Head-torch on, I rode and rode, making good headway into the still night. By midnight I had covered 70 kilometres; I started to look for a likely turn-off. I found what I thought was the right track, but all I could smell was sharp eucalyptus charcoal, the ground recently burnt. But I had to stop. I tiptoed into the bush, humping my bike over my shoulder as I always did, to disguise any tracks that might lead to my tent. I was used to putting up my tent in the dark. Immediately, I muzzled my lamp, knowing too well how the thin walls of my tent were a membrane; I being the fragile inner organ, illuminated for whoever might be watching.
Which I trusted was no one. Until arcs of light began rising and falling repeatedly across my frail home, and I heard distant music, a muffled car radio? Of course, said my imagination, this was ‘Wolf Creek’ country, and of course, said my alarmed brain to my thumping heart; there would be a carload of murderers lurking in the burnt-out scrub. Just waiting for the most stupid irresponsible naïve cyclist to put herself right in their midst at 1a.m. in the middle of fucking nowhere.
I rehearsed my goodbyes to my daughters, begging desperately with the spirits to negate what I imagined, furious for dipping again into my bargaining credit. I dared not breathe. Not brush against the nylon of my sleeping bag or tent. The lights came and went in nauseating waves, but the music stayed. My jackhammering heart would betray me I was sure, but then there was a tumultuous thundering through the bush, deafening all else. Wild horses? Wild camels? Kangaroos? Murderers?
Thumpwhack, thumpwhack, thumpwhack.
Things, which must be huge, crashed into my tent, collided into my side, then picked themselves up and charged off again. My heart stopped. Miraculously, along with them, it picked itself up and went on again. Miraculously, my tent stayed in tact and there were no murderers. I must have fallen asleep. When the sun sliced through my yellow tent, toasting, I discovered that my Sony Walkman was somehow on, the radio emitting white noise under my sleeping mat.
Three weeks later, my bike ride complete, my daughters and I were reunited at home together in Gippsland. I received a parcel. And a letter. It was from my misunderstood genius friend. The parcel had located me care-of the town Post Office. Inside, was a perfect but disturbing piece of woodturning, in Jarrah. Made by George himself, in the form of an Urn; the type where you keep the ashes of your loved one. His letter was five pages long; more of his fabulous insights and predictions. But what made me stop was this:
‘Freya’, he wrote, ‘when I couldn’t find you back at your caravan that evening, I rode off looking for you. I was worried. I rode until 3 o’clock in the morning. I thought you might have gone in search of that campsite, and I felt remorse for having suggested it. It was an ill-advised idea. That is why I went looking for you.
Please write to me so that I know you are safe. I would like to come and visit you before they arrive. And believe me, they will.
Yours Truly, George Lightbody.’
Now, fifteen years later, in my frostbitten tent on the edge of a French bog somewhere between Lozère and Aubrac, I suddenly feel churlish for never replying to George. And I have no recollection of what became of his Jarrah urn.
Finally the hunt recedes, les chasseurs by now at home with their wives, cradling a bowl of lait chaude, baguettes broken and dunked in their hot milk coffee. I burrow into my bag, feeling warm for the first time since yesterday. I listen to a bird sing: it resembles a magpie’s morning warble back home. I can hear the bright busy voices of Stéphanie and her girls, but I stay put, letting them gain some ground.
One week later I am trudging through misty rain, and I see ‘H A N N A’ written with a stick in the path. Then I see ‘MILA and NISHA’. I marvel again at the courage of these girls, which for me, makes the chemin addictive.
When I encounter my next muse, we cross paths without realizing.
Ilona
An enigmatic beginning to Printemps in Aubrac; with this my second return to the chemin, my father is on my back in a little vial, wrapped in my woollen socks. It is late, there is gentle but persistent rain, and I am starting to shiver. So I stop, take off my pack, and rummage for gloves, scarf and rain jacket. I grab some chocolate, thinking to walk another couple of hours. Although the weather is discouraging, I put my headlamp in my pocket, but I do not turn it on.
