Alimurgìa [a-li-mur-gì-a]
From alimentazione (food) + urgenza (emergency).
Nutrition by fire: the calculated, desperate gamble of eating bitter, potentially poisonous wild plants just to survive.
Just few years ago, I received an email that flipped my life on its head: the editor from a Major American Magazine had not only read my pitch (a rarity, in my experience as a freelancer) but he was ready to commission my article about the oldest and longest pilgrimage route in Europe, the Via Fucking Francigena.
This wasn’t “The 10 Best Ways to Eat an Avocado” or some other kind of dreck I’d normally consider myself lucky to land. They, Major American Magazine, were flying me, a poor, overeducated idiot, to Tuscany to write about what I knew and what I loved. And they were offering me real money to do so.
It was better than winning the lottery.
After months of research, translating medieval texts and reviewing archival maps, I dragged my asthmatic ass across 100 Italian miles during the hottest summer on record. Weeping and hallucinating, stealing fruit from the vineyards, proudly announcing at every ancient monastery why yes, I am writing an article about this experience, and if you’re interesting enough, you just might be in it, wondering all the while what I did to deserve this great, punishing fortune.
It was well over a year, all told, of plotting the route with my assigned photographer, of interviewing archeologists and historians and hikers, of drafting and revising, of fending off the voice in my head that said I had no right to have made it this far.
After all of that, I had given the Major American Magazine exactly what I thought they’d wanted.
What they’d wanted, it turns out, was anything but that.
It’s not that I was hurt or shocked when the plug was pulled. Much worse, it confirmed what I had told myself all along: I never did belong in the big leagues. I felt sorry for them for having wasted their time, and returned, somewhat relieved, to my life of unanswered pitches and job applications and watching C-grade horror comedies in bed.
And so went 2024.
A few months ago, after band practice, my old friend Mark pulled me aside. One those weird, inexcusable freaks who seems to enjoy exercise, Mark had just completed a marathon bike tour of Norway. This summer, he said, he was looking for an upgrade: 1,200 miles, 7 countries, across the Straight of Dover, over the Alps, from Canterbury Cathedral to the Vatican through mud and sand and shit and piss and goddamnit the motherfucker wants to bike the Via Francigena.
“You should come,” he said.
“Right,” I scoffed. “Sounds like a great fucking idea.”
To be clear, I’m more broke than I’ve ever been, my body is falling apart, I’ve never biked more than ten miles, let alone 1,100, and the memory of that pee poo fart ass beautiful fucking trail only brings me bitterness and rage.
I should also note that Mark and I have some complicated history. Having met during our year abroad in Florence way back during the Belle Époque, Mark was there when my friends and I had all of our possessions stolen during a road trip across the Iberian Peninsula (he blamed me). Mark, née Schmark, was also there some fifteen years ago when we drove a school bus across the Continental United States and *someone* puked on the rooftop bed without telling anyone (I blamed him).
It’s been a lot of bitching and bickering, let’s just put it that way.
I don’t believe it’s in my nature to be daring, to push myself physically, to expand my consciousness or learn from past mistakes. I am, in a sense, a travel writer who doesn’t particularly love traveling. Hell, I don’t know that I even like writing; if anything, I resent it.
The problem is, I’ve tried the alternative and it feels like scurvy. If I don’t keep suffering such stupid, ill-advised adventures, I suspect my teeth will fall out of my skull, my hair will thin, and my flesh will rot from my bones.
Plus, my therapist says I should do it.
So yes, I’ve decided to join Schmark on this ill-advised adventure. Yes, I am going to spend two summer months in those idiotic spandex shorts, rubbing various anti-chafe creams onto my anus, pretending to keep up with these other try-hards on my broken old Bianchi with my broken old body.
I’m heading back to the Via Francigena with the hope that I might one day say the name of that fucking trail with pride, not shame, recasting the experience in my own way: slowly, bitterly, and with a bottle or two by my side.
On this page, I’m going to do my best to document the experience, which I anticipate will fall somewhere between travelogue, sounding board, and amaro field guide.
I hope you’re able to follow along, if for no other reason than to alert my family if I don’t make it.
With love and apprehension,
Eric Millman