The Wait

Wake-up feel: 8.

My own bed again, after days in a big city.

At this time of year the day begins with the fire. Then the exercises. Still dark — somewhere around four.

Long before the pilgrimage this was my hour — the best of the day for thinking things through, for reflection. A threshold hour — no longer night, not yet day. Others have found their way to it too, by other roads. The exercises came later, from what I found while preparing for the walk.

Screen time. Then out, with the first light.

The path up the mountain. On one side the slope falls steeply to the stream. On the other it climbs, just as steep, to the ridge.

The morning unusually quiet. Peaceful. The sounds soothing. No more buzzing above, in the tops of the trees. The rush seems to have stopped. What could be done to make ready for the winter seems to have been done.

Now the wait.

For the humans there is still work. Apples and plums to pick — to store, or to dry. Wood to chop.

My thoughts are on doubt. Of myself. Of the path. Of others.

I did not see where the bees had gone. I heard where they no longer were.

The old people counted the dark by the roosters: the first at midnight, the second deep in the night, the third before the light — and after the third, they said, nothing that walks in the night has power any more. The physicians of the far east gave the hours from three to five to the lung — the breath, and the grief it holds. My soul waiteth for the Lord more than they that watch for the morning — so the singer in the old book.

The monks who came over from the Sacred Mountain kept that hour too. They did not drive doubt out, it is said; they watched what rose in the mind and did not follow it blindly. In the gospel of John — the disciple the new count keeps today — Thomas doubts, and is not turned away: he is given the wounds to touch. And an English poet, mourning a friend, wrote: There lives more faith in honest doubt, / Believe me, than in half the creeds.

The old count keeps the eve of the Cross: tomorrow, they say, the birds leave for the vyrii, the snakes go down into the earth, and whatever still hums and crawls falls quiet until spring. Tonight the moon comes full, and rises out of the east with the old slow one beside it, whether anyone is watching or not.

Today the leaf, as those who set seed by the moon kept it — a water day. What is picked for keeping on such a day does not keep, they say. The apples and the plums wait for the fruit, two days on.

The wood is still to be chopped.

Day 98
Verkhovyna, Carpathian Mountains, Ukraine
© 2026 Michel Garand | A Pilgrim's Journey | CC BY-SA 4.0
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