There is this peculiar love I have, of hiking at night. Decades after that incident in Western Australia, I still ride my bike or walk in pitch black, the stars as guides. I will avoid going to bed just to sit quietly at night, the dark room a forest of secrets. More than that, the night is a place of refuge from an over-abundance of light: back home, I favour driving long distances in the dark; the bush gliding past reveals itself as multiple layers of depth. Or back in my studio, where I surrounded myself with ceiling-high charcoal drawings, the swathes of dark marks drawing my eye away from the details of the superficial, into a gentle penetration of their substance.
Sometimes I ask myself why it is that other hikers fall in the dark. They hit their heads on a rock and lie suffering, unable to be found by search parties until it is too late. Some get struck by a fatal fork of lightning. Some are spared. It makes no sense, so I persist in the foolishness of my nocturnal habits.
I am bent low, adjusting my pack back over my shoulders, when my skin pricks. Goosebumps up and down; I lift my head a little, to apprehend a moving shadow. The eerie sway of what seems like a giant crosses the bridge in front of me. Upon reaching the other side, this strange apparition dwarfs the arch and crucifix. I am loathe to continue, but don’t have much choice. The rain is steady now, and low mist obscures the path. I wait and watch, letting the giant gain as much ground as possible. The idea of pitching my tent somewhere out here in spooks-ville seems ludicrous. I put my headlamp on over my beanie, but still don’t turn it on. I cannot see more than a few metres in front of me. Each step seems to take an eternity. I aim for the Gîte as fast as I can, but slow my pace so as not to catch up to the apparition. Now I wish the secrets of the dark room would go away.
Under an hour of walking, and I could see the lights of the Gîte ahead. I speed up, my feet now soaked. And as I advance, I catch sight of my ‘giant’. She is wearing a long skirt, or multiple skirts, as they swing dramatically as she moves. From the back I see that her pack is enormous; an out-dated canvas one, with huge bundles stacked high on top of her shoulders, looming over her head. Her long hair flicks out to the side with each ponderous stride. Its straw colour is illuminated by a golden glow in front of her. As if she were holding an archaic lamp out in front as she walked, as if in a storybook.
I want to reach out, touch her shoulder and say, Please, come and stay here where it is warm, you can’t keep hiking like this on your own on such a night. But she was already gaining ground. Part of me feared her unknown face when she turned around; the other part of me assumed she wished to remain aloof, anonymous. It felt as if I would have to contact a supernatural world, to get through to her.
The Gîte turns out to be indeed warm, but raucous with a group of twenty walkers, all old friends. The very reason I carry a tent. But sharing showers and the kitchen and dining room and dorm is an intriguing experience; one I haven’t had since youth hostel days, decades ago. At dinner, I meet a couple from New Caledonia, and a solo German woman in her 70’s. They wisely have rooms of their own, in the more dignified Bed and Breakfast. We talk in French and laugh and drink cheap table wine…it’s a breakthrough for me to be doing everything ‘IN French’! I feel a kind of new lightness, but also of gravitas; a growing up that could not come from spending days and days alone listening to French radio at the hut. Even France Inter was not enough.
Tonight, in the gaiety of my fine companions, I sense liberation. But my thoughts keep returning to the lady with the lantern. Is she still swaying long into the damp night? Where does she sleep? I ask if the others had come across her.
‘Ooh, that one, she’s a sorcerer, une sorcière, stay away from her!’ they say, sniggering.
‘An alluring enchantress emerges out of the foggy gloom in Aubrac…seems very fitting!’ says someone theatrically, in a foreign accent.
‘We saw her yesterday, we thought she was a gitane, she seemed so other-worldly’, said my New Caledonian friends. ‘We tried to offer her food, but she was skittish, mumbling something over and over. She refused our help’.
‘Better that she didn’t stay here’, pipes up a well-groomed man in a ridiculous cravat, ‘she would have stolen something’, and then he coughs. Not a real cough.
‘Il a raison’, says his coiffed wife in her tight plaid pants and bold lipstick. ‘On ne sait jamais, even if we are on the Compostelle. You know it attracts all kinds of crazies, even witches.’
