Tag: pilgrims

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stroke-recovery

Strokeaversary: Canada Day 2026 Edition

It was a great Canada Day. Sara Parks officially became an Associate Professor at our university, Saint Francis Xavier, today. And after storms, a stroke, and setbacks, Sara and I finally, finally, finally got our kayaks – bought four years ago on sale at Canadian Tire – out and onto the water of our little cove here in the Acadian village of Pomquet. It was about time! Sara had to haul me out of the kayak afterwards, but otherwise it went great! I haven’t tried swimming yet, but kayaking is another #StrokeFirst, which reminded me it’s probably time for an update. (Kudos to Shirley Parks, Sara’s 84-year-old mother, who eschewed our suggested itinerary of museum visits and concerts, and instead declared it was a day to finally get those kayaks out on the water. She then was the only one who went barefoot through the shore grass, and then needed less help than me getting out when we were done!)

#StrokeFirsts

You may remember from a previous post that Sara and I keep a “gratitude cup.” Our practice is to add slips of paper throughout the week when something happens for which we’re thankful. Sometime during the weekend we try to go through the notes with a festive beverage, often a bottle of Nova Scotia bubbly, giving us a chance to be thankful twice.

Since my stroke, one regular category of items in our gratitude cup has been #StrokeFirst slips. Lately, there’ve been a lot:

My left-hand dexterity has improved markedly. These days sometimes I even forget for a few minutes after waking up about my left-side deficits… until I turn on the tap. In addition to the kayaking, I can now “flick” the car’s turn signal and house light switches without acrobatics, stir liquids with a spoon without looking completely goofy, type more fluidly with both hands, hold my tea in my left hand, and play C and F chords on guitar again – not well, but they’re there. On Father’s Day, I went fishing with my StFX Religious Studies colleague Gerjan Altenburg and his son, and he was the one who noticed a major difference in my ability to cast a line compared to this time last year. And since “The Beast” (the old Husqvarna tractor left by the previous owners) broke down, and our new lower-end mower “Chairman Mow” can’t handle hills, I can hand-mow our steep, weedy, and rocky hill to the water, with both hands. Great physio! (At least, that’s what I tell myself as consolation.)

#Running

An even more major #StrokeFirst happened two weeks ago. Running is one of those things I had come to understand I could never do again. I had tried and fallen, or tried and just frozen. I accepted it might be one of those things that wouldn’t come back. But last week, we were taking the garbage to the road right at mosquito banquet hour. As a true Maritimer, Sara was doused head to toe in bug spray. She suggested that standing next to her would be enough protection for me. On the way back down the driveway, I was surrounded by a cloud of mosquitoes, all chowing down. “RUN!” Sara yelled. “I can’t!” I reminded her. “Try! Just give it a try!” she urged. “Maybe it will work this time!” Sure enough, for the first time since the stroke, I managed a kind of hopping shuffle-run. I was overjoyed. My “foot-drop” (the toe of the affected foot tending to sag and catch the ground) is clearly improving. I was never a serious runner, like my friend Lyndon Sayers and pals, but I’ve had dreams recently where I’m jogging in short spurts like the old days. I hope they’re premonitions. I’ve found, like some others, that starting to dream about a new movement during stroke recovery often precedes actually doing it!

#MedChanges

In the last few weeks, after the semester ended, and Sara’s remarkable father Winston was laid to rest in his 91st year, I’ve found myself doing a lot more physical labour, all involving kneeling or crouching: sanding a deck with a belt sander, painting it, planting and fertilizing trees, mowing, weeding, building a low garden box for vegetables… Each time I would kneel and stand up I felt extremely dizzy. I was also feeling exhausted: some days I needed not one, but TWO naps! I chalked it up to a busy semester, hospital visits and a death in the family, and general stroke recovery.

