Walking the Western Front of WWI with Guest Briana Gervat

Join host and creator of A Lady Well Travelled, Shannon Bednarova, as she interviews guest, Briana Gervat, An author, poet, photographer and fellow traveler, Briana discusses her 36-day, 500-mile journey along the Western Front through France and Belgium and how it inspired her latest book, There Will Come Soft Rains.

Briana details the heartbreak that led her to undertake the journey, seeking healing, wisdom and understanding by walking a path that witnessed unimaginable horrors in WWI, yet retained incredible beauty and told tales of the incredible resilience of humankind. She gives us a glimpse into her favorite sights along the way, the most sacred, meaningful and even angelic!

Briana shares one of her beautiful poems for the audience and discusses how she reveals her true heart through her poetry and photography. Shannon encourages everyone to visit Briana's gorgeous website, view her photographs and immerse yourself in her poetry.

Links:

Briana Gervat

theperegrinepilgrim.com

DISCLAIMER: All opinions, recommendations and experiences shared on this podcast are solely those of the creator and/or her guests.  Please do your own research and consult the appropriate professionals before making any decisions based on content shared on this show. 

Thank you for listening!  I welcome your feedback and suggestions or you simply let me know if you are enjoying the show. You can reach me at Shannon@ALadyWellTravelled.com

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:29

Hello, and welcome to A Lady Well Traveled. I'm your host and creator, Shannon Bednarova, and I'm delighted that you've joined me today. If you're new to the podcast, this show is all about travel, and what I want to do is help you transform your travel experience into something that's new, less stressful, and more meaningful. Today I am so excited to welcome our guest, Brianna Gervat. Brianna is a photographer, a poet, an author, and a fellow traveler. And Brianna has been on many incredible journeys, but her most recent journey was walking along the Western Front in Europe. And the Western Front is the front from World War One. Brianna and I talked, and I am so thrilled that she's on the show today. Brianna, please say hello to our audience.

SPEAKER_02 1:31

Hello, everyone. Shannon, thank you so much for having me today. What a lovely way to explore the world through stories and what you just had to say as well. Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 1:43

In doing research for this podcast, I just loved your website, and I would encourage anyone who is listening after the podcast to go to your website. I'm going to give you opportunities to talk about how they can find out all things, Brianna Gurvat. And your website is beautiful with photography, which of course you've done, incredibly beautiful poetry, opportunities to find out all about your books. And so we're going to just uncover all of that today in our discussion. So uh is there anything else before we dive in that you want people to know about you? Uh that uh we haven't talked about maybe in my introduction.

SPEAKER_02 2:26

No, I think that I think I like the organic kind of authentic way of opening up. We're humans. There's so much about us. We're complicated, we're simple.

SPEAKER_01 2:34

Okay, well, let's let's just dive on in there. You and I were just talking about history. I remember knowing exactly when I decided I want to be, you know, involved in history, and I have a passion for history. I was in the sixth grade listening to my teacher, Mrs. Penny, read to us from the historical fiction novels of Anya Seaton, and they were all about the royal families in the British Isles. They were wonderful and captured my imagination. And it was something from which I've never looked back. So, when did you become aware of your passion for history? And when did you make the decision to pursue that as a career path, as a part of your life's journey?

SPEAKER_02 3:21

I think I had a very similar experience. You know, I had wonderful teachers, even in elementary school, that would, you know, you saw history unfold before you. I went to elementary school at the end of the Cold War. Well, yeah. Well, you know, you went to school during the middle of the Cold War, you watched it all happen, and you were wondering what was going on in the world and if it was going to end. I think it was just that idea of being present for the history that was unfolding. And then you learn that there were so many other times throughout history that people felt the same way. So it was just learning their stories and listening to the past to learn something about the present was always something that I was obsessed with. And then when I was in sixth grade, we were learning about John Brown, who was the abolitionist. And I I don't know why, but like I got obsessed with him. And then I at the end of the year, my history teacher wound up giving me the John Brown Award, which I'm I'm fairly certain I'm the only person in the world to have ever received a John Brown award. That's great. Yeah, so I I think history was always in me, like we were talking about before. I just think that history is just something you either love or don't understand, or think you need to memorize when it's really just this constant unfolding of life. I love that.