Repulsed, I regret staying here. Sure, one never knows. Sickened by the hypocrisy, ashamed of my own reluctance to make contact with the mystery pilgrim. But the New Caledonian couple compensate for the bourgeoisie: their compassion and humour intervene for her, and for me also, at a later date.
The next morning after petit déjeuner, I notice the Parisian couple are in a foursome, and that their copious luggage is being transported by taxi to the next Gîte. As is that of the twenty hikers, but at least they sleep and shower communally, and bring very little with them. It makes the load Ilona carries look nothing less than heroic.
I say farewell to the Caledonians, but they reply,‘ A bientôt Freya, on se verra' at the next stage. We’ll see you soon’.
Having worried about the Lantern Lady overnight, I set a fast pace, in the hope of meeting her. In an hour or so, after crossing a fast-flowing stream, the trail ascends to a higher plateau of wildflowers; the sun has burnt off the morning fog, an illuminated manuscript, Arcadia itself. As if to leave no doubt, a flock of sheep glow against the emerald pasture, and the distinctive caramel Aubrac cows graze contentedly below in the valley.
My ‘apparition’ is easy to spot, as her colourful attire is striking. More fit for a folk dance than a hike. She is sitting on top of the rise, her skirts and scarves wrapped around her like a maypole. She’s leaning against her pack, which itself resembles another whole body behind her. She appears to be praying. So I approach slowly, going down dale in front of her line of vision, so as not to startle her. I wave. She waves back and I climb up, approaching gently as if she were an untamed animal. Or a small child. How idiotic, given that last night I thought she was a Giant.
But she is skittish, and it takes time to gain her trust. We exchange names; each finding the other’s pronunciation worthy of remark.
‘Please’, she says with excruciating care, ‘excuse that my English no good, and French not at all’
‘Well, please excuse me that my Estonian is non-existent, and that I am pathetic at rolling R’s!’
‘You like some cake? How you say, Frreya?’
‘Thank you, Ilona, call me Frey. But you don’t seem to have much food…. I have plenty… please… have some of my chocolate… I re-stocked yesterday with three family-size blocks! Here, take some, please take!’
‘No that is not right Frey, you must accept gift also from me’
And so we carry on like best friends in a schoolyard, divvying up our lunch, obsessed with sweets. And like women in the market place, we compare notes on where to get the best value in food along the trail; commiserate about being trapped for three hours in a town if you happen to arrive at five minutes past midday, and the small supermarché doesn’t re-open until 3pm!
The simple sharing of food is our universal entrée, taking us on a symbolic leap to the heart of things. Ilona accepts finally some fruit and chocolate, and I reluctantly accept the last of her cake. We sit for a while in silence. Although not quite, as Ilona is intermittently murmuring what might be prayer, but sounds like gibberish. Hanging from her neck are numerous rosary beads, a large gold crucifix, and a small porcelain pendant of Jesus. A ‘portrait’ that Ilona tells me she cannot be separated from. Ilona is indeed a dedicated pilgrim. This is a matter of life and death for her. In the light of what she tells me, the disparaging speculation made about her by other pilgrims is atrocious.
‘I am on run since two years, my family not want me, I run from my Father. I do bad, bad things. Some men, they hurt me, really hurt me; Police, they chase me, no passport. But I have him,’ as she caresses the pendant, as if Jesus Christ was her boyfriend.
‘And I have Holy Spirit, I make Pilgrimage for Holy Spirit, to make be better woman. Before, I am bad woman.’
As she recounts her story, I cannot take my eyes off Ilona. She is exquisite to look at, with the eyes and face of a child, but the body of a voluptuous woman, that no amount of long skirts and scarves can obscure. She has that same bewitching beauty I have seen in my own daughters, as they straddle precariously between adolescence and womanhood. I fear for Ilona, just as I had feared for them.
‘But Ilona’, I insist, ‘you must not keep walking and sleeping out alone at night. It is not safe’
‘I am not alone’, she says with defiance. ‘I talk whole time with the Spirit. Anyway, I prefer to walk nights when people cannot see me. And I sleep in public picnic shelter, in town centre, so no man can hurt me or he be seen’.