However, when I checked my blood pressure, which had been so dangerously high for years and likely caused my stroke, it was low. Way too low. My brother Mark was visiting. (His annual golf trips across the border have now become all-Canadian adventures, and this year’s brought him to NS and PEI.) Ever the researcher, he looked up safe ranges and simply said, “those are dangerous numbers.” After Mark was back home came a brotherly text: “did you take care of that blood pressure yet?” I made an appointment with my wonderful family doctor, Alison McGlashan, who immediately stopped one of the large suite of blood pressure meds I went on post-stroke, and gave me a rota to follow for discontinuing more, should ongoing BP readings indicate the need.

I’ve now dropped two of my regular pills, and my BP is already closer to “normal.” The dizziness and fatigue stopped right away! A surprise side effect of dropping Amlodipine was that I immediately started smelling more. I didn’t realize that I hadn’t been smelling as much, but when I started being able to pick out what fruit is being eaten in another room of the house, and being offended by the compost, Sara looked it up and, sure enough, certain medications can dampen smell! I just walked by my work boots on the shoe rack and thought, “yuck! Is that how they smell all the time? Poor Sara!”

Some things – like this rhubarb pie Sara and Shirley recently made – smell (and taste) even more glorious now!

#The13Pilgrims

One of the great things about becoming an old fart is that I can go to conferences and try out zany ideas that early-stage academics still trying to build CVs and land jobs might not dare try.

For instance, pilgrim personality cards! I’ve invented a deck called “The 13 Pilgrims.” I’ll be presenting these soon at the 13th Sacred Journeys International (pilgrimage) Conference in Quebec City. The deck is designed for multiple uses: as a conversation starter, a preparation and/or debriefing tool for pilgrimages or other experiences, a game, a group decision-making tool (e.g., for a congregation considering a merger), and an informal personality/role test. It’s based on 13 pilgrim archetypes I developed, while the talented Cape Breton artist and illustrator Kate Phillips did the artwork. I was able to hire Kate because of an Eastern Synod Mission Grant (my bishop, Carla Blakley, and her assistants, especially the Rev Adam Snook, continue to be SO supportive of my creative endeavours!).

I’m really looking forward to presenting this. Isn’t Kate’s artwork fantastic?

#Context

So this Canada Day, I’m grateful. Yes, I sometimes lurch when I walk, and ignore my left hand as it hangs limp, and have to concentrate on each movement to avoid mishap. But I’m still improving – even if just a bit – every week. And there is so much joy and life afoot.

Living through a major stroke hasn’t been easy, but I know how fortunate I am. Right now I have three very dear pilgrim friends, with whom I’ve walked many miles, all facing life-threatening cancers. Their inspiring courage is remarkable, and a testimony to their spirits.

There is no perfect life, at least not for long. The longer we have the privilege of living, the more certain it is that we will know grief, pain, and heartache, in some way or another. I choose to focus on gratitude for what I continue to learn through my stroke. I pray for the friends I’ve just mentioned (and those I haven’t but am thinking of) in their disheartening battles. And for you in yours, whatever they might be.

This fall, I’m the speaker for the Nova Scotia United Church clergy education retreat at Pictou Lodge (pictured below – the couches remind me that a blog is a conversation). My topic is: “Everything After Everything Falls Apart.” Almost two years after my stroke, I’m still learning what that “everything” includes — from my own experience, and from what that experience leads others to share. Thanks for being part of the conversation as all of our ways forward unfold.

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book reviews Uncategorized

Sheila Graham-Smith on Someone Else’s Saint

(and on pilgrimage in its varied forms)

This fall, while signing copies of “Someone Else’s Saint” at the Writers’ Federation of Nova Scotia‘s annual Booktoberfest in Halifax, I had the good fortune that the Pottersfield Press table was right beside the Askance Publishing table, where Sheila Graham-Smith was signing copies of her novel, “if, after snow.”

She had never heard of my book, nor I of hers (although apparently I was the first to recognize the Sappho reference in her title). We exchanged our books accompanied by firm promises to read and report back.

Sheila did much more than report! She penned a pensive and writerly review, wrapped in a meditation on pilgrimage that features Chaucer, writer (and StFX colleague) Anne Simpson, and my dear friend and pilgrimage expert George Greenia.

It’s a perceptive and wise review. A gift! For more from her, look up Sheila’s two books if, after snow (which I’ve only just begun, and which is enchanting and extremely well-written) and The View From Errisbeg!