SPEAKER_01 4:38

Well, can you tell our listeners what compelled you to take your journey along the Western Front in the first place? Yes.

SPEAKER_02 4:48

I'd walked the Western Front in 2022, and COVID had just started to not fade away, but the world was opening up again, and I wanted to experience the world again. I wanted to travel. I'm sure you missed it just as much as I did.

SPEAKER_00 5:02

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_02 5:03

And you know, five years before that, I had walked uh the Camino da Santiago, the Camino del Norte, um, in Spain. And then the year before COVID, I had traveled, I had uh I had taken a road trip along the Civil Rights Trail in the American South. It was just an extension. It was just an opportunity to explore history in another part of the world. I always like to go places and spend time there to learn what we are capable of in both both extremes. The devastation, but also the beauty and creation.

SPEAKER_01 5:35

Mm-hmm. That's a great answer, of course. You also were taking this journey, and I think it's an amazing thing that you did. How did your experience, and I got the this information off of your website? How did your experience studying genocide in Rwanda prepare you for studying later about World War One?

SPEAKER_02 5:59

Tell me about that. So when I was in graduate school, it was an artist, I went to school for art history and I was getting my master's degree, and I didn't know what I wanted to study, but it was art studying art history, and I came across all of these terrible images of war. And you have this belief in photography that a single image can change the world. That if you look at something that people will be moved to the point where we have no choice but to be better. And now that we're inundated with so many images all the time, the world is still not becoming a better place. The world is what it is. And so after I've graduated uh from graduate school, I traveled to Rwanda and I just learned about what came after. There are so many incredible people living and working in Rwanda and that have been deeply affected by the genocide. They, there's family members that they lost, they're still healing and they are still forgiving one another for what they have done. And through that, they've created art.

SPEAKER_00 6:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 6:58

And the art is another an example of that we might be capable of destruction, but we are also capable of so much beauty. And we need reminders of that on a regular basis. And I think that, especially after COVID, after experiencing that trauma of those years, being able to travel someplace where there was something that was so tragic that happened was almost it flowed into it. It was, it was, it was, there was no question about it. There's the Great War, there's the Western Front, we all just live something through something very traumatizing. How do I reconcile? I need to go on a long walk to process all of these things that I feel, all of these emotions, but also to understand that humans are humans and we're never gonna change. Or, you know, most of us are not gonna change.

SPEAKER_01 7:50

Right. And I'm 62 years old, you're not. I've never been through anything that was as devastating as World War One, World War II. You haven't either. Um and probably COVID was our worldwide event that impacted everybody. We were all uh impacted, we all saw a lot of people die. We all lived in fear for a while because we just didn't know what was going to happen. And we were washing our hands every five minutes, we weren't allowed to go out in public. We had to stand apart from everybody, we had to wear masks all the time. Um, I can remember watching the television every afternoon at four o'clock to get the updates from the government as to what was going on and how many people died, and were the hospitals being overwhelmed. So I think that after coming out of something like that, we're trying to make sense of it and we're trying to look at other instances in history where the world was catapulted into this catastrophic era or period where everyone was involved, everyone was dealing with horror and devastation. Having something to compare it to, but also having the understand of understanding of the resilience of the human being and and that we all somehow made it through, didn't we?

SPEAKER_02 9:11

No, absolutely. I think that you definitely encapsulated the whole sentiment. It's you I I feel like in a way I had to look back to look forward. Like you said, we are very lucky living in America for many, many reasons, and we did not experience those devastating wars. Right. But to have lived through that is to have be traumatized, to be to experience something that you don't know what the answers are, and you you know, and there's so much conflict still, and it wasn't necessarily a war, but it was something similar to or adjacent to.

