Tyler Merkel: Canterbury Pilgrimage

This Halloween was one for the books. 

Since 1173 ,pilgrims have flocked to Canterbury in search of miracles, Thomas Beckett's bones, and spiritual renewal. All semester long we have been reading Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales. It is an unfinished collection of stories about pilgrims who come from all layers of society. Chaucer used these tales and peculiar characters to paint a critical portrait of socially stratified England.
 On Friday, October 31st we would walk on the very same trail that pilgrims had been journeying on for hundreds of years.

To say the least, I was geeking out. 

Our pilgrimage started out at the Tickled Trout pub in the wee village of Wye. Kate Mena and I had volunteered to navigate the group for the next eleven miles with written directions and a few landmark photos to guide us. We walked through royal hunting forests, medieval pubs, and many backyards- all along one of the oldest natural trails in Britain, the North Downs. Somehow, the three hour walk turned into a eight hour trek that had us walking into places like the Fright Wood (no kidding, that was the actual name of the forest we went though) long after the sun had gone down.

With our complaining knees, sore feet, and niggling shins and hips, and bodies dehydrated and empty stomachs... in short, things were miserable. Yet throughout all that we distracted each other with scary stories, silly riddles, and rib-tickling reenactments of Chaucer’s tales. If anyone knows me, they know that these kinds of misadventures are my favorite moments-- they are the stories I end up sharing when I journey back home. When everything goes wrong it feels as though I shed my tough second skin, and with it shed my inhibitions, comforts and make room for something else to happen.

When we finally did make it into Canterbury late that night I shrieked at the sight of Canterbury Cathedral, bathed in a warm yellow light in the distance. The entire group broke into a sprint towards the towering steeple and threw ourselves down on the grassy ground and just laid there, all sprawled out below the bell tower. Student and professor alike, we let our weary bodies rest, laughed and cheered while we let our eyes soak up the ancient cathedral. In that moment, feeling so much closer to the pilgrims who came before, we all simultaneously agreed that it had all been worth it.