Chaucer said that in “Aprille … than longen folk to goon on pilgrimages.” April is the time to travel, and fortunately we can travel as much with literature as with our feet.

One can retrace Chaucer’s walk from Southwerk (though the Tabard Inn is long gone) to Canterbury. I know of one person locally who has done this. The route is still distinct, relatively easy to do and worthwhile as the “holy blissful martir” is still there. Stay to listen to the evensong in the cathedral if you can.

Along the way you can take out your copy of the Canterbury Tales and read, at the most, six of Chaucer’s tales, all on some variation of marriage. Start with the Knight’s Tale and learn what a woman really wants. The Wife of Bath is explicit, as she had five husbands and wore the Latin motto, amor vincit omnia. Be sure to read her lengthy prologue.

The Clerk’s Tale, the Merchant’s Tale and the Franklin’s tale also tell of marriage. If you want, you can end with the scatological Miller’s Tale for some bawdy humor.

Another pilgrimage you can take is the Camino on the way to Santiago de Compostela in Spain. This fabled route is still walked by thousands each year for various reasons. One can actually start in Paris, but that is a very long hike. If I were ever to walk it, I would want to start in St. John Pied de Port in southwestern France so I could go over the Roncevalles Pass, where Roland died. Does anyone ever read “The Song of Roland” anymore?

From there Pamplona beckons, and you can run with the bulls in July if you wish. I don’t. You can read there the best novel Hemingway ever wrote, “The Sun Also Rises,” which involves the Festival in Pamplona.

The shortest distance a traveler of the Camino can walk and still get a badge in the shape of a shell as a true pilgrim is from Sarria to Santiago de Compostela, about 60 miles. There are books with extremely detailed itineraries of the entire route. Check the Internet, too. Shirley MacLaine once walked the entire route and wrote a book called “Camino” on her journey. I read most of it but stopped when she took a side trip to Atlantis.

Locally we have no fabled walks or pilgrimages, unless you might call the path to Ashland for plays such. I guess you could walk the Applegate Trail in that direction. There is always the Oregon Trail. People have retraced it in covered wagons and on foot. Following Lewis and Clark back into the lovely country of the Lolo Pass is worth doing also.

For easy hikes through out Oregon I can recommend the guidebooks of William L. Sullivan. His maps are superb, and with the detailed directions, they are easy to follow. Sullivan has walked all of his recommended hikes, and then he asked the local authorities to check his directions for accuracy.

If you are going north on 101, I can recommend “Trask” by Don Berry, about the conflicts between the fur trappers in Oregon who settled down with Indian women and the righteous missionaries who thought such liaisons were unseemly. Tillamook is Trask territory.

“The River Why” by David James Duncan might be about the Nestucca River with all of its meanderings, but it is the most hilarious fishing book I have ever read. It may be a parody of “A River Runs Through It,” complete with Gus finding his true love on the banks of the Umpqua where she is fishing nude for salmon with pole used like a spey rod. Love at first cast.

What started all of my musings about travel books, however, was a Japanese poet. Basho, the premier writer of haiku, took long journeys in 17th-century Japan and wrote journals about his trips. What is novel to our western eyes is that his prose descriptions of where he went are interspersed with haiku, triggered by his experiences.

Haiku, if you remember, traditionally have three lines: first, five syllables, second, seven syllables, third, five syllables. Usually there is a suggestion from nature. The rest is up to the poet.

Basho’s most famous poem goes in English, “At the ancient pond / a frog plunges into / the sound of water.” This translation is from “Narrow Road to the Interior and Other Writings,” by Matsuo Basho, translated by Sam Hamill.

I would like to suggest that wherever you travel this year, that you write a haiku a day. Be like Basho. Experience the moment and then express it in a pithy poem. As you go along the road, the trek or way may become as much aesthetic and metaphorical as literal.

All journeys are pilgrimages, both Chaucer and Basho would say, and we become one with the way.

“All along this road

not a single soul — only

autumn evening.”



Ralph Mohr taught English and Latin at Marshfield High School for 31 years. He welcomes comments and suggestions regarding the column at rmohr1565@charter.net.