I stare at the young man on the train platform unable to believe my ears. “What do you mean the bus doesn’t go there?” “Sorry, there is too much snow in early spring. The bus cannot get to the monastery.” He pauses while contemplating my stricken face. “You could try snowshoeing there; it’s only a few hours,” he suggests gently.
I wouldn’t know how to snowshoe if a black bull with three horns chased me. I had invested months of planning and a good slice of my savings for a pilgrimage to the remote alpine monastery that’s home to the world-famous St Bernard dogs. All that effort came to an abrupt halt in the town of Orsières in the southern Swiss Alps as I heard those fateful words.
Pilgrimage
The primary reason I’m on this pilgrimage stems from a lifelong fascination with St Bernard dogs and their legends of finding and saving people lost in the snow. Going through a bit of a lost period myself, I decided to search for the fabled rescuers at their source.
The hounds, originally bred in an ancient monastery on the St Bernard Pass in southern Switzerland, have an intriguing history. The monastery, built in 1050, was named the Great St Bernard Hospice after its founder, Bernard de Menthon, who later became a saint. Situated on a dangerous road used by armies and bandits, the hospice became a sort of on-the-road-refuge for travellers, refugees, merchants and soldiers alike.
The route through the St Bernard region has been used since the Bronze Age and has felt the tramping of tribes and armies over millennia. In 390 BC, a Gaulish army crossed to defeat Rome. Hannibal’s famous crossing of the Alps in 217 BC, reputedly with elephants, is also associated with the Grand-St-Bernard.
In 57 BC, Julius Caesar crossed the Summa Poenina, as it was known then, to conquer the pagan peoples of Martigny, who worshipped the Celtic god Poenn; the chain of great peaks on the Swiss–Italian frontier still bear the name Pennine Alps. Since then, Pope Stephen II, Charlemagne, Huns, Saracens and Napoleon have passed through the region.
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The monks themselves travelled in the cold, snowy conditions and it helped to have a companion able to break a good trail. Thus evolved a dog with a broad chest to push through snow, rolls of fat to keep it warm and a keen nose to find the trail. The dogs’ sense of smell also found people lost in the mountains or buried in avalanches. The tag of “rescue hound” snowballed into legend and by the 20th century the dogs had found more than 2000 people.
Sadly, there are now only four monks left at the hospice — not enough to care for the 20 dogs, each the size of a miniature horse. A foundation set up in the nearby town of Martigny took over the dogs’ breeding and care on condition the pooches still spend the summer with the monks to keep a link with tradition.
The second reason for this pilgrimage is to step, just momentarily, on one of the two great mediaeval Christian pilgrimage routes that cross Europe. The Via Francigena links two historic Christian centres of importance: Canterbury in England and Rome in Italy. The other route is the St Jacques de Compostelle, running across northern Spain.
First recorded by Sigeric, a Saxon archbishop of Canterbury, on his return journey from Rome in 990, the Via Francigena came to be used by thousands of pilgrims, peaking around the 11th century when multitudes of souls “looking for their Lost Heavenly Home” tramped across Europe. The Via Francigena was, and still is, a road for pilgrims and slow travellers and was declared a European cultural pathway in 1994.
“The traveller of La Via Francigena is aware of both his mission and his responsibility…” goes the saying. For someone like me, who knows her mission in life involves exciting global travels, helping to change the world and meeting remarkable people while experiencing exotic landscapes, the words have a resonance. The problem lies in the word “responsibilities”, so perhaps this pilgrimage is also an internal search for acceptance and balance.
Getting there
To get to where I was standing in Orsières, the heart of St Bernard country, you take several planes to Zurich in Switzerland and board a train for the four-hour trip to Martigny, a lovely town overlooked by an ancient castle, set in a valley surrounded by mountains.