A pilgrimage is a journey to engage the foreign as foreign, outside our comfort zones.

Sheila Graham-Smith
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“Der Pilger (The Pilgrim)” reviews The Good Walk

Gotta love those Germans…

When my friend Traugott Roser contacted me to let me know he’d written a review of The Good Walk, for the magazine Der Pilger (The Pilgrim), I was overjoyed!

My hopelessly naive generalizations about Germans include that…

All Germans are fit and athletic and they LOVE walking and pilgrimages. So they’ll eat up The Good Walk. The book that really ignited the contemporary rise of the Camino was Hape Kerkeling’s fun and incredibly popular I’m Off Then: Losing and Finding Myself on the Camino de Santiago, first published in German and a sensation there.,

All Germans idealize the North American “West” and North American landscapes. Germany is a crowded country that has lost so much of its own “wildness” but still maintains a strong national mythology of origins around it. And yet …

All Germans are aware of and sensitive to Indigenous sovereignty and concerns, and …

All Germans love to read, and as a bonus, as truly civilized people are multilingual and can often read English books like mine, unlike most anglophones and folks like me, who struggle with anything more than simple tourist directions auf deutsch…

SO. After all these expectations, how did the review turn out?

Thanks to Google translate, you can read on for yourself….

The Review

p. 43 New Pilgrim Perspectives:

“A devout Muslim embarks on the Way of St. James, and a Canadian professor and long-time pilgrim follows the trail of spiritual wandering in the vastness of the Midwest. Two inspiring book recommendations from Protestant pastor and passionate pilgrim Traugott Roser.“

“The Search for a Lost Home (Die Suche nach einem verlorenen Zuhause)“

“Matthew Anderson, Professor of New Testament at Concordia University in Montreal, is an experienced pilgrim who has also led his Canadian students through Spain, France, England, and Norway and has made a name for himself as a documentary filmmaker on pilgrimage. After many trips to Europe, he wonders whether pilgrimage is also possible in North America and what pilgrimage might mean there. In his new book, “The Good Walk – Creating New Paths on Traditional Prairie Trails,” he tells a compelling story of humanity’s age-old paths through the prairie of the Middle West. It is an account of a painful yet healing search for home: “Pilgrimage together with others—in the broadest sense understood as spiritually motivated hiking—is a way of searching for a lost home.” Anderson is a descendant of settlers who farmed…

(P. 45) and built small towns on the supposedly deserted plains of Saskatchewan (see photo above), and [the region once called] the Northwest Territories. Since 2015, Anderson and his wife Sara have been traveling the trails once used by traders, settler treks, and the Northwest Mounted Police, a paramilitary force commissioned by the Canadian government. But Anderson not only gets close to the story of his own family, descendants of white European immigrants, but also of the people who lived there before and were deprived of their land through sham treaties, displacement, and targeted extermination.

Pilgrimage: intercultural and interfaith

Anderson is accompanied on his journey by various companions, including Don Bolen, the Catholic Archbishop of the Diocese of Regina. Descendants of the First Nations, the Lakota, the Nakota, and the Nehyawak (Cree) accompany them or host them, as do descendants of settlers and the Métis, descendants of European-Indigenous marriages, who historically mediated between cultures as fur traders and are now considered an independent nation.

Anderson sees his hikes through the vast landscapes as pilgrimages to places whose history has been partly forgotten, partly erased. This also changes the landscape and its perception itself: through narratives and archaeological evidence, places of living memory emerge.

The places create new relationships and deepen old ones. In this way, the pilgrims come into contact with the spiritual world, [sometimes] with the elders and wise men of the Indigenous peoples, [sometimes] with their own family history, and [always] with nature. Through Christian and Indigenous rituals, the pilgrimage becomes an intercultural and religiously unifying experience. At the same time, it is a painful journey that ties in with the tradition of penitential pilgrimage: The extermination of the North American bison took place in the vastness of the prairie. This deprived the Indigenous people of their livelihood, and thousands starved to death while faced with the government’s deliberate inaction. It is equally painful when the pilgrims encounter survivors from the church-run boarding schools (of both Catholics and Protestants):

On behalf of state authorities, children were taken from their families and  Nations and placed in Christian schools. Only in recent years did the public learn of the graves of thousands of nameless children who did not survive the ordeal.