SPEAKER_01 9:42

Absolutely. I think we s we won't know the impacts of COVID on our country for many years to come, whether it's the kids who weren't able to go to school, if it's getting the vaccines, whether it's how we all had to socially distance all of the impacts on our mental, emotional, physical, our psyches. How how were we really destroyed during those times? It's, you know, it's something I think we're going to be studying for a very long time.

SPEAKER_02 10:16

I totally agree with you. And that's that's part of that's a lot of the reason why I went on this trip. It wasn't just because I love history and I love France, but it was just that I felt those things. I I really I questioned that the entire time of the shut of the the the that the world shut down. And I couldn't process it staying in one place. I couldn't, I couldn't just stay there and let it and let it be rolling in my head over and over again. Like I needed a way to move through it. And if I wasn't going to be able to move through it, how was I going to get beyond that?

SPEAKER_01 10:47

I certainly understand that. So I explore how travel, hiking, walking can be so extremely therapeutic and healing with almost every guest who's been on my show. As we have unpacked during this discussion, do you feel that your trip was able to help you heal from the trauma that you experienced during COVID and any past pain? Tell us a little bit about that and in accordance with your comfort level. What did you discover about yourself when you were on this journey along the Western Front? What did you feel about your perspectives about yourself? What shifted during your experience? What did you learn? How did you grow? Tell us about that.

SPEAKER_02 11:33

That's a very a lot to unpack.

SPEAKER_01 11:35

I know it is. I'm sorry. No, no, are you sorry? I think wow.

SPEAKER_02 11:40

This is Shannon. This is what we're meant to talk about. We're meant to actually really dig into the depths of our souls and our psyches and our emotions. And that way we can just we can trudge it up or we can we can learn from it or become better human. Yeah. So I think when I first started out, it was with relief. Yeah. I was out in the world again. I had my backpack on and I was walking and it was difficult. And my physical, my physical experience matched my emotional turmoil. You know, I would cry randomly and not because I was in pain or I was in emotional pain. I was, I would cry all the time and just I'd be like, I don't understand anything. Here you have this devastating landscape of World War I, and you see that all these men fought for four years, and it was over a hundred years later, and we're still doing the same thing in one way or another. And it just hurt so much because you recognize it within yourself and you see which ways you're traumatized. I think that the walk really helped me learn the ways in which I was not processing the trauma that I experienced in my life, or that that I was able to look back and say, I I have experienced X, Y, and Z, and this is the way I've reacted to it. Now, is there a better way? Is there not an easier way, but is there a way that I can work through I lost my best friend when I was nine years old? Oh wow. Yeah, that's hard. It was really, really hard. And the rest of my life was spent in grief. Yeah, yeah. I got it. And it was grieving so hard. And then I think I studied history so much so I can grieve more.

SPEAKER_01 13:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 13:15

So I can sit there and say, I am not alone. This has happened to so many other people. And yet I felt so alone. So I think that walking the Western Front by myself, it was almost like cathartic because I already felt alone. I was already so isolated in so many ways. And so I could work through that and I could allow myself to cry and to break down and to not be weak, because I don't think that crying is weak. I don't think that revealing emotion is weak by any stretch of the imagination, but to allow myself to be up until I walked the Western front, I didn't give myself, did not allow myself vulnerability. Well, I didn't expect to be strong.

SPEAKER_01 13:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 13:55

Yes, always strong. Always strong, you know, strong in so many ways. And then strong also proved myself. Oh, I can walk the Western front. Who gives a shit? Sorry, part of my French. Like I, yeah, I can I can walk 500 miles across France. That doesn't prove anything. It might show I have physical fortitude. You can be hard in so many ways, but where's the softness? And really, I think my the title of my book is There Will Come Soft Rains. And I think that the softness comes from experiencing that, the experiencing the vulnerability and allowing yourself to be open to every emotion that you feel and accepting it and moving through it and not not fighting it all the time.

