 This is St. Tech, Hawaii. Community Matters here. What is, and joining me today on Global Connections is Ed Westergaard. Ed Westergaard is a geologist who's currently in Golden, Colorado, up in the high, in the Rocky Mountains. And let me welcome you to the show, Ed. Aloha. Hello, Carlos. How you doing? Very well. Well, I'm delighted in our show today on Global Connections. Well, we bring, you know, interesting guests that can share insights on different aspects of world affairs, global issues, helping really connect us to the world in different ways. And I'm excited, the conversation we'll have now with Ed. It looks at some experiences he's been having now for some years as a real, I guess, pilgrim, a modern-day pilgrim. And more specifically, we're going to talk about his adventures traveling by foot, walking along the very famous Via Francigena, Francigena. Perhaps you'll clarify the pronunciation as you know it, but this is a very important common, well, kind of road and pilgrimage route that runs from England, beginning in Canterbury, and makes its way across Europe, France, Switzerland, and on to the Holy See, Rome, Italy. And so, Ed, welcome to the show again. And let me ask you, if you can maybe say a few words about yourself. I know you're a geologist by training, but really you're a polymath. You're one of these people that has several different sort of expertise. Of course, you're a scientist as a geologist, but an avid outdoorsman, and as well a historian. And particularly right now in this chapter of your life, you're looking to sort of combine these, your understanding of environment, landscape, and through these experiences walking across Europe, also helping understand maybe the importance of this historical trade route. So tell us a little bit about your background and how you got interested in this opportunity and maybe just a few words about your experiences so far with this pilgrimage route. Well, Carlos, I am a geologist, retired from the oil industry, and there was some extra time on my hand that decided to pursue another interest of mine, and that's history. Fortunately, as being a geologist, really all I've done is gone from studying four and a half billion years of history to focusing on a mere few thousand. So it's actually a reduction in my area of interest. But in particular, I've always been interested in man's interaction with geology or with the Earth writ large climate, landscape, et cetera. And so this has allowed me an opportunity to dig a little deeper into that. And so I started a master's at the University of Colorado Denver in environmental history and just about ready to start right in my thesis and wrap it up. Excellent. So very important to underscore as a lifelong learner. I mean, we never stop learning and your education goes on. It takes different paths. And now in many ways, you're bringing that long experience as a professional scientist. So your real passion for understanding, I guess, landscapes, places, and it's one thing to study them or maybe even be involved in the many great details of science. Now you're really pursuing this other venture, which takes you back to, it's a long, long historical tradition, this long path. So tell us a little bit about this. This is called the Via Francizema. And I guess it translated me into the route through France or something. Tell us a little bit, both maybe what it is entailed and just describe what it is for our audience. Sure. It's an old pilgrim's route that goes back to the third or fourth century that was also a route of commerce and was a military route. It's a little bit like the Ho Chi Minh Trail in that it's a combination of routes that have kind of intertwined and wandered and meandered and eventually showed up in Rome. Although, I will say, crossing several of the mountain passes would funnel those various routes into choke points, if you will, where they all became one route. And yeah, so many important cities are along the way that themselves are pilgrimage sites. They have relics, the remains of saints that people in medieval times, even today, still come to visit to obtain a miracle or what. But my interest is purely secular. Quite fascinating because here again, this is a route that has been traveled now for, gosh, many, many centuries. And as you noted, it has a lot of historical relevance. And even today, in the more recent past, we have places you go through that are more recent memories, particularly the World Wars of the early 20th century. I wonder if we might show one of the first graphics we have is an actual map, a map of this route that takes you today. It begins primarily in Canterbury, England, right? I think that's where you begin to venture. And again, just to remind our audience, we're talking about a trek of about 2,000 kilometers. Maybe what, I think it's about 1,500 miles or maybe clarify my conversion there. But it's a trek that is done by foot. So you literally are walking and taking this long path and lots of little segments, retracing this classical pilgrimage route. If we have the map, it's showing us some of those. And maybe just describe briefly in your own words, I mean, what you're traveling through and maybe the type of terrain that it goes from. Go ahead. Sure. The way I do it is I slap on a backpack as light as I can make it and carry everything I need for the route. Happily, I can resupply as I need. I have finally, this year, I got rid of my tent and my French has progressed enough that I can usually secure accommodations somewhere along the route every night, at least so far, and successful. And some of us walking on roads, which is probably the French drivers are more comfortable with people walking along the roads than an American is walking along the French roads. But so far, no incidents. But there are trails that walk through woods, you know, come to villages and towns. It's all sorts of variety of terrain. But probably some of the most magical moments are when walking on the actual old Roman roads. The stone that's