Time magazine editorial

[Rosina Lila]

Hello,
I am sorry that my efforts to "attach" the one pilgrims' editorial on the
July 5 issue of TIME failed.  Surely it is obvious that I'm not at all proficient
in the use of computers, etc.
So..... here goes:
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TO OUR READERS

Our Pilgrims. Progress

         On his way back down from the summit of Mont Blanc, Paris Bureau
Chief James Graff met a woman on her way up. Graff was blistered and bruised from
one of the hardest things he'd ever done (that's him on the cover of this
magazine), but Catherine Rougerie left him thunderstruck.  She is blind, and was
being guided to the top of Western Europe's highest peak by a rope, tied to a
friend. "She made me realize that her limitations, like mine and everyone
else's are just things to get over," Graff says. "And it doesn't happen unless you
try.".  This wasn't Graff first bit of mountaineering for Time-while covering
the Bosnian war in 1993 he once had to make his way through mountainous
terrain at night with Serbian soldiers firing on his position-and it reminded him
of something he'd learned then. "You can push yourself a little further than
you thought," he says. "It's good to know".
         To reconnect with simple powerful lessons like that, people
sometimes need a drastic change of scene that leaves them alone with themselves, even
if they are not by themselves.
         That's why, as Europeans take their holiday this summer, they aren't
all lounging by the sea. According to one recent survey, so-called adventure
bookings in the UK are up 37% since 2002, to 4.5 million, with hiking and
rambling the most popular, and cycling and mountaineering not far behind.  We like
a good ramble as much as anyone, so we decided to devote this year's European
Journey special issue to the greatest treks, quests and pilgrimages we could
find.  Not all of them involve strenuous exercise, but they do invigorate the
spirit.
         Of course, in secular Europe the spirit takes many forms. Just ask
sportswriter Simon Kuper, who in this issue reflects on his journeys to the
great football cathedrals of Europe; or British author Adam Nicolson who
describes growing up in  Sissinghurst, arguably England's lo veliest garden, and
watching the pilgrims come to him.  Writer Michael Brunton rode his London-battered
mountain bike high into the Italian Alps in search of the shrine of Madonna
del Ghisallo-the patron saint of cyclists. Brunton is not a churchgoer, but in
this mountainside chapel, he says, he found a "vibrant place that connects the
past with the present, the living with the dead, and draws on a collective
human passion that even the nonbeliever can recognize as religious."
         Food writer Lydia Itoi discovered the same sort of passion during
her extraordinary 36-day, 780-km hike on the Camino de Santiago, one of the
great ancient pilgrim trails of Europe. Today's campaigners on the Camino are as
likely to be driven by a thirst of adventure as by conventional faith, but
whatever they expected, self-discovery is part of the bargain. After all, a
journey of over a million steps gives you plenty of time to listen to yourself
think. "Where are you from?" has always been a hard question for me," says Itoit, a
freelance food and travel writer who was raised in Japan and the U.S. but has
lived all over the world. "But the Camino blurs nationality-for the first
time ever, I felt part of a diverse community."
         Communal bonds were also at the heart of Reporter Ursula Sautter's
pilgrimage, a 21-km Volksmarch, or group hike, through the woods near Re
ngsdorf, Germany.  The walk took Sautter back to her own teenage years, when she
made these excursions with her family and friends-as some 2 million Germans still
do every year. "The sounds of stomping feet were the same", she says, "and so
was the unique aroma of liverwurst sandwiches coming from the depths of my
rucksack."
         For deputy editor James Geary, the unique aroma of pilgrimage
belonged to Sweny's lemon soap-a Dublin product that Leopold Bloom carries in his
pocket in the pages of James Joyce's Ulysses, and that Geary and throngs of
other Joyce devotees bought on June 16, the centenary of Bloomsday, the day on
which Joyce's masterpiece is set. "Few works of art inspire people to do such
silly things at the same time," says Geary. "People from all over the world
travel to Dublin to recreate a day that exists only in the imagination."
         Why do Joyce pilgrims-or any of the other questers in this issue-do
all this? It's easy to overthink the answer. As Itoi says, "sometimes you just
have to hit the road."

                                                 Eric Pooley, Editor
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Regards,
Rosina


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