SPEAKER_01 14:36

Yeah, absolutely. So, what did you find in your walking? Because I know sometimes traveling, walking, all of it has been so healing for me and the trauma I've experienced in my life. And I don't know what you find the most healing, but I know being near watcher, waterfalls, rivers, oceans is very healing for me. Also being near mountains, um, and being reminded how small I am. I don't know if you're a person of faith. I am, and I always love to be reminded that I'm here and God's there, and there's something greater than I am. And that to me is very healing. I love being in nature because that reminds me that life goes on. The birds are there, the birds keep singing and everything keeps growing, and the trees keep growing and the flowers bloom. No matter what, no matter if COVID happened, no matter if World War One or World War II or this conflict in Iran, no matter what's going on, all of the nature continues. And I think that's one of the things that helps me.

SPEAKER_02 15:49

I love that. I love I think that's such a beautiful way to put it because I feel the very same way. I try to walk every day in nature. I try to be outside, I try to get the morning sun, and I do have faith as well. And I think the biggest blessing, the biggest, the biggest experience that I still return to every day in my heart is that not only did I experience God in nature, but I was able to come across cathedrals as well. Yes.

SPEAKER_01 16:16

Oh yes. And I will talk about that.

SPEAKER_02 16:18

Yeah. And so it was this idea that just the way the light would move through the trees in the forest and the way the sun would rise. I woke up every day grateful of being able to live this experience and to cherish this and to just just sit there and place my faith in God or a spirit or or you know, a higher power other than me that is going to walk with me and share this time with me. When you're in nature, I think that you get these beautiful reminders. It's like a knock on the door of your heart and say, Hey, I'm here. Open up, open up. Here it is.

SPEAKER_01 16:57

Absolutely. And your cathedral of the trees analogy is perfect because when you see the dappled sunlight coming through the leaves, it's a beautiful stained glass. And God puts you in places you can worship all the time. You don't have to be in a church or a cathedral. There are so many beautiful cathedrals and churches and basilicas in Europe. And I love that too. But isn't it wonderful how we can always just find a place to worship in nature at any time? Anytime. So let's talk about your title of your book and how you came to choose that title because I love that story. Would you share that with your audience? Yes.

SPEAKER_02 17:43

So I had been working on my book for about a year and a half, and I didn't know what to call it. I knew I was writing a book. I knew I'd walked 36 days along the Western Front and I had completed the journey. I knew the I knew the arc of the story, what I wanted, I knew what the story was, but the story wasn't was but was nothing without a way to invite invite you into the story. Right. I picked up uh Ray Bradbury's on writing. And as I'm reading through, and you always learn little snippets of of how you can write better, especially from someone as good as Ray Bradbury. He was writing about how he had written a short story that was titled There Will Come Soft Rains. He had said that it had come from a poem written at the end of World War I. And as soon as I read that line, I looked up the poem, I looked up the poet. It was a woman named Sarah Teesdale, and I said, you know what? That's the that's that's the title of my book. That is There Will Come Soft Rains, because it would rain so much over the course of my journey that it just made sense. There will come soft rains. And it goes back to what you were saying before, that nature goes on. That's what Sarah Teesdale writes in her poem, that nature goes on, that we can live through all of these things, but nature will not stop.

SPEAKER_01 18:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 18:57

And so that title, once I had that title, everything else almost fell into place. And it was just, it was like you said before, God puts us where we're meant to be. And that was put in my in my vision to put me where I wanted to be as well.

SPEAKER_01 19:10

I love that story. I it's so emotive, and it makes you envision the healing, the healing tears of God coming and washing the land clean after war. It really does.

SPEAKER_02 19:23

No, absolutely. And I felt that way. You know, I I always think about rain, um, and not in the catechismic sense, no, but more think of rain as a baptism. That if you're going through anything in your life, if you're experiencing something and a rainstorm comes, let that rain wash over you. That's right. Let it baptize you, let it bring you into something bigger, something more, and use that as a cleanse, as a as a way to to just really wash away it and it might not wash it away permanently, but just just let it let it let it come over out in waves. Let it just flow.

SPEAKER_01 19:59

Perfect. Perfect. Thank you for sharing that story with the listeners. I think that's so beautiful. Now, did you write any poetry when you were on your journey?

