Walking to Canterbury: A Modern Journey Through Chaucer's Medieval England [Paperback]

The author, a man of Native American and English heritage, wrote an earlier book, Walking the Trail, about a several month walk tracing the infamous Cherokee "Trail of Tears" backward from Oklahoma to his home in northeast Alabama, as well as two other books tracing historic American routes. He claims his trip to England to follow the medieval Christian pilgrims' route from London to Canterbury Cathedral, described most famously by Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, was an effort to connect with his English heritage. I finished the book concluding that Ellis' so-called pilgrimage was just a way to provide his publisher a sequel to sell based on the reputation of Ellis' apparently successful earlier writing.

For a guy supposedly seeking to understand his English roots Ellis invests minuscule effort in the process. He's commits just nine days to his first trip to England: arrives in London, departs the next day a seven-day, 70-odd mile walk, spends the last night in Canterbury, then returns to London by train to catch a flight back to the U.S. Such a short trip can't provide enough material for 295 pages, so Ellis pads the book with flashbacks to his Trail of Tears walk plus a lot of material about medieval English history, customs, daily life and English and non-English Christian practices. Some of the historic material consists of pages-long quotes from other books. Mind you, the historic extracts can be interesting, but there are better sources for such things and the book's subtitle promised "a modern journey through Chaucer's medieval England."

Ellis focuses on some fairly odd people for someone saying he wants to get in touch with his English heritage. His most significant encounters are with unemployed, spike-haired, heavily pierced slackers and their pet iguana (he actually tarries an extra day to party with them), Swedish, French and Dutch tourists, an Iranian immigrant and several bar tenders. No farmers, no police officers, no teachers.

Ellis' walk is hardly a religious pilgrimage. His own beliefs are Native American/New Age (i.e., deifying created objects rather than the Creator) and he expresses scant respect for Christianity. On one occasion Ellis hurts his back when he trips in the forest and experiences excruciating pain. That night, seemingly for the first time, in desperation he prays for relief. The next morning he experiences a self-described miraculous healing. Then, rather than credit God for healing him, and perhaps seeing the occurrence as "a sign" to repent and complete the trip as a true pilgrimage of thanksgiving as medieval Christians would have, Ellis quickly explains away his healing as a fluke.

Ellis encounters some New Age nutburgers from Holland. They are lead by a Dutchman calling himself Geronimo who, for unexplained reasons, came from Amsterdam to England to practice some half-baked version of Native American spirituality in an attempt to relieve urban angst. Ellis writes: "Geronimo's teaching Native American spirituality when he has no such heritage disturbed me." But a few pages later non-Christian Ellis perceives no hypocrisy when he arrives in Canterbury and, among secular visitors there to see the historic building and its art, makes a spectacle of himself by ascending the Cathedral steps on his knees in imitation of a pious Christian pilgrim. What a jerk! Afterward Ellis celebrates the conclusion of his "pilgrimage" at a bar where people mock Christian heritage, then leaves early the next day to rush back to Alabama and his supernatural dog and ancient Cherokee holy rocks.

Ellis is a bit of a weird traveler, to boot. He lugs a 40 pound backpack of camping gear and spends a third of his nights in a tent in the semi-rural landscape, sort of like camping in the suburbs while walking from New York City to someplace in Connecticut. And he cooks on campfires several times at historic sites and just off the road in scraps of forest and farmers' fields. I've made walking tours in the British Isles and can tell you people just don't do that sort of thing; heck, most people don't build campfires anymore when they hike in the U.S. And Ellis blends into the local populace by wearing a broad-rimmed hat adorned with bird feathers, a rattlesnake rattle and sea shells. One bit of quaintness - the trip occurred in 1999 - is Ellis talking about the great pocket knife he always carries and uses to carve figures in his oak walking stick. Ahhhh, pocket knives.... remember when we were allowed to carry those when we traveled in the good old days before 9-11?

I don't recommend this book. The stories aren't that good (most of Ellis' "adventures" are about as interesting as your maiden aunt would have on a package tour) and you can easily find better sources about the history of Canterbury or medieval England. I bought it because I enjoy making and reading about both Christian and secular pilgrimages, but this isn't, to my disappointment, really a pilgrimage book.

Walking to Canterbury includes a small scale sketch map of the route, some small black-and-white reproductions of medieval scenes, a three-page bibliography of sources used for the historic extracts and a grainy photo of the author's muscular upper torso in a tight cowboy-looking shirt.