Anna Karenina and me

The following essay appeared in the Hope Academy of Senior Professionals annual Review, published this week.

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“Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”

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A year after I retired, I walked the Camino de Santiago in northern Spain. I started my walk in the French village of Saint Jean Pied de Port, at the foot of the Pyrenees, and ended 500 miles and 29 days later in Santiago de Compostela, a university town in northwest Spain with a famous cathedral (allegedly where the apostle Saint James the Great is buried). I took one day off due to food poisoning, but otherwise left my pilgrim hostel (or albergue) early each morning and averaged more than 17 miles of walking per day, while carrying everything I needed in a large backpack.

The truth is, “carrying everything” was something I thought about a great deal before setting out. I spent hours, in fact, selecting what to take.

Having the right pair of shoes, of course, was critically important. More than one pilgrim I met along the way had to give up and go home early due to blisters. A sleeping bag was important too, since I was walking in March, and most nights were surprisingly cold. I also walked with hiking poles. I had never used poles before but had read enough to convince me that they would reduce the impact on my leg muscles and knee joints. I had clothes and toiletries too, but the other item that turned out to be essential was my mobile phone.

And not because I used it to make a lot of calls. I did make a daily call to my wife who was usually just getting up as my day of walking was coming to an end, but as lovely as it was to hear a familiar voice each day, even that was not what made the phone essential. Other pilgrims, especially the younger ones, had downloaded an app, usually “Wise Pilgrim,” with its helpful navigation tools. Not being as technologically skilled, I took a Camino guidebook which served the same purpose, giving distances and elevations and mileage goals. No, the one indispensable feature of my mobile phone was its e-reader.

Before setting out, I had downloaded Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina to my phone and planned to read a few pages each night before falling asleep. After dinner and conversation with fellow pilgrims, most of us would be tired and eager for some silence and rest before the next day’s walk. So, we would crawl into our sleeping bags in the group sleeping areas and try to fall asleep. My strategy for falling asleep each night was to read. But not just any book; instead, a book I had wanted to read for years.

(Photo: Keira Knightley played the titular role in the 2012 movie.)

I had read Tolstoy’s War and Peace when I was in high school. My best friend and I even went to see the 1956 movie version starring, among others, Audrey Hepburn, Henry Fonda, and Anita Ekberg. (Because of its three-and-a-half-hour length, the theater showed it in two installments, a week apart.)

But for some reason I put off Anna Karenina. And I shouldn’t have. It’s the better book of the two. Tolstoy thought so too, as did many others. When William Faulkner was asked to name the three greatest novels ever written, he replied, “Anna Karenina, Anna Karenina, Anna Karenina.” The novel appeared in serial form from 1875 to 1877 in the Russian periodical The Russian Messenger, so reading it the way I did, a little at time, turned out to be quite satisfying.

I had never walked a pilgrimage before, and Catholics have historically done much more with pilgrimages than Protestants, but I found the experience to be one of the finest of my life (so far). I met people from all over the world. We would walk together in small groups during the day, and we would talk over dinner each night, forming what is often called a “Camino family.” I frequently went to pilgrim masses too in small churches in the villages where we stayed, even though I could understand little of what was being said. But the intensity of a pilgrim experience can be overwhelming at times, and reading a novel – not just any novel, but one of the best ever written – turned out to be just the right way to end my days.

Anna Karenina deals with themes of betrayal, faith, family, marriage, Imperial Russian society, desire, and the differences between rural and urban life, some of the same themes I was thinking about as I walked. At the center of the story is an extramarital affair, between Anna and Vronsky, a dashing military officer (played by Jude Law in the 2012 movie version), which scandalizes much of society in Saint Petersburg and forces the lovers to flee to Italy.

What struck me, though, was that even though the characters spend a great deal of time in either Moscow or Saint Petersburg, Tolstoy barely describes those cities – they are practically invisible – whereas the countryside is described in exquisite detail. What I found was that these descriptions fit my experience perfectly.

The Camino route I took, known as the Camino Frances, passed through cities like Pamplona, Logrono, Burgo, and Leon, but I remember little of them. What I remember about northern Spain is the countryside, the freshly turned earth in preparation for planting, the vineyards (especially in those provinces that produce Spain’s wonderful Rioja wine), and the farm animals (with whom we sometimes had to share the path). The cities I passed through required so much concentration (to avoid becoming lost) that I lost track of the inner work I was doing, which after all was the reason for making this pilgrimage.

Cities, as Tolstoy presents them, offer only two possibilities: social conformity and bureaucratic subordination. Finding spiritual rebirth, engaging in internal dialog, and coming to terms with life – all of that requires us to be outdoors, Tolstoy seems to say. And it was true for me as well. Walking in the chilly morning air, reflecting on my life, and remembering the people in my life for whom I am deeply grateful was what gave my pilgrimage its power and lasting memory.

Konstantin Dmitrievich Levin, the novel’s co-protagonist and perhaps a veiled self-portrait of Tolstoy himself, seems to come alive outdoors, especially when he is mowing the fields with his workers. In the end, like Tolstoy, he comes to faith. That was my experience too.

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“All the variety, all the charm, all the beauty of life is made up of light and shadow.”

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