SPEAKER_02 20:10

I did. I did write poetry, but I found that during COVID, I was so glued to my phone that I when and when I'm on my phone too much, my brain is not my own.

SPEAKER_00 20:20

Right.

SPEAKER_02 20:20

It then takes on the thoughts of other people and everything. So I was scared after COVID. I was scared that I wasn't gonna be able to write poetry again. And it hurt because words used to be words used to be come just into me and they would just and I'd be able to figure out something. But being on my phone so much and being feeling like the need to be so connected to everything else, those words were not available to me as readily. I wrote two like, but they were small poems. I just felt like walking, experiencing what I was experiencing was poetry in itself. So I I wasn't focused on the writing aspect, I was focusing on the actual walking and feeling.

unknown 20:58

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 20:59

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 20:59

There was a day that I was walking, uh, it was on the Shemandadem, and they they fought in like a cave underneath the ground, and they and there was fighting over a head, and you get to go down into this cave and you get to see how they lived. And Germans were on one side and French were on the other, and they could hear each other echoing. And then when I resurfaced, uh the words came to me and I and I thought, mm-hmm, mm-hmm. Which is just war, war, it is life without air. And but it's it just made sense that it was just war is life without air.

SPEAKER_01 21:36

Yes, yeah, very much. Yeah. As I said, I loved your poetry. It was very Goetheesque, very romantic, very melancholy. I was like, my goodness, there's a lot there. So uh would you do us the honor of reading or reciting one of your poems? I know our my audience would absolutely. Love that. Sure.

SPEAKER_02 22:01

All right. So I'm gonna choose a poem that I wrote when I was in Wadi Rum. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 22:08

Nice.

SPEAKER_02 22:08

Yeah. So we talked about nature. Yeah. And we talked about healing and everything else like that. So this is a poem that I wrote when I slept in. In Jordan, right? Yes. I slept a few nights in the desert and I just couldn't, I just couldn't get enough. I was sad to leave.

unknown 22:24

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 22:24

So the night the name of this poem is In the Land of Pink Wind. Give me a second. The moon rose, not yet full, just after the sun surrendered to it the last of its light. And each grain of sand blushed as if only now, at so late an hour, remembering the mountains they once were. When the last of the Bedouin lullabies faded into the shadows, I began to sleep, the sleep of one thousand and one nights, the moon my pillow, the stars my blanket, and the wind, a thousand and one kisses in the darkness. Morning came as slowly and as quietly as the night, the light returning long before the rising of the sun, and like the slow coming of day, my thoughts turn slowly to this. If this life offers me love, not in the form of a lover, but rather peace in this place of both silence and space, then happily will I return to the arms of this desert and allow my heart to grow still.

SPEAKER_01 23:16

Very nice. Thank you so much. You're welcome. Lovely. Yes. So again, I want to encourage anyone who's listening to go to Brianna's website and read her poetry. It's fabulous. Thank you so very much, Shannon. Well, it's true. I must say I find a lot of modern poetry drivel. Yeah, I I do too. And I really did not find yours to be that way. And I was very, very happy. So thank you for giving me the gift.

SPEAKER_02 23:47

It's funny because sometimes I read poetry and it still surprises me that I write poetry because I don't actually enjoy reading it very much. I read actually, I read, but I love Ryokie and I love I like the romantic poets. I love the people that are sitting there and saying, like, I have this passion, I have this obsession, I have this emotion, I have this darkness, I have this light, and I'm going to tell you every single thought in my head.

SPEAKER_01 24:12

Yes. And I love like I said, that's why you were so, you just hit me. She's so Goethe-esque that I'm just like, wow. Woo. Okay. Now tell me about, was there any sight that took your breath away due to either the sheer magnitude of it, the human tragedy of it, the destruction of war, the beauty that you saw along your journey on the Western Front.

SPEAKER_02 24:41

Every day there was something that was beautiful, but I always go back to Verdun.