Ilona’s logic defies me. Yes, I get it, her love of anonymous night walking. But my own instinct is to find the most obscure camping spot, hidden and out of sight. My experience of past harassment from men makes me steer clear of any visibility at night.
‘Here, I show you my guide, she who sent me on this pilgrim path. She is Philippine, married to French man. She in very bad car accident, and since then she communicate with Holy Spirit. See look here you can see it in my photos…See! Look Freya, that light… That glow in corner of the room, that be the Holy Spirit!’
Ilona is pressing her photos at me, and again I feel terrified for her, her absolute and unwavering childlike faith.
‘But what exactly did the lady tell you to do, Ilona?’
‘She tell me to walk to Lourdes, to be healed, and then keep going all the way to Santiago, she tell me the Holy Spirit will look after me. And I will be saved from everything.’
I considered before replying, that Ilona might actually be saved from the hell from which she had fled. Looking patiently at all her photos, and feigning amazement at the nebulous golden glow hovering next to or behind the Philippine preacher, I decided to reign in my cynicism…who was I to question Ilona’s faith?
Only blind faith could persuade a young dazzling woman to walk alone for a year, or possibly longer, and put herself in harm’s way, all the while murmuring prayers in what I later realised was speaking in tongues. Only blind faith. Or a past worse than I could imagine. Ilona reminds me of a close friend back home whose once fierce wit and intelligence is now a timid apology for being smart. Her unflinching belief in a mighty God turns her into a supplicant for whom ‘meek’ is too strong a word.
I cannot imagine why God would want the inheritors of the earth to be that meek. But the Ilona’s and Daisy’s of this world offer a necessary balance to my narcissism, and our larger egos. Which is nicely illustrated as soon as the boisterous walking group reach the rise, and one of the men recognises me. He starts to approach, smiling, but when he sees and hears Ilona immersed in her trance-like tongue-talking, he rolls his eyes apologetically, and backs away. His tribe keeps a safe distance, but stare nevertheless.
I myself need to leave and keep walking, as unlike Ilona, my pilgrimage has a pressing end date. I regret that mine is not the big life-changing, possibly life-risking, experience that hers is. I give her a tight hug, and urge her in motherly tones,
‘Please take care of yourself Ilona, the world is not always friendly, even here on the Compostelle. On ne sait jamais.’ And then I want to eat my words, my unwitting mimic of the tight-arsed blonde with the lipstick last night.
‘Thank you Frey, you have been a friend to me. No-one else sit and listen like you. All think I am mad.’
I feel doubly ashamed, because I wouldn’t kno
w where to start to be a friend to this troubled girl. Just as I have lost the map on how to be a true friend to Daisy, back home in Australia. There just isn’t enough room for their God as well as the one I prefer to imagine in my mind.
Once out on the path again, I am impatient to overtake the straggling group. Those who saw me with Ilona are curious, and ask as if already convinced of the answers,
‘So, is she really Crazy? Is she some kind of Mystic? Who is she speaking to all the time? Where does she come from, do you think she could be a Witch?’
The more sympathetic among them ask me if she has enough food.
‘Yes, she knows how to look after herself’, I say, and let them guess about the rest.
But from that day on, I always hoped to cross paths again with Ilona. I took to wrapping up treats in clear plastic bags, with a note and her name written large, pinned to trees or fence posts along the way. I would inscribe with a stick, daily messages on the track, leaving signs of encouragement, but I never saw her again.
Once, near the end of my walk, I bumped into a trio of young men, camped right in the middle of the path. Thereby avoiding the often time-consuming mission to find a stealth site nearby, devoting their time to reading instead. They were polite, well spoken, and gentle. The kind of men you like to meet on the chemin.
I described Ilona, and asked if they had met her.
One’s eyes lit up, ‘Oui, oui, yeah I’ve met that chic, wow what a spin out… really weird, but really nice, une très jolie fille….But I didn’t know how to get through to her. Are you Freya, the one that leaves the food and signs for her?’
I found myself close to tears at hearing that Ilona was thus far safe. I thought about her for the rest of my hike. And when I returned to our hut. And for months afterwards. And now, four years since the Path, I’m still wondering about her, and whether she found what she was looking for.
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