Reward for Physical and Mental Effort

The paths across the prairie demand physical and mental effort from the pilgrims, but they also reward them: through community, forgiveness, and understanding. Matthew Anderson ultimately even succeeds in finding peace for his deceased parents and for his sister, who died very young. The pilgrim’s path is a good path, and with the project Anderson describes, a new, very unique pilgrimage tradition begins in Canada.

I couldn’t put either book down; it was precisely the different perspectives of both authors that inspired me to consider my own pilgrimage

I couldn’t put either book down; it was precisely the different perspectives of both authors that inspired me to consider my own pilgrimage on the Way of St. James in a new and more profound way: as a consciously religious experience, as a path to encounter God, and as a path to reconciliation.”

Dr. Roser’s Own Pilgrim Book

I wouldn’t be much of a friend, if at this point I didn’t mention that Traugott has published his own pilgrim book. It’s in German, titled Hola! bei Kilometer 410: Mit Allen Sinnen auf dem Jakobsweg (Hola! At kilometre 410 with all senses on the Camino de Santiago).

I wonder if a rather free, but still good, translation might be: “Hola! Fully aware and alive at kilometre 410 of the Camino de Santiago.” It’d be great to see this valuable book out for the English-language reader as well! (By the way, the other book he reviewed with mine in the above article sounds fascinating).

Traugott does all kinds of interesting teaching and research, including (like me) teaching Bible and Film classes. He is also an ethicist who teaches about ethics in healthcare and palliative care.

Thanks, Traugott, for the great review. Buen Camino! Looking forward to walking with you some day soon!

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SOUTH BRANCH SCRIBBLER

This prairie boy remembers feeling on top of the world when he got called a “Montreal Creative” by Nantali Indongo on CBC Radio One Montreal in 2012:

But I have to admit being “author Matthew Anderson of Antigonish, Nova Scotia” feels pretty great in 2025. That’s my moniker in this “Story Behind the Story” interview for the South Branch Scribbler. Interviewer Allan Hudson is a New Brunswick writer and promoter of writing, and The South Branch Scribbler is his blog. He reached out to talk about the backstory of Someone Else’s Saint: How a Scottish Pilgrimage Led to Nova Scotia, published this coming week.

If you live near Moncton NB, I’ll be joining Allan at the 3rd Annual Greater Moncton Riverview Dieppe Book Fair, April 26 2025.
Riverview Lion’s Centre 10am to 3pm.

If you live near Antigonish, the official launch of Someone Else’s Saint will be at the Antigonish Heritage Museum on May 1 2025 at 7pm, where I’ll be upstaged by the glorious Mary Beth Carty and blessed in Gaelic (at least I hope it’s a blessing – my Gaelic isn’t too good yet) by Lewis MacKinnon.

If you live further afield, Someone Else’s Saint is available from Indigo, or by request at those two symbols that the world is still a good and just place: your independent bookseller or your public library.

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On the Benefits of Walking

Photo of walker Harold Steppuhn, by Matthew R Anderson

A friend asked if I had any recommendations for books or articles on the benefits of walking. Do I? Of course–too many, as I discovered when trying to make a list! So here, for others who may be interested, is a very partial catalogue (under construction) of books and articles in English or translated to English. Some are about specific paths or trails, some are thematic, some meditative, some memoir, some scientific, and many have more than one of these ingredients. My favourite books in this genre combine memoir, humour, historical reminiscence, and observations about walking. So that’s what I’ve also tried to write.

Solvitur ambulando: it is solved by walking

Some suggestions

Horatio Clare, Something of His Art: Walking to Lübeck with J.S. Bach (Dorset: Little Toller, 2018). Nice BBC-style writing (there are podcasts of this as well) about following Bach’s footsteps through paths.