SPEAKER_01 24:45

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 24:46

So I had approached Verdun, and there was a this massive rainstorm, Shannon. It was the rain that I feel like we talked about this. You know, when the storms come in in South Carolina and you're just like, this is violence. This is violence on a level that I so I had a storm like that, and there was nowhere to turn to. There was nowhere to escape. I was walking through all of these fields. Wow. And then you're getting to Verdun, and it's almost like, it's almost like that was my invitation. It was like, oh, you want to go to Verdun? Oh, you want to walk? You want to get there? We're gonna show you what it was like. Like it was, it was almost like God being like, This is this is this is this is this is your baptism by rain. Mm-hmm. And then I got to Verdun and I had slept. Um I'd camped out all the nights before I got to Verdun. And I arrived there, and you know, like, you know, if someone looked at me, they'd be like, Who is this?

SPEAKER_01 25:35

Yeah, own person.

SPEAKER_02 25:37

Yeah, who is this feral creature? But I got to Verdun, and it was like you feel like you walk through, like when you go through a veil somewhere where you're go where you're passing, and you just feel like you're entering a a space that's so different than everywhere else.

SPEAKER_01 25:51

Right.

SPEAKER_02 25:51

Verdun was like that, and then you get to go up this shaft. So they have memorials there, they have a museum, and they have cemeteries, and then they still have, you know, a lot of the fortress, a lot of the battlefield, like you still see the mortar rounds that are that went into the that went into the concrete, and there's still signs everywhere that say like danger keep out because it's you know, there's still shells. But you go, you go see this ossuary and you see the 130,000 souls of bones. Yeah. And you just and you're like, what are their names? Who are they? Did their families come here to look for them? Like, did they ever find them, you know? And how long do they wait for them to come home? You know? And then you go to this, so the the the monument, the ossuary at Verdun is this shaft. So it's this beautiful sandstone or limestone, it's just white. And there's the tower of the dead, which is in the middle, and you can walk up these stairs to the top where there's this bell.

SPEAKER_00 26:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 26:46

And you look out across the battlefield, and you just think, My God, they stayed here for almost one full year.

SPEAKER_01 26:54

Yeah. And killing each other.

SPEAKER_02 26:56

Yeah. Just but in the most violent, unfathomable ways.

SPEAKER_01 26:59

Like it was just gas and trench warfare and just horrible stuff. Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 27:05

And that and that the and that people survived that. And then we wondered why they had shell shock or they were like disregarded when they came home. And we do the same thing to our soldiers now. So it's like what we didn't learn. So you look at it and you think, my God, so you had you had the war to end all wars. You had this monstrous, monstrous battle. And then we still had war afterwards.

SPEAKER_01 27:26

Yeah. Do you feel like there were ghosts or spirits? Or were you comforted by God while you were there?

SPEAKER_02 27:34

I am very spiritual by nature. I uh call for protection and I ask for safety. Yes. And so I had I I had gotten two rings made before I left. One was a ruby. So I wore that as a ring of protection. And then I had one of my favorite jewelers, my friend Kate Sidney, make me a ring with sardonics. Look like trenches and no man's land. I just I would hold on to that and call for protection. And I, if there were ghosts, that I was there to walk with them and not to intrude upon their and it it didn't, it never felt unpeaceful. Like it it felt like almost it as if and I I said that too in my book. I said, Oh the soldiers are sleeping now. Let them rest. Let them rest.

SPEAKER_01 28:19

That's right. And you pray for the rest of their souls. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 28:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 28:24

God will give them rest.

SPEAKER_02 28:25

And I think that I think that after traveling for so long, I think that they do. And I think that, you know, felt that you felt that it was a terrible straw that they drew.

SPEAKER_01 28:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 28:38

And but I don't think that there's I don't think there's a haunting there as much. I mean, m maybe other people feel that way, but I didn't I didn't feel that way.

SPEAKER_00 28:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 28:47

And I'm glad.

SPEAKER_01 28:48

I'm glad that that's the case. So let's talk about some happy things. Yes. Let's talk about them. Tell me about the most interesting person that you met on your journey. And that can be, you know, a farmer, a housewife. I don't care. It doesn't have to be anybody famous. Just somebody who just captured your imagination.