Signs of the 56 BC Roman war against the Celtic tribes of Martigny are evident in some of its Roman ruins, including an amphitheatre where cow fights are held in early autumn. On top of another ruin is a famous museum with the impressive-sounding name of the Pierre Gianadda Foundation and it was here that I had my first “moment”.
Walking into the museum, I saw the brooding, massive form of Balzac, one of Auguste Rodin’s masterpieces. A 19th century French genius of sculpture, Rodin in 1882 met his most talented protégé, Camille Claudel, with whom he worked, fought and loved for more than 10 years.
The exhibition wove the tale of both these talented artists. Impressive sculptures by both were interspersed with written and photographic work that showed the quick rise and fall of Claudel and the gradual rise of Rodin’s career. I was transported into a world of passion and loving intensity.
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They challenged me, those long dead artists and their masterpieces of emotion. How do I love? Do I allow myself to feel all I can or do I hold myself back through pain, fear and embarrassment? Do I choose to sit in my safe shell of impassivity or can I step into openness and passion, risking hurt and humiliation?
Later, I sat outside with tears in my eyes, my head reeling with new perspectives. From a morass of half-crazed thoughts and tearful emotions emerged new understandings: I had been hiding my feelings and suppressing my creativity and willingness to love. I realised I wanted to live as passionately as I could.
Then emerged a new and simple appreciation for my husband, he who goes about his suburban business and awaits my return. Perhaps I will call him…
Travelling higher
The 15,000 inhabitants of Martigny reside at an elevation of 475 metres. My pilgrimage took me steadily higher as I left this lovely town with its cobbled streets and local food specialities that focused on local cheeses.
The night before leaving, I indulged in a cheese feast involving different types of delicious fondues served in communal pots over individual flames. The fondue meal, I was told, is always a shared one so friends and families can dip and talk. Where were my family and friends? How much do I share with them? Another “moment”: an understanding that I truly wish to feel community in my life.
Continuing my journey in search of the St Bernards, I left Martigny in a cute little train called the St Bernard Express. The train is small, red and covered in pictures of large, cuddly dogs occasionally accompanied by several black-robed monks, so I felt I was nearing my goal just by the pictures of dogs surrounding me.
I felt a surge of excitement as I gazed at this magical country. The train wandered over snow-covered mountains, across forested dale and whistled through dark tunnels until it arrived at the town of Sembrancher, where I left the train bound east to the valley of Bagnes and the town of Le Châble, better known for its enormous commune.
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Across the platform, an identical train whistled a greeting and off we went into St Bernard country. This region speaks to one’s inner child: a toy train journeys through a Swiss terrain normally seen on postcards and biscuit tins. We rattled past villages of pitched-roofed houses and steepled churches, backed by terraced vineyards, then tootled through dark tunnels and into birch forests slashed by snow-laced gorges.
We entered an enormous valley and stopped with a satisfied whistle and sigh at the railway terminus at Orsières, hub of the St Bernard region. The valley supports 3000 residents living in 19 villages, many of which cling to the slopes that sweep up towards mist-shrouded mountain tops.
So here I am, standing with a stranger on a train platform and digesting the fact I could go no further. In summer, a connecting bus takes visitors up to the monastery, but not in the snowy spring.
Surrender
The stranger introduces himself as Dominique and offers to show me around. So I surrender to yet another “moment” and am taken on a powerful journey of simplicity and local charm. The drive up a zig-zag road climbing a magnificently steep mountainside reveals spectacular vistas of jagged mountain ranges herring-boned with snow. From the angular mountainsides emerge knobbly ledges where little villages poke out from swirls of white mist.
We reach the village of Champex-Lac and from its 1400-metre vantage point I see Orsières as a small patch in an impossibly large valley spreading out in all directions. The surrounding mountains rear into the clouds and I point and gasp in wonder as Dominique smiles.
It’s time to warm up and eat, so we enter an atmospheric restaurant called Vieux Champex (Old Champex), housed in a rustic 100-year-old building. I dig into the local specialties featuring bolet (a mushroom dish), roesti (grated potatoes) and a sizzling steak fresh off the wood stove’s hotplate. This is the kind of pilgrimage I can stomach.