been there for 2,000 plus years, you know, it's still there. And some of the roads, you can see the wagon ruts. I think I have a picture later on that shows that in Italy. And it's a varied route. You know, you cross the Alps through the Gaul in St. Bernard Pass, which is a historic entryway into northern Italy, and Napoleon crossed there in 1800, bringing his army into Italy. And, you know, the Pennines across Italy is extremely rugged, but very beautiful. Yeah, so it's a wide variety of terrain. Quite amazing. And, you know, again, many historical markers, whether they be the Roman roads you described or even burial sites of famous early pilgrims. But I wonder if you might share with us a couple of the pictures you brought, which have to do with perhaps some other historical sites, the cemeteries that were from more recent wars. Tell us a little bit about some of those photos. Sure, if we call up picture two, this is a picture from a place not called Le Bu, or near Le Bu. It's a World War I cemetery. It's a British cemetery. And this was in the area of the Somme Battles in 1916. And, you know, right here, there were about 3,100 graves representing men from the UK, Canada, New Zealand. And it's one of the things I find fascinating because landscape is both an accomplice to history in that the landscape helped dictate how these battles unfolded, but the landscape was also an archive of history. And so, World War I, that archive is in the form of cemeteries and memorials. And the British were unique in how they handled the cemeteries. And with the Commonwealth Grave Commission actually left most of the cemeteries where they were originally. So then maybe there was a forward medical unit that had casualties. And as these soldiers expired, they were buried. And that's where those became cemeteries. And those are cemeteries that are there today. Although they have been cleaned up and they all have the same Portland Stone headstones. And whether you were an officer or a private, you had the same type of headstone. It's a very democratic burial. Burial, yes. But quite a, you know, again, these are moving places that you see. And of course, anybody who studies that period, particularly World War I, especially World War I was such a vast, you know, deadly conflict, so many lives lost. And today it's commemorated in these memorials, these cemeteries. I wonder if we might move through. We have a number of pictures to go through and just maybe before we come to a break. Let's look at a few more real quickly and see what else you can share. If we move on to the next one, I think that's number three. Yeah. So this is an example of the first cemetery I showed you was what they call the collections or concentration cemetery. It was a small cemetery, but they started bringing in bodies and remains from other cemeteries in the battlefield as they were found after the war. But then here's an example of two very small cemeteries. And they're hard to see except for, you can see the two crosses sticking up. And those are called the Great Cross or the War Cross. And again, these are made out of Portland stone. There are almost every blue cemetery. And as you're walking along the Via Fantagina, you'll just see these things sticking up in the middle of nowhere. And you should go by and visit them and document what people are writing and try to learn a little bit about what that cemetery is about. The other interesting thing about this picture, if you look off in the distance, there were two slag heaps or in French, what they call terrells. And these are important part of this landscape because this is why the Germans are here. Germans wanted the resources of this part of France. In fact, it later became, because they had captured this area, they didn't want to let it go. And so it actually prolonged the war when the Allies and some of the initial fantasies of truce that were being offered by the Germans, the Allies declined to give them this. But also mentioned that those slag heaps are now UNESCO heritage sites. It's kind of weird. But yeah, another interesting thing about that is that when I was in another cemetery near here, I noticed all the Polish names and it was a civilian cemetery, all the Polish names. And so I asked my friend of mine who lives near here and he goes, oh yes, after the war there were no men left. So they imported people from Poland to work the mines and they're still a big Polish population and they're descendants of their... And of course the Poles have a long connection with the Britain in particular, even in World War II, a large community that was there during the war. Quite fascinating. Well, we're going to get close to a break in a moment here, but I wonder, we've looked at just some initial ones. And again, it underscores how this is a route. Of course, we're looking at really more recent in the last century, but as you said earlier, it has markers and then maybe even burial sites. I know it was a route where many in those early days would make themselves, I guess, who are interested in making their way to Rome. This was the classical path coming from the UK, from England at the time, and coming from France and on the way down. And so today it has now been a step and I believe the European Union itself has given it a special status now as a cultural heritage site. So what we'll do, it's a cultural route. What we'll do is we'll take a short break right now and come back to continue a fascinating dialogue about this. I'm your host here on Global Connections Carlos Juarez. I'm joined today by Ed Westegard, a geologist and an outdoorsman who has spent some time now walking the famous Via Francigen now, which is a trade route, I'm not a trade route, sorry, a pilgrimage route and an ancient route that goes from England to Italy. And we'll come right back with more on the story. Please join us in just another minute. This is Think Tech Hawaii, raising public awareness. For more than 100 years, American Humane Association has been teaching kids to be kind to