SPEAKER_02 29:11

Well, I had gotten to Verdun. And you've traveled, so you know, like when you get to France, it's not that you can show up to your hotel at two o'clock in the afternoon. It's like, no, you come come here at five. And if we're here, we're here. And we'll let you in. Yeah. And if we're not in yourself a place to have a glass of wine.

SPEAKER_01 29:28

And yeah.

SPEAKER_02 29:28

Exactly. Exactly. So I had gotten to Verdun and I didn't necessarily plan a place to stay, but I'd found a hotel and I'd camped out the night before. So I was like, I'm going to get a nicer hotel. I'm going to find a place that definitely has breakfast and whatever. So I come into this hotel in the center of Verdun, and this um very handsome gentleman opens the door. Yes. He was so handsome and he just looked like an absolute angel. And we had talked and he was so soft. And it it was almost like he was a reflection of how I want to move through the world one day too. And so we had spoken and then he let me uh he let me up into my room. And then he had smiled when I came back down again, recommended a restaurant down the street. And then the next day he puts food out for breakfast and the bread is warm. And then he's like, Do you like cheese? And I'm like, Of course, of course I like cheese. And then he's like, Do you like jam? And then we we just have this whole conversation in French. Um, and my French is not very good, but it's good enough. He does his English is minimal, but we're having this beautiful conversation about esprit, which is spirit and faith and hope and meaning and life. And so it's just it's raining in Verdun that morning. And I say, I'm going to go to the cathedral. And he goes, Yes, go, go, go. And uh, because I could have stayed and talked to him forever and ever and ever. And then I went up to the cathedral and I had the cathedral all to myself. And in the like you were saying about the dappled light and the the stained glass and stuff, the light came in in such a way in the cathedral that I just thought, oh my God, like people, these, these, these artisans created this space so this light could do this. Yes. And I just I just sat there and I just it was such a beautiful moment. And so when I got back to the hotel, Fabrice was still there and I showed him the pictures, and I'm like, he just takes one look at these pictures. And he says, He's like, That is a gift. That was a gift. And I just sat there and I just looked at him. I looked at the pictures and I I cried because it was it was a gift. It was such a gift, and it was it was a gift not only to have that experience, but also to be able to share it with this man that was a true angel.

SPEAKER_01 31:49

Uh the Bible says perhaps you're entertaining angels unaware. Perhaps you were entertained by an angel unaware. I love that. He he was a such a comforting spirit to you. So very much so that's who he was. And shouldn't we all be that way? Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 32:08

It's a good way to look at life. You know, we're all we can all sometimes we're the angels, sometimes we're the we're the protector, like we're protectees.

SPEAKER_01 32:14

Yeah, or the we're the person that needs that angel. Yeah. And you probably did after your long journey. So to care and comfort you. That's so nice.

SPEAKER_02 32:25

Yeah, and I sent him a copy of my book after afterwards, and he's like, I got it. This is great. That's so neat.

SPEAKER_01 32:32

Would you recommend doing this journey to any other like-minded individuals who want to uncover history?

SPEAKER_02 32:39

I'd recommend bits and pieces unless you have the time to do what I did. I really took the time to go out there and to do this walk. So if you don't have the time to do it, maybe pick the different battlefields or do it like concentrically, like pick a place and then visit all the sites in that battlefield and then maybe go back and stuff like that. But I mean, if you're stubborn and you really want to walk 500 miles through rural France, yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 33:07

Well, and are there options for people who maybe don't have that amount of resolve that you do? Can you do it by car, horseback, bike? Or are there options for that?

SPEAKER_02 33:18

Yeah, there's a so many people that go through and do it by like they cycle the Western Front. Um, they can do that in 10 days, maybe less. Okay, yeah. Horseback, maybe, but then you have to think about where you're gonna keep the horse and and there's more.

SPEAKER_01 33:31

I didn't know if there was a tour group or that perhaps arranged that.

