In her apartment in Waterville, amid the modern furniture, hang a Gothic architectural mirror, Gothic sconces, a 16th-century replica tapestry of Burgundian wine pressing and several large photographs of Vézelay, all focused on light shining into the basilica. Candles stand all about. Cat toys and trees dominate the little study, "essentially my writing room," she said, "but mostly my cat's." In the living room a tall bookshelf stores only cookbooks ("I adore gourmet cooking and wines," she said), and the walls of the tiny kitchen are adorned with posters of French cheeses, French breads, French wines and liqueurs and culinary devices for cooking. At home she turns in a 7 or 8, rises at 4 a.m., and makes her big meal of the day at 1 or 2 in the afternoon, but on pilgrimage she makes Spartan meals, mostly bread and cheese, and puts up in budget hotels. What with her cervical spine problems, her everyday walking and walking on pilgrimages--usually eight to 10 days each and as much as 20 miles a day on her eight different journeys so far--she says she has "lost many dress sizes."

Taylor has traveled by bus, taxi and train as well as shank's mare on pilgrimage and doubts that walkers are the only true pilgrims. At Lourdes she stopped in a shop, explaining her health problems when the proprietor asked why she was there. The woman told her, "It's the intention, not whether you walk or not that makes a true pilgrim," Taylor said.

Taylor's intention is to get her feet on the ground.

"Historians are attracted to place," she said. "Being on that ground, feeling what happened there, feeling history as living lends to passion in teaching about it. You feel the place you work on. You feel inspiration for your work."

Most comfortable traveling alone in the countryside, she exults in the chance to take it all in, delights in the sheep and cows on the route, even one of those vicious Spanish dogs she was told to watch for. "He was fine," she said. "For me, religion is also seeing creation in everything--my cat, the leaves, the beauty of nature."

The great blessing of journeying alone on pilgrimage, she says, is chancing upon generosity.

She speaks of complete strangers at hotels going out of their way to help, calling ahead for her to all sorts of places to hire cabs whose drivers tell her stories, give little tours and often charge her nothing to go long distances. French bus drivers offer "petit detours" off their routes to show her medieval sites. Seeing the crucifix she wears, people initiate conversations that transform into informal interviews about life experiences. Fluent in French, she's exchanged reasons for existence with an ancient woman at a bus stop. On the bus after an hour-long conversation, Taylor said, "She held her hand against my cheek and said, "You're a good woman.' It felt like a blessing."

"People are forthcoming. I've found people will talk about spiritual yearnings as often as not," she said. "It's the contact with people, the talking, that seems to make the connection I'm dwelling on. . . ."

"I was very much the hermit, Taylor said. "I found myself through this process. I'm becoming more community involved. I got involved with people."

She can be found "bringing back the boon," giving talks to the Newman Club and other groups on campus or speaking with local church gatherings, sharing her experience and her academic research on pilgrimage, saints and shrines, the pilgrim's motives for going on pilgrimage, the change that transpires in the pilgrim heart. Whether we travel a route to a holy shrine halfway around the world or out to our own backyard, we may look on each day as a pilgrimage. Do something however small every day, she says. It's "the very little, ordinary things" we do or that are done for us rather than grand gestures for good or ill that give a soul fresh life.

At a time when religion is generally not in fashion on college campuses across the country, she talks about her religious beliefs in her classes, not embarrassed, she says, to be an academic who, through research, became religious.

When she spoke two years ago in Debra Campbell's course, "The students were fascinated," Campbell said, "to discover that a woman who had been out in the world and experienced many things would become a Catholic in early middle age. It gave them a whole new perspective on Catholicism." Students said to Taylor, "Someone your age, a professor, saying why you wanted to become a Catholic! It's nice to have a professor say, "I believe in God.'"

"I don't know why I came to this particular path," Taylor said. "My own belief is, we experience what we need to, where we need to, at a time we need to. But the idea that each thing that happens to us for good or ill is part of that journey, and how we act in response or don't act can make all the difference."

Life, the pilgrims say, is a journey you're always in the middle of.