animals. Those in our homes, on the farms, on the silver screen and wildlife conservation caring for the world's vanishing creatures. But we can't do it alone. Visit kindness100.org to find ways to teach kids how they can make a more caring, compassionate, and humane world for all of us. Aloha, I want to invite all of you to talk story with John Wahee every other Monday here at Think Tech Hawaii. And we have special guests like Professor Colin Moore from the University of Hawaii who joins us from time to time to talk about the political happenings in this state. Please join us every other Monday. Aloha. We're back here. I'm Carlos White, your host on Global Connections here on the Think Tech Hawaii series. And we're delighted to be having a chat today with Ed Westergaard. Ed Westergaard is a geologist based in Golden, Colorado where he joins us from the Rocky Mountain. And we're talking about some of his travels and travails. For some years now, he's been doing a very fascinating long, long hike, 2,000 kilometers long. It takes you from England, ventures through France, through parts of Switzerland, and ends up going through Italy to arrive in Rome. And this is a very ancient route that's been traveled up. Gosh, for millennia, it seems like. And today, it is also now being sort of revitalized and even some of the European countries, as it's recognized by the European Union, as a, what was it described, a cultural route? I was even reading some about how in Italy, as it goes through many parts of Tuscany, they've also kind of begun to give it more attention. And I wonder as we continue the chat, and tell us a little bit more about, you know, the experience itself. You've got a few more pictures we'll turn to in a moment. But as you've checked along, I mean, what have been some of the interesting anecdotes, the stories, things that have surprised you along the way? Obviously, this is something that, you know, some people know about it, but there may be some who have no clue what you're doing. And here you are walking for, and maybe tell us as well, how long does the journey take? It's a pretty long trek. Well, how many ways are you actually literally walking? Yeah, last year, when I actually walked the entire route, it took a hundred days. But I took a few days off. I went to visit some friends in Paris, but well deserved, a hundred days. And, you know, in France, it is not very well developed. It's poorly marked. You're at the mercy of guidebooks and your maps. Once you get to Switzerland, it becomes a little more easy to follow. You know, you're never really able, in the Via Francigena, to sort of switch off. You always need to be cognizant of where you are, especially in France, again, when you come to crossroads, you better make sure which way you need to go. Italy is very well developed. There is a huge support system for it. There's lots of accommodations. It's very well organized. And it's actually an economic boom for some of the local communities. That's one of the goals of the European Commission when they put together the cultural program was to create an economic bonus for communities. That was one of the aims. Yeah, and accommodation in France is a bit dicey, in particular because so many people are moving away or moving out of the countryside to the big city. Everything is for sale in the villages. But not so much. Interesting. Let's take a look at some more photos that you've got with us to share. Maybe you call up the numbers that you've got there and give us a quick overview of some of the pictures you've taken. Yeah, why don't we go to Picture 8. This is a picture of a relic in the town of Cormacie, in the Champagne area of France. This was the place I visited last year and a church was closed. This year I happened to arrive just when a lady was opening it up and she figured out that I was a pilgrim and she gave me a tour of the church. At the end I asked her, hey, are there any relics? My best pigeon French. She kind of smiled at me and motioned me to the back of the church and sent me to the sacristy. It's just like the locker room for the priest. Inside the sacristy, on a plain table, is this beautiful reliquary and I couldn't believe it when I look at it and I saw it was a rib bone, the Saint Remy. Saint Remy is an important piece of French history or he was an important piece of French history in that he was the man who, or the bishop, who baptized Clovis, converted Clovis to Christianity and Clovis in the early 6th century was the first, what we consider, king of France. So it was, I don't know if it's really his bone, but people believed that it is and those relics carry a huge amount of power even today amongst the believers, if you will. But I am fascinated by it and it's really fun to see. Wow, that thing. What else you might share with us here? If we go to picture nine, St. Maurice. This is from the cliff. It's from Switzerland. Yeah, we're in Switzerland now. This is the oldest western monastery in continual existence. It was established in the early 500s and if you look to the right or left side of the picture, you can see the steeple of the monastery. St. Maurice, to me this is a fascinating tale of landscape in that to the north of St. Maurice and we're kind of looking northeast in the picture, the Rhone River Valley is very wide. As you come to Maurice, it's necked down by a big outprop of limestone. It creates this cliff that I'm standing on. So it was a perfect place to place soldiers to defend the high passes into Italy. And that's what Diocletia did in the 300s or the 200s to put down some revolts in France. So there's a guy from Egypt, Maurice who was the leader of the Thebian legion. They happened to be Christians and he was ordered to persecute the local Christians. He refused. His legion was decimated. He refused again and he was killed along with all those officers. Anyway, a couple hundred years later, he becomes a saint. And this monastery is built up around that legend. But the reason it's there is because of the