SPEAKER_02 33:35

Well, there's so many wonderful battlefield guides. My friend Ronald, he does Verdun. He's a battlefield guide there. You can find people that go and like their specialty is the Somme, the Marn, Eap. You can you can go on these battlefield tours for a few days to get your feet wet into these places. Okay. One. But also, history is a lifelong study, and you can study one battle of the great war. I love that.

SPEAKER_01 33:59

Now, you were telling me that you've walked the Camino de Santiago, other things. Do you have any more plans to do further great journeys or walks in the future?

SPEAKER_02 34:10

Yes, after we get off, I'm gonna go walking in the woods. Okay. But uh, no, I want to walk the dolomites. I want to hike the hut to hut.

SPEAKER_01 34:19

Nice. Because I was wondering about have you ever heard of the Incan Trails in Peru?

SPEAKER_02 34:26

Yes. I won't I want to make my way to South America soon, but I just don't know exactly what in what capacity I'm gonna do it.

SPEAKER_01 34:33

Okay. I got just got back from uh the Galapagos in Peru, and there were so many hikers doing the Incails, and that was so fascinating. And they have what their version of the Sherpas are. For each hiker, it takes three of their Sherpas to move you along the Incan Trail, but it's beautiful. Oh my goodness. So something that you may want to consider sometime. I was wondering if your next next thing on the agenda for travel would be another monumental walk.

SPEAKER_02 35:05

No, I have one in mind, but it's uh it would take it's it's like two thousand miles. And there'd be a lot more planning involved, a lot more. I can't just don a backpack. I have to move through places and yeah, absolutely. There's there's a war in part of it. So I mean, there's that. Yeah, yeah, gotta okay. Well, you know, gotta skate, gotta skate along, make sure you're safe. And there's also weather, weather in winter to like when you're walking that far, it takes a lot longer. So it'd be a longer journey. And where do you start? Where do you finish? Mm-hmm. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 35:41

So, were there any places that you ate, stayed, or sojourned that you would highly recommend for our listeners if they decide they want to go and do this trip?

SPEAKER_02 35:55

Yes. So there's this one place in the lake area, which is Lac de Medine. There was this hotel, and it had like, I don't know if it was a Michelin star or like it had a Michelin chef or something, but it was just this beautiful meal. And if I had walked further that day, I would have stayed at that hotel, had dinner, had breakfast, and it's right on the lakes there. So it's just this beautiful, lush region that is just fun to be around. Okay, fabulous. And no, I'm not gonna remember recommend this other place because it's usually really quiet and I like having the cathedral all to myself. Okay, all right. But but uh if you ever get a chance, to go to Champagne and to drink champagne and to see that cathedral is something that is should be on everyone's bucket list.

SPEAKER_01 36:42

Well, this has been wonderful. Thank you so much. And before we close, I hope that you will tell our listeners how to find everything about you and how they can read your poetry, buy your books, all your social media, everything. So take it away.

SPEAKER_02 36:58

All right, so you can find me on my website, it's thepereganprogram.com, but it's you can just put brianagravat.com and it's the same thing. You can find all my my photographs and my books there. You can find my book there. There will come soft rains on Amazon. And then on socials, I have had some misfortune in the last few days where my my social media has been disabled. Huh, okay. Yeah. So I'm trying to get that back, and so I'm gonna maybe start a YouTube channel as well. So, or I might just take a break for a little bit and enjoy, enjoy the spring and summer. There you go.

SPEAKER_01 37:33

No problem with that. I think your your website pretty much covers everything somebody might want to know about you and then reading your books, which I'm looking forward to doing as well. Thank you so, so much. I hope you will come back again. I love this, this has been wonderful and I've enjoyed every minute of it. Me too. Me too. Fantastic. I just want to remind our listeners to let us know what you thought of the podcast. And if you have questions for Brianna, you can send them to me. Or I'm sure if you send them to her, she'll be happy to answer them for you. You can reach out to me at Shannon at a lady well traveled. That's Shannon at a lady well traveled and traveled with two L's, please. And you can find me and recommend me to your friends and family. I'm on all the streaming platforms. And remember that God created this big, beautiful world just for you. All you have to do is get out there and see it. So until next time, bye-bye.