Linda Cracknell, Doubling Back: Ten Paths Trodden in Memory (Glasgow: Freight Books, 2014). Good memoir of esp Scottish trails, combined with travelogue and literary commentary. Available (through a new publisher) on Amazon.

Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1974). In some ways, this book helped start the “new nature writing” and its emphasis on walking. Or it picked up on Thoreau, since it’s really about walking and observing in a small area. A classic.

Dwayne Donald, “We Need a New Story: Walking and the wâhkôtowin Imagination,” Journal of the Canadian Association for Curriculum Studies (JCACS) La Revue de l’association canadienne pour l’étude du curriculum (RACÉC) Vol. 18, No. 2, (2021): 53-63. Focusses from nêhiyaw (Cree) perspective on the uses of walking as a way of changing things, including attitudes and history of settlement.

Nancy Louise Frey, Pilgrim Stories: On and Off the Road to Santiago (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998). This entertaining, well-written book is specifically about the Camino de Santiago as “therapeutic walking”

Frédéric Gros, A Philosophy of Walking (New York: Verso, 2014). Gros focusses on the history of walking and philosophical thinking.

M. Brennan Harris (2019) “The Physiological Effects of Walking Pilgrimage,” International Journal of Religious Tourism and Pilgrimage: Vol. 7: Iss. 1, Article 9. doi:https://doi.org/10.21427/q6de-av43 Available at: https://arrow.tudublin.ie/ijrtp/vol7/iss1/9. Pretty much what it says, and interesting from an exercise scientist’s point of view.

Trevor Herriot, The Road is How: A Prairie Pilgrimage through Nature, Desire, and Soul. HarperCollins, 2014. I know Trevor and have walked with him. He’s a good writer and a keen observer of humanity and nature, and passionate about the environment and justice for Indigenous peoples.

Werner Herzog, Of Walking in Ice. Translated by Martje Herzog and Alan Greenberg (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2015). Short and interesting, this account details Herzog’s journey north on foot to visit a supposedly dying friend.

Erling Kagge, Silence in the Age of Noise (New York: Pantheon, 2017). (translated from the Norwegian). Lovely reflection, on the meditative aspects of walking.

Gideon Lewis-Kraus, A Sense of Direction: Pilgrimage for the Restless and the Hopeful (New York: Penguin/Riverhead, 2012). Details three different pilgrimages including Hasidic pilgrimages, in extremely well-written, urban “New Yorker” style. Emphasis on the “restless” part of the title.

Robert Macfarlane, The Old Ways (London: Penguin, 2013). The prototypical English countryside walking book. A classic must-read of the genre, about the English countryside, full of interesting and educational asides.

Lisbeth Mikaelsson, “Pilgrimage as Post-secular Therapy.” Scripta Instituti Donneriani Aboensis 24 (2014): 259–273. Pretty much what it says, as academic treatment.

Robert Moor, On Trails: An Exploration (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2016). An entertaining and well-written general exploration, tending toward the environmental and natural place of walking, rather than the historical.

O’Mara, Shane In Praise of Walking (Bodley Head, 2019). Haven’t read this yet but absolutely will, since it’s by a fellow Dubliner. From a neuroscientist!

Thelma Poirier, Rock Creek (Regina SK: Coteau Books). Poetic explorations of land and history from Poirier’s three day walk to the source of the creek in Wood Mountain. In the tradition of Nan Shepherd and Annie Dillard.

Nan Shepherd, The Living Mountain (Aberdeen: University of Aberdeen Press, 1977). A classic meditation on place and our longing for connection to the natural world, set in the Cairngorm Mountains, Scotland. Walking-and noticing-locally.

Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, As We Have Always Done: Indigenous Freedom Through Radical Resistance (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2017); See chapter 9 “Land as Pedagogy.” From Anishinaabe perspective, on land as teacher (walking has a place but secondary, in this treatment)

Rebecca Solnit, Wanderlust: A History of Walking (New York: Penguin, 2000). I still think this is the greatest book of this genre, by a fantastic, insightful, author concerned not only with walking but also with justice.

Solnit, A Field Guide to Getting Lost (New York: Penguin, 2005). Great, but not as good as Wanderlust (or maybe I just compare everything to that).

