Monday, February 18, 2008 | by nathan

The Ants and St. Francis

I became a St. Francis enthusiast first because of Rich Mullins. I liked him so much that I asked the Catholic student minister at Wake Forest, who was a Franciscan, to have lunch with me to explain more about what St. Francis was about. I’m absolutely positive he thought I had lost my mind. But I would not be deterred. I devoured the Little Flowers and talked endlessly to my non-Catholic Catholic buddy Jack about him.

When I got to Italy the first thing I wanted to do was to visit Assisi. I wanted to go on a pilgrimage. I’d never been on a one of those before, but I figured it was mostly going to a place, seeing things and praying a lot. I had probably $50 and a rail pass with which to take this entire trip.

The Let’s Go! Guide recommended a few nice hostels; I chose the cheapest one. Francis, I figured, had devoted his life to a vow of poverty - how could I pilgrimage in a plush hostel room? I got out my rail pass, looked at train routes, packed my yellow duffel bag with two changes of clothes, my Bible, and my journal, and boarded the train in Venice. First stop: Florence.

Bologna is along the route between Venice and Florence. Just outside Bologna, the train came to a dead halt. This is not an unusual occurrence in European rail travel, so I kept reading whatever book I was reading and writing in my journal.

The train lurched forward again three and a half hours later; about an hour into our delay, a thin Italian man straight out of a Rowan Atkinson portrayal came into my compartment and started chain smoking. Lovely. We arrived in Florence after my train to my next connection - Terontola-Cortona - had already departed. The next train wouldn’t leave for two hours. Every fiber in my being screamed in protest as I seated myself at the McDonald’s in the Florence train station.

It was late, late afternoon by the time the train to Terontola-Cortona finally arrived, and even later before it departed. I was trying to be saintly, patient, but inside I was boiling with panic; being late is one of the things that freaks me out the most. Being late in a foreign country whose language I have not yet mastered is worse.

The train station at Terontola-Cortona is not a nice one. There was no board announcing arrivals and departures. Like an inner-city bus stop, you pretty much just had to know which train to get on and at what time before you arrived there. Knowing that the connection I’d meant to catch had left already, I seated myself on my yellow duffel bag and thought for awhile.

I could wait patiently for a train here, or I could walk into town and get a room. I wasn’t sure a train would even come, so I prayed. "Please help me know what to do."

Some Italians walked by behind me. I heard them talking about Assisi; my Italian was just good enough that I heard one of them tell the other that the last train for Assisi would come shortly, arriving at my destination around 9 p.m. I had my answer; keep going. I waited; the sun went down.

The train rolled up, and by the looks of the sparse crowd on the platform, it was the last one of the night. I got on, worrying less because look! God had provided me a train! Neat. We left the station, my mood higher than it had ever been.

We rolled up to Assisi precisely at 9 p.m. - my first on-time arrival all day. Excitedly, I grabbed my little yellow duffel and exited the train. My mind boggled at what I saw next.

Assisi, it turns out, IS ON TOP OF A MOUNTAIN. And the Assisi train station? AT THE BOTTOM OF THAT MOUNTAIN. Just as I was worrying what I was going to do - climb a mountain in complete darkness? Find a place to stay at the bottom of the mountain and hike up the next morning? Get back on the train to Venice, go pack my things, and hop the first flight back to America? I heard two people speaking American English. Normally I avoided other Yanks like the plague, but this was a welcome sign, a signal, the next right step.

They were loading luggage into the trunk of a taxi.

"Do you mind if I split this cab with you?" I asked.

They were a New England couple who couldn’t be bothered with a poor college kid, but they begrudgingly said yes. I thanked them profusely, threw my yellow duffel into the boot, and off we went.

That stupid cab ride - for which I paid half - cost me at least a tenth of my budget for the weekend, which wasn’t much, but still. The cab dropped us off at the old couple’s posh hotel near the city centre. I thanked them for letting me share the ride, and pulled out my guide. Where was my hostel?

On a map of the town, an arrow pointed out the northeast corner of the town gate. I glanced at this, put the guide away, then began walking. I’m good with maps and directions, and I figured if I went in that direction, I’d see what I was looking for. But when I got the town gate, I saw nothing resembling a cheapy hostel. I pulled out the guide again.

Somehow, in all my planning, it had escaped my notice until RIGHT THAT MINUTE that my hostel was 1 km out of town, on the side of the mountain. The road led through the gate and into the darkness. It was approaching 10 p.m.; I’d be lucky to get a room at the place I’d booked, and I for sure wasn’t getting anywhere else in town to let me stay, not this late. A kilometer isn’t that far; I set off into the darkness, walking.

