Europe were expected to make at least one major journey in their lives—to the east in the form of a Crusade or to the west in the form of a pilgrimage. The towns I was passing through had been built largely in the 11th through 13th centuries to support pilgrims on their westward journeys and then on their returns home.

I’d grown accustomed to walking twelve to fifteen miles a day. The pilgrimage trail knits together roads—often the ancient pilgrim’s route paved over—with dirt or grassy trails cutting through forests and farmers’ fields. Judging by the sun, I had six hours of daylight left. The next village was twelve miles away.

Having walked through Noailhac, I paused at the town line, contemplating my next move. The brown eyes of a tired, lean German shepherd caught mine. Ten feet away, she turned, took a few steps, stopped, and turned her head toward me again. She seemed to say, “Follow me.”

What did I have to lose? I followed.

We walked together up a long, muddy hill. Periodically, she looked back to confirm I was still there. Atop the hill, we approached a small stone chapel dedicated to St. Roch, patron saint of dog lovers (and dogs). I told her, “This looks like your place. Please go right in.”

She sat in the second pew on the right, with me behind. After a few minutes of apparent meditation, she wandered toward the rear door, so again I followed.

I suggested we share lunch. She wouldn’t touch stale baguettes but liked the hard cheese and kept asking for more dried blueberries. After lunch, I stood and said, “Good to meet you. Thank you for bringing me here. I’ve got to be on my way.”

However, when walking right alongside me, the shepherd said, “Where d’you get the idea you’re going anywhere without me?” Title It had been a few weeks since I left home. A year ago, my life felt perfectly in balance. Then a dire threat, bereft of conditions for its execution or cancellation, from Author the most implausible and implacable source, threw me careening off balance. I walked to restore balance not by ruminating but by focusing on The Way itself. Leaving home was hard because my unravelling already burdened my family. The moment my feet touched the trail, I was able to exhale. Being so terribly, blissfully alone brought an extraordinary sense of relief.

She and I walked together along a rolling, asphalt road. Occasionally, she scooted under barbed wire and ran across vast green fields in wide, interlocking circles. If she ran ahead, she either waited for me or ran back to place herself like a shield between me and oncoming cars.

A long-horned, brown-and-white cow caught my eye. I stopped to take her photo. Irritated, she kicked up wads of grass with her hind hooves and charged. I’d been warned that barbed wire wouldn’t hold a cow charging full tilt. The shepherd darted under the barbed wire and counter-charged. The cow reared up on her hind legs. Then the shepherd and cow exchanged glances, the cow exited stage right, and the shepherd glided under the barbed wire as if nothing extraordinary had happened.

Over the next few hours, we only once encountered other people—two bent-over, smiling old men and an old woman donning a sunhat—who welcomed my dog like an old friend. “Mon cheri,” one addressed her. If other dogs paced and barked furiously to guard their property, my dog did not engage. We ran out of water long before I began questioning: How much daylight remains? Where will we sleep tonight?

The path emptied into a dirt road. The first fruit trees we’d noticed all day—apple, pear, fig–stood by the roadside. I helped myself to apples and pears off the branches; the figs had already turned moldy. My dog picked over the fallen fruit as if she’d hunted it down.

With residual light fast diminishing, we had no choice but to follow the path when it turned into a forest. My companion seemed as unperturbed by darkness as she was fending off the fussy cow. She sensed barbed wire and scooted under it.

She led. I kept talking. She stayed close. Repeating “steady now” kept me calm. As we approached an “electric fence” sign, she strolled beneath safely, so using a limbostyle maneuver I followed without removing my backpack. As long as I focused on my connection to my companion, my feet somehow eluded the fallen chestnuts littering the trail.

“My dog is my shepherd. I shall not want,” I joked. Then, I repeated: “Dog is love.” I began to envision spending a night in the forest, with all its uncertainties.

Just as my adrenaline dipped, we saw a house abutting the forest. The full moonlight made the tips of the tall, pampas grass surrounding the house look like flames. “We’re almost there,” I told my companion, feeding her dried blueberries.

We came upon a road of smooth asphalt running mostly in a straight line, with adequate overhead lighting. It became apparent my companion was unaccustomed to

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