Thoreau (need I say more?)

Edmund White, The Flâneur: A Stroll Through the Paradoxes of Paris (New York: Bloomsbury, 2001). Interesting for being a perspective about the history and philosophy of urban walking.

Raynor Winn, The Salt Path. (London: Penguin, 2019). More on a specific set of English historic paths, with general observations about walking.

There are LOTS of popular articles about the benefits of walking. A smattering, in no particular order:

https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/5-surprising-benefits-of-walking

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2019/jul/28/its-a-superpower-how-walking-makes-us-healthier-happier-and-brainier (based on the book In Praise of Walking by Shane O’Mara; there is a BBC podcast featuring this writer here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/51SPhn5FKSYRnQNswfnWsN2/8-reasons-why-we-should-all-walk-more )

And last but not least, Matthew Anderson (that’s me!!) The Good Walk. A memoir of how we launched the long-distance pilgrimages that Canadians and Indigenous folks have been taking almost yearly since on traditional trails across the prairies. I’m looking for a publisher!

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Walking to Lübeck

On the recommendation of Ken Wilson, I’m reading Something of his Art, a 100-page book by English-Welsh author and broadcaster Horatio Clare about a walk from Arnstadt to Lübeck, Germany. In October 1705, at the age of 20, a rebellious young Johann Sebastian Bach headed north on foot to pay a surprise visit to the elder organist and Baroque composer Dieterich Buxtehude. Clare and two others from the BBC recreated that walk, also setting out in the fall. The record of their trip – you can listen to a BBC podcast series about it – contains Clare’s reflections on everything from Bach’s temperament (students of the day carried rapiers to defend themselves) to ways that the autumn countryside – and our world – have changed because of climate degradation.

Ken loved the book; he told me I would too. He was right.

Clare walked 230 miles, roughly the distance we’ve covered in our treks on Treaty Four and Treaty Six territories. I’ve had the pleasure of singing works by both Bach and Buxtehude in various choirs over the years. And I’m a Lutheran, affected by years of hearing Bach, and by some of the same theological worldviews that inspired the composer.

But you don’t have to be musical or a Lutheran (or even a walker) to love this book: Horatio Clare is a rare treasure of an author. His rich descriptions will have you hearing the sound of their feet “through thick cushions of beech leaves, gold and bronze and red,” and seeing Lower Saxony “intricate and melancholy in the rain.” You’ll learn about Bach. More than that, you’ll find yourself walking along Thuringian trails greeting local farmers, or entering old-town Erfurt in the golden twilight. Anyone who has ventured on long treks will feel a thrill of recognition in Clare’s words: “Coming into town as night falls is a wonderful feeling after a day’s walk. You move through the streets, your eyes sharpened by the length of the day’s views, your feet tired and your muscles worked, alert and fatigued at once.”

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How the Meaning of a Pilgrimage Never Stops Changing (even when the walk is over)

Have you ever had nagging doubts about whether you behaved properly at some event? Or thought back on an experience, only to realize you now think about it in an entirely different way than you once did? It can happen in pilgrimages too. It was enlightening to check back with Ásta Camilla Gylfadóttir about our 2016 trek with her and a group of other Icelanders from Bær to Skálholt. I’ve been worried that with our English-language needs and our massive tourist luggage we eight Canadians “spoiled it” for the Icelanders that year. But for Milla, our walk is only a bright memory. For her, the fact that there were Canadians along on the Pílagrimar only made it better. I can’t tell you how liberating our recent Zoom chat turned out to be.

Gabriel from back making wings day twoWhich makes me realize once again that there are many parts to a walking pilgrimage: the journey is only one of them. A big part of any pilgrimage is narrative: the stories that gave rise to the pilgrimage (at Lourdes, for instance, the Marian appearance to Bernadette), but also the stories that come out of the experience of the pilgrims. Like the dozens of crutches left in Brother André’s chapel at St Joseph’s Oratory, Montreal, or the hundreds of pilgrim blogs, videos, books, and poems arising from the Camino de Santiago in Spain, these later stories “layer on” to the original narratives, making the original journeys richer, more complex, and more about the present. A pilgrimage stays ever-present – and ever meaningful – in its re-telling and sharing. For that I’m thankful.