Down the mountain, in the Umbrian valley, the lights of little towns twinkled. I could see a million stars above me, but there was no moon. I kept walking, hoping to God I wasn’t wrong, and that I wouldn’t need to pull out my guide again, because there was no way I could read in this light. The wind kicked up my shoulder-length, hippie-kid hair. A horse whinnied just off the road. In the darkness I could make out a few cows; nothing to fear. "Nothing but the murderers," I chuckled to myself. I kept putting one foot in front of the other, moving forward, praying with every step.

Later, when I would read the E.L. Doctorow quote that writing a novel is like driving a car at night - "you can only see as far in front of you as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way" - I would think of this walk, this night in Assisi, and how that’s pretty much what life is like too.

I walked as quickly as I dared, and after awhile there was a light in front of me; I’d reached my hostel. I quickly found the main building and walked in.

In broken Italian I explained to the desk clerk that my train had been delayed, that I’d just made it to town, that I’d WALKED - he took all this in with an air of bored bemusement, then informed me that they’d assumed I was a no-show and given my room away. "Still," he said in English, like my Italian was so laughably bad that he’d do me a favor and speak my guttural native tongue, "I have a caravan. You can have that."

The price was lower than what my room would’ve been, and after that expensive cab ride I was keen to save a few lire. I paid him for two nights, took the key, and walked along a path he showed me on a map.

My caravan was a tiny little trailer that had been manufactured in the 50’s or 60’s. It was tiny and austere, but, I figured, perfect for me. It had light and a bed; what else did a pilgrim need? I opened the door.

The first thing I saw - the VERY FIRST THING I SAW - was a huge, hairy spider waiting for me inches inside the door. I’m horribly arachnophobic; I can’t even get close enough to a spider to squash it. But after the day I’d had, I was too emotionally worn-out to be afraid. I simply looked at the spider, and he at me, as if he’d been expecting me.

"Well," I said to him, out loud, "one of us is going to have to die here tonight before the other gets any sleep." And I skooshed him. I threw my yellow duffel bag on the bed and went to sleep.

I had the kind of sleep where you wake up in the morning feeling like you’ve only just gone to bed 20 minutes before. I was tired and out of it. The hostel offered a free breakfast of bread, jam, and warm milk. I availed myself of this and walked into town, my spirits lifting as I looked out over the valley, realizing that Assisi, its place on the mountain, its heavenly views, are like fertilizer for sainthood, a breeding ground for righteous men. How could one not feel close to God in a place that high-up and beautiful?

I spent the day at the basilica, which had been destroyed by an earthquake 3 years previously, the beautiful frescoes by Giotto almost completely erased. I spent hours praying there before finding a 2,000 lire ($1) lunch of pizza sauce on dry bread and sparkling water. I sat on the steps of the Temple of Minerva and wrote a letter to my friend Summer. I prayed outside the Basilica di Santa Chiara, which was still closed due to its rebuilding after the quake.

I was on a pilgrimage but not feeling particularly spiritual or uplifted. Mostly I was tired, and hot, and worried about money. I stubbornly sat in a park and read the entire book of Acts, the spiritual equivalent of stamping my foot and crying out to God for some kind of revelation, dammit, because here I was having all this trouble and the least He could do is give me some freaking inner peace. "Like it’s so much skin off Your nose."

Nothing. Still, the town and the day were beautiful and I walked back to my caravan as the sun was setting over the valley. I picked up some food on the way out of town, figuring I’d have a light dinner, read until bedtime, then get up in the morning and get the hell out of this town. I’d made sure to check the train schedules and to plan to get down the mountain in time for the very first departure, lest I not make it back to Venice at all.

I walked down to the communal bathroom and washed my face and hands, then headed back up to the trailer. I opened the door and experienced the greatest shock of all: the walls were crawling.

Ants. Millions and millions - okay, hundreds and hundreds - of large black ants were living inside my caravan. Maybe I’d made a mistake killing that spider. Maybe I’d earned this. They were all over the floor, the walls - but nowhere near the bed. I looked over at my yellow duffel bag, wondering if I could grab it, get back to town, and grab a last train out. That was no option - I’d end up in some other town and have to get a room, and I was almost out of money.

After staring forlornly at my bag, sitting on the ant-free bed for awhile, I decided I’d make a leap. I jumped to the bed, clutched my bag to my chest, and watched the ants moving around, living where I was living. On the ceiling, on the walls, but nowhere near me. I was in a safe zone, on my bed, and as the night fell the ants went to sleep, disappearing into the cracks in the walls and under the door. They were gone at last, and after hours of racking my brain as to what I’d do, I fell asleep there in the safe zone.

First thing in the morning I was up like a shot - before the ants could stir - and out the door. I hit the breakfast, where I wrapped ten pieces of bread up in a napkin to take with me on the train, and hiked back to town. I caught the first cab I could find - that was the very last of my money - and hopped the trains back to Venice.

Years later, I can still see those ants, that living wall, and still not be completely sure what I learned on my one and only pilgrimage, except perhaps that I’m a tad braver than I once thought.