Congenial atmosphere and hearty fare bring down barriers. A bottle of wine appears, along with a few locals, who settle in to hear Dominique talk about his grandparents’ nomadic lives following the cowherds up and down the mountains to their summer and winter pastures. He and the other townsfolk are excited that far-off Australia had cattle families in the Victorian High Country who led a similar lifestyle, even to the point of having rough slab alpine “chateaux”.
We spill out of the restaurant like old friends, chattering in a mix of English and Swiss French. Cars are produced and a confused but congenial impromptu tour of Champex follows, revealing a lovely lake formed by the withdrawal of glaciers. Boats are available but we decline, not wanting to mix alcohol and boating.
Dominique drives me to a nearby village deep in its quarterly bread-making activities. Inside the communal bakery, I learn the age-old recipe for what look like fairly chewy loaves. Four times a year, through the centuries, the local families fire up a large village oven and keep it hot over several days so each family can bake over 100 loaves of bread.
Stumbling out of the hot two-roomed bakery, I gulp in the cold air and momentarily feel grateful for the surrounding snow and ice that keep temperatures around zero. I look back at the apricot-coloured building that houses the communal bakery. It stands cold and squat in the snow, yet warm and lively inside.
Chopping wood, carrying water
These people move their cows and bake their bread, give birth, live and die in a place where they have deep roots. They seem happy and proud, secure in the knowledge of the surrounding area. All the people I have met in the St Bernard region emanate the same aura — one of steadfast stability. I think of Auguste Rodin’s quiet, long-suffering wife — a shadow in the great master’s life, who nevertheless constantly created the home, hearth and hearty fare that sustained Rodin and his creative genius.
Isn’t that the two sides of life, I ponder on the way back to Orsières. A certain amount of mundane plodding is needed to keep the daily bread on the table and the wood cut to keep a body warm and a heart secure. Then, from this can emerge the wild thrashings of creativity, excitement and passion.
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I, like so many, tussle with these opposing forces: the mundane cooking, cleaning and ferrying of children in the boxed suburbs of Melbourne, from which my writings and planning of pilgrimages, travels and tales can emerge in sporadic explosions of juice and fire. When I’m at home, I yearn for travel; when I’m travelling I think of home with fondness.
I realise that both the plodding and the travel bring balance and both are required for a full life. Can I stop yearning to be somewhere else and relish where I am in the moment, knowing that my need for the other will emerge shortly and I am eminently blessed to be able to have both in my life?
I hug Dominique and exchange email addresses, the St Bernard Express whistling its imminent return to Martigny. As the doggies look at me from the painted side of the train, I muse on the unexpected. I didn’t get to see the original home of the St Bernard, but I felt great satisfaction from shared local food and basking in the endearing friendliness and ancient traditions of a people comfortable in a magnificent mountain region. I explored my yearning for community and roots and realised I need to find a balance for the settled and nomadic sides of my existence.
My pilgrimage by planes, trains and automobiles is not as arduous as the journey of those who walked the Via Francigena, but who said pilgrimages are set in stone? I didn’t see the famed monastery, but I was challenged and gifted with insight and opportunity. Not to mention some pretty amazing scenery.
I see a helicopter flying above with a stretcher hanging from a cable. Technology may have replaced the St Bernard’s role in rescuing strangers, but they still have a knack for letting travellers find themselves.
Trip notes
- Saint Bernard dogs: The Barry Foundation
- Martigny
- St Bernard region
- Best time to walk the Via Francgena: May to September
- Accommodation: from B&Bs and small local hotels to convents, hostels, camping and luxury spas
- Association Via Francigena provides pilgrim passports and publishes two useful guidebooks.
- Iubilantes is an Italian-based volunteer cultural pilgrimage organisation