My pilgrimage podcast is now available on Spotify and on TuneIn, as well as Apple Podcasts (some episodes missing) and it’s hosted on Podbean!

Iceland from inside church day one

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Meeting Saint Clare on the way to Holy Island

I just posted the second episode in my podcast series “Pilgrimage Stories from Up and Down the Staircase”! In these 20 minutes you come along for the first part of the walk along the St. Cuthbert Way from Melrose Scotland to Holy Island, England. You’ll meet Chris and Clare, and find out why she’s Saint Clare, to me. I hope you enjoy the show, which you can find on Podbean here, and on Apple podcasts, here!

walking to Holy Island

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Pilgrimage Stories From Up and Down the Staircase

How do you walk a pilgrimage during these months of restricted travel? I’ve been walking up and down my staircase in Nottingham England, and dreaming of pilgrimages past! To share those stories I’m releasing my first-ever podcast, “Pilgrimage Stories from Up and Down the Staircase.” Each episode features a different trail, or a different character I’ve met. psuds logo finalI’ll introduce you to enthralling paths in Norway, Scotland, England, Iceland, Canada and Indigenous territories, and provide some of the resources you’ll need to walk them. All the while I’ll be telling the stories of the fascinating individuals I’ve walked with and met along the way, and sharing snatches of our conversations, songs, and experiences.

Alpine shelter

Thursday, July 30, 2020, at 5 pm Montreal time, I’m releasing the first episode: “Walking the St Olav Way.” In the 17-minute episode you’ll hear snatches of our struggle up and down mountains and jumping late-spring run-off streams and boggy marshes. You’ll meet a friendly Norwegian border agent and a marathon German pilgrim struggling to understand his life. You’ll sit with us in rustic Budsjord Gård and hear fellow pilgrim Kathryn singing as we walked. I hope you’ll listen in to this first episode, and to the others as they come out every Thursday! The series “Pilgrimage Stories from Up and Down the Staircase” will be available wherever you find your podcasts.

To find out more about St Olav before listening to the episode, why not check out some of these resources?

  • The official St Olav website, which you can find here, is a wealth of beautiful images and practical info (look for the English-language option)
  • In 2011, Alison Raju wrote The Pilgrim Guide to Trondheim, available at this website.
  • For my article about the history of the Trail and its modern-day recovery as well as some photos of our 2013 trek, see the International Journal of Religious Tourism and Pilgrimage, here.
  • For an article about the health benefits of walking the St Olav Way, written by a Norwegian scholar of pilgrimage in the same journal, see this link.

I’m looking forward to sharing my experiences with you on the “Pilgrimage Stories From Up and Down the Staircase” podcast!

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Kahnawà:ke to Montreal Walk, 2019!

Last Saturday, October 26, a group of eleven, mostly Settler Canadians, walked the Seaway between 25-30 km from Kahnawà:ke’s Cultural Centre to Montreal. I’m a Settler scholar from Treaty Four territory, and I planned this walk as a “bodily territorial acknowledgement,” in preparation for our Theology in the City Conference at Concordia this week. We pilgrims were a mixed group – a Buddhist monk, two professors, two undergraduate students, a doctoral student, and a writer! With the knowledge and approval of the Traditional Longhouse of the Mohawk Nation at Kahnawà:ke, we began with a smudge led by Dr Christine Jamieson (Interior Salish – Boothroyd Nation) – Christine teaches Indigenous spirituality in our Dept of Theological Studies. Then we were off! We were blessed by the nicest day of the week: sunny, dry, and warm. We were enthusiastic walkers who made good time, and were back in Montreal by supper.  I’m thankful for the good conversations and quiet moments of beauty and contemplation along the way. Thanks also to the enthusiastic reporters from the Concordian, led by Jad Abukasm, who walked the first leg with us and enjoyed breakfast at our table at the Sunnyside Diner (formerly Friendly’s) in Kahnawà:ke!

(all photos Matthew R. Anderson)