limestone that made it such a defendable position for the armies. And it's actually always been sort of a holy place because there's a huge spring there. And so there's artifacts going back to early pagan times. Fascinating. So yeah, so it's this connection between landscape and history again. Quite a spectacular view. You can see the spectacular view that you described already. I mean a very strategic location helping them to defend these passes so they could control access, of course. Maybe we've got time. Let's move to one more and we'll try to finish up because we're nearing the end of our show here. But give us a quick snapshot of another one of your photos here. Picture 10, I alluded to a few minutes ago. This is the Consular Road to Gaul or France near a town called St. Martin in northern Italy. So this road was built in the first century B.C. And if you actually look, there's kind of a column there looking object there. That's a mile marker. And it actually has number 36 on it in Roman numerals, which is a distance to the town, a large town at Osta, which is roughly about 50 kilometers from here. I'm not sure exactly what their distance metric is. But if you look there on the stone, you can see the ruts that are in the limestone or in the stone on the road. And that's my favorite hiking partner, my wife, Melanie. They're in the picture for scale. And also that art that you see in there was actually dug through by the Roman engineers. And it's amazingly smooth. And now these roads are really, really fun to walk along. And especially once you start getting into Switzerland, you get to walk along chunks of them for extended periods in Italy as well. Wow, I remember. It's quite fascinating. And I wonder, you know, here you are in the modern, you know, early 21st century, of course, enjoying the privileges of, you know, better quality equipment than maybe St. Martin or other pilgrims had in previous days. I wonder, as we get near the end now, if you might just share a quick answer to, you know, what are the kind of either items, a couple or two or three items that you are just grateful to have or that you make sure you pack in that backpack that you get, things that you've learned from experience or again, that are obviously things that maybe earlier pilgrims wish they had, but you can't go without. Well, having good boots is, you know, indispensable. Mold skins or blisters or any sort of blister maintenance. You know, trying to keep blisters from, or, yeah, blisters are brutal. And I would say those are probably things that I value most. And the other thing probably that we don't think about that I have today that my fellow pilgrims in the past didn't have is a simple map. They didn't have maps in medieval times, at least not as we think of them. So how you knew to where you needed to go next, must have been interesting. Absolutely. And of course, on one hand, we do have these modern technologies, but even as a physical map, do you find yourself still unfolding an actual paper, map, or not at all? Absolutely. No, I use my phone as a navigation aid too, but I'm old school. I still like the map and, you know, batteries wear out. That's right. Things happen in technology. It's important. And especially, you know, as an educator myself, I, you know, I've got students that I work with that can imagine a life without a smartphone. Well, guess what? You know, you have to learn to be a bit more resourceful and actually look at a map, open it, unfold it, et cetera. Well, it's been a fascinating. We've got a couple more minutes to wind down here, Ed. And maybe if there's another one of these photos, you could share one map set of remarks about it and we'll bring closure to our overview today. I've been fascinated by this. You know, your experience both as a geologist and kind of understand, you know, things like, you know, rocks and the earth, but now seeing it from a more historical vantage point brings a different perspective. It helps you connect with two. Maybe there's one more that you want to speak to. How about picture seven? Okay. And I just saw this one up there because, you know, big folks, my study is there's a memory of World War I in the landscape. At least some of my pieces will heavily dwell upon. And this is part of what they call the iron harvest in France. So every year, the farmers, they dredge up tons, literally tons of unexploded ornates, old shells, bullets. And these are pieces that I found in about 10 minutes in a sugar beet field. And I didn't take them home, most of them, but it's amazing to find these things out there along these fields. We just don't think about that at here in terms of archives and history. Yeah, fascinating. And of course, again, you know, just that war, particularly World War I, left so much of this there. And again, 100 years of past, but here you are still today, every day bringing out the legacy of that. Well, this has been a great conversation that I really appreciate your opportunity to share, you know, insights of your experience traveling this ancient route, this pilgrim route from Canterbury, England, through France, through Switzerland, through the Italian land, all the way into the Holy See, the Vatican today. And it's a route that people like you who are modern-day pilgrims are sort of making sure that we understand and appreciate this historical context. It's been a great conversation. I thank you for that. For our listeners, I'm your host here, Carlos Suarez, on Global Connections. Thank you, Carlos. A good example of helping bring together, again, a world traveler like Ed, who is embarking on this journey of the ancient trade, or not trade, I can say trade, but it's the ancient pilgrimage route that took many, many, and even today continues to take the modern-day pilgrim. So we will close on that. I thank you for all our listeners joining us here on Global Connections. We'll be here again in two weeks for your next episode. Thank you so much. And thank you, Ed, for joining us as well. Aloha. Thank you, Carlos.