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← Up, into the cloud · Stage One

II

Stage Two

Borda → Roncesvalles

21 June 2024 · over the pass

The Basque air knows no borders. Nor does the fog. Somewhere inside it, France ended.

A calf and its mother grazing behind a barbed wire fence and stone wall, dark clouds overhead — The cow still doesn’t know, but the calf has questions.

A stream running down a green valley between grassy hills — Ultreia et suseia. And then, deorsum—as water goes.

Rough-cut stone steps climbing a grassy slope, disappearing into fog — Hold on. To what? To the path, to the poles, to myself?

A wooden waymarker post beside a muddy track disappearing into fog and fenced forest

A hooded hiker in a rain poncho walking away down a stony path with trekking poles, fog ahead — Hold on. To whom? To the stranger walking ahead.

Pale-barked trees standing in a misty beech forest — Did angels once embrace these trees and leave their bark white?

A tree trunk broken and torn open, with fresh green leaves still sprouting from the wound — Broken, but not gone.

A stone waymarker engraved Navarra Nafarroa with a scallop shell, fog swallowing the road ahead — Between countries. Within one land.

A wooden trail signpost beside a small stone memorial plaque for a pilgrim, deep in green forest

A stone village church with a bell tower under a bright blue sky with white clouds — And still, beyond the clouds, the sun.

A small antique cast-iron figure of a face mounted at the corner of a stone wall — I am being watched by something old.

Closed wooden shutters with black iron hinges set into a whitewashed and stone wall — I am being watched by something old.

View from the back seat of a van, two Guardia Civil officers in the front seats, another patrol car visible ahead — Confundida. Green, green, green. Then green-and-white salvation.

And then I arrived. Again.