Paris to the Pyrenees: A Skeptic Pilgrim Walks the Way of Saint James Read Online Free PDF Page A

appreciative of Gaul’s fine roads and prosperous Oppida. In fact, without the pre-existing road network, how would Caesar have been able to march so quickly into Gaul? The Celtic tribes in Caesar’s day already had been transformed by contact with Greeks, Etruscans, and Romans, and had an advanced if brutal civilization. They were less “barbarian,” for example, than the hardcore Germans or the savages holed up in what’s now Switzerland. The Gauls could no longer defend themselves against the Swiss-Germans and, taking Caesar at his word, it was these overly civilized Gauls who called upon Rome to save them from the future makers of the world’s best chocolate and keepers of secret, numbered bank accounts.
    The Gallic request for Roman aid fitted nicely with Caesar’s long-term goal of “Romanizing” northwestern Europe as a bulwark against Teutonic hordes. So up he swept from the Forum, to fight for Gaul and, it turned out, to stay. And stay. The tale sounded like a warmup to the last few centuries’ conflicts pitting France against Germany, with England and America—the New Romans—stepping in to save the day.
    The day was long, but not long enough to spend it entirely with Caesar. Full of bounce and unfamiliar optimism, we headed south on the Roman-pilgrim’s trail, following a bright yellow scallop-shell signpost. Though it made me feel unkind, I could not help thinking the road looked like any other rutted, muddy farm road. But as we trekked forward full of glee, the realization that centurions and perhaps Julius Caesar himself had ridden down it somehow gave the scenery a disconcerting, jackbooted gravitas.
    TIME TUNNELS AND WISHING WELLS
    We hadn’t hiked more than a mile when we spotted our first famous landmark—the Fontaines Salées archeological site and salt springs.
    “Do we have time for a visit?” I asked, checking my pedometer and watch.
    “About three months,” Alison reminded me. “Who’s keeping track, other than you?”
    Inside the ticket booth, a lean man sat reading a newspaper. “The Roman road ran by here,” he said unprompted, as we showed him the tickets Astérix had sold us. “Part of it is underneath the paved road you just walked on. But the Romans were newcomers,” he added with an air of mystery. “The Celts started using the salt springs around 200 BC.” He sounded like an oracle, or an actor used to reciting the same lines. “It’s older than that, though, much older.” He raised a finger, wiggled it significantly, and returned to his newspaper.
    A pattern of stone ruins hugged a lush, green hollow near the river. Walls a few feet high revealed what was, we learned, the Gauls’ circular temple to the gods of this mineral springs. The Romans had remodeled and expanded it. Enough had withstood the centuries to evoke the salacious rituals of old.
    Frogs croaked in marshy pools as Alison read aloud from the site brochure. I couldn’t help concurring that the Romans and Celts were Johnny-come-latelies. Archeologists had discovered nineteen wooden wellheads at Fontaines Salées, all fashioned from felled trees hollowed out with fire. Dendrochronology and carbon-14 revealed one sample to have been cut in the spring of 2238 BC.
    2238 BC?
    I repeated the date silently, counting backwards. That was 4,246 years ago, the end of the Stone Age or Neolithic. Here?
    We wandered through the ruins, seeing them with new eyes. I was filled again with disconcerting enthusiasm. Salty water welled through the rubble. I peered into one of the submerged wooden casings. The bark was still on the tree. How had Neolithic peoples learned to glean and use salt to preserve food? Perhaps they weren’t so primitive after all. Tadpoles swam among lazy bubbles. I couldn’t help feeling lost in the bottomlessness of 4,246 years. It made Saint James seem a beardless youth. Was this where the wishing-well myth had originated? Had the pre-Celtic salt-harvesters invoked the spring’s gods and the