Our planet having completed another trip around the sun, it is now my turn to take another trip around the planet and return to the place called home. America awaits, for me as it did my ancestors. How much they left behind, I see now! They left to pursue a dream, but I must wake from mine.

Before I get too sentimental I thought it would be a good distraction to take a look back at the last year in numbers. In fact I have not been gone exactly a full year, only 352 days. Americans may be interested to know that I did not have a clothes dryer, a microwave, or a car during that time. Croyez-le ou non, I can report that it is indeed possible to live without such things – and much else besides. But I will be happy to have them back when I return.

During my travels I spent 38 nights in a hotel. As such things go I thought this was a pretty impressive number, until comparing notes with one of my brothers I discovered he’d made it to 62 nights this past year. Then I got to thinking about what the number of nights would be beyond which it is no longer fun to be in a hotel, and I concluded it was far less than 38, let alone 62. Brother, let’s try to avoid such numbers in future!

Having discovered Candarel sweetener pills in Amiens, I ultimately consumed over 3,500 of them in my daily tea and coffee. This will no doubt be alarming to my mother, but I can assure everybody that my condition would have been a lot more alarming if I’d eaten 3,500 sugar cubes. (I did not count, and do not want to know, how many chaussons aux pommes I ate.)

In addition to the three cities in which I lived, I travelled to 18 others for some kind of visit, sometimes just for a day, sometimes staying several nights. I have no idea how many trains I took, but it was more than enough. With a few exceptions almost all these trips took place in France since travel was impossible during my time in Scotland.

Also in Scotland I went 124 days without a haircut, which is a lifetime record that – for the sake of all humanity – I hope never to repeat.

I read 38 or 39 books, depending on whether I finish the current one on the plane back (Villette by Charlotte Brontë). As already mentioned in an earlier post I did also watch all 121 episodes of Lost, which was probably less edifying than reading but did help pass the monotonous days of lockdown.

Having left hobbies, pastimes as well as my car behind in America, the main thing I did this year was simply walk around. I didn’t count every step but I believe I walked over 1,600 miles. This is roughly the equivalent of walking from Paris to Rome – and back. We know medieval peasants made this very pilgrimage (Joan of Arc’s mother is believed to have done it), and while it is a long way, I now understand it is certainly not impossible. But I don’t think it took them an entire year, and it is still a mystery to me as to what kind of incredible shoes they must have had then, because I went through a bunch. In addition to the 6 pairs I brought at the start I’ve purchased 5 more since being here, and multiple tubes of shoe glue. (To be completely honest I also just like owning shoes, but it is also true that many of them have been destroyed from overuse.)

I like walking almost more than anything, but the miles definitely took a toll on my feet, feet which had already been through three surgeries before I came here. I swallowed fewer Advil than Canderel in the last year, but not by much.

Of course I also wrote 46 blog posts including this one. Having never kept a blog before, I learned along the way what it can be, and what it can not. My goal was to share experiences with family and friends, but this turned out to be more difficult than I anticipated. I am sad to report that the majority of what was most interesting about my experiences never made it on to these pages, mostly because it did not take me long to reach the limits of my descriptive abilities.

Naturally enough, the topic of language has often been in my thoughts over the last year. When I think of the tremendous effort it has taken me to learn just a few words of French, or understand even the simplest of sentences and then only when someone speaks slowly and clearly, it seems nothing short of a miracle when a French person speaks to me in English. By what magic can they possibly string together these intelligible sentences in (what is to them) a foreign language, let alone understand the strange sounds of my reply? Although they look normal on the outside, these people possess a true superpower.

Equally, as alluded to above, I have thought about the limitations of language, even of my native language. Anyone who has ever tried praying to a divine being will know of its utter insufficiency. What (we think) we know about the people around us is rarely based on what they have told us about themselves, but what we have observed, and that over time. Most of the questions we have as adults do not have verbal answers, or any answers at all; and most of the challenges we face as individuals or as humanity can not be resolved merely by discussion. Of human suffering: what minute fraction has ever been alleviated by words? For that matter, what true joy has ever been precisely described by them? This is not to discount the achievements of the poets and novelists, but most of us are not Byron or Dickens, and no word can banish a headache, nevermind a heartbreak.

Language, as with every human thing, has a limit. In the early days of this year I dearly wished I knew the right words to navigate my way through the bakery. These were ultimately acquired, but I have yet to acquire the words to impart to the reader what it is like to be in a French bakery – thus I have not tried.

The problem is not actually the terrible uniqueness of French bakeries, nor even the novelty of being abroad. At some point, certainly in adulthood if not before, each of us begins to accumulate a string of experiences that are increasingly defined by their singularity relative to anyone else’s. We drift farther and farther away from the shore of easily-shared anecdotes and find that fewer people really know us; those who do are the ones who have been with us on our journey the longest.

As for the blog, so long as I was merely traveling around, sight-seeing and posting pictures of old buildings, then it seemed to fulfill its purpose, or so it seemed to me. But somewhere along the way the voyage become more than a trip and turned into something else we have yet to communicate (or possibly comprehend). Such a development – for it definitely was a development, and an unforeseen one – seemed like the sort of thing I should most want to write about, but every effort to write anything at at all was always to misrepresent what I had set out to explain. But to keep on going describing only the lesser things was to misrepresent even more profoundly by omission the actual experience I was having. Either way I realized with frustration that I was no longer sharing anything with anyone; at least not reality.

In truth, some experiences can only be shared when two people go through them together. A blog is not going to cut it, although there may be other good reasons for keeping a journal, and I hope this one has served other purposes. If nothing else, I trust it will bring back good memories when I read it again years from now.

It may also be wise for that future self to be reminded of some things he learned this year. Therefore, dear Lewis:

• You learned that visiting a new place can be a wonderful experience. Getting there is usually not. Travelling hither and yon as a lifestyle for its own sake is not sustainable, no matter what someone said on YouTube.

• However, living out of a suitcase for a year has taught you that material things are neither as important or gratifying as the people who want to sell you material things have led you to believe. This knowledge, we know, will not prevent you from buying more shoes. Maybe it can prevent you from buying more rusty antique cars.

• French pastries will not go to your waist if you have to walk every day to get them.

• Stepping into a cathedral, no matter how beautiful, is not a guaranteed way to encounter God; though he may well be there – but stepping into a cathedral is a worthwhile experience all the same, and kneeling in one every day may be good for you in ways that the people who built them knew better than us.

• You have been reminded that life is not over until it is over. Living as if it were is a wonderful way to miss out on the few moments that make any of it worthwhile. But every lesson takes its own time to learn, and to live as one alive you must become ready to be in pain.

• Finally, you have seen that even when you have no clue what you are looking for, if you go searching, you may yet find it in spades.