Pilgrimage Poles and Purpose

I dig my hiking poles out of the closet in a new-found frenzy. Bits of autumn leaves and dirt still cling around the points. The red metal is never cleaned but occasionally wiped off. I never think of them until I throw them into the back of my car for weekend walks through the local woods or more serious ventures.

Our first significant outing brought us up the rocky peaks of the Adirondacks, where I gripped hard and dug into the steep boulder-strewn trail up Cascade Mountain. On another sojourn, they held me up during an unexpected knee-pained seven-hour descent to the bottom of the Grand Canyon. They’ve flitted by my side through the flowered woods of Quebec.

On occasion, others have taken their place: wooden walking sticks on an eight-hour trek through the cloud forests of Machu Picchu, a random fallen branch on a path to a cliffside tea house in the Himalayan foothills, and shared on a canyon-to-sea hike over the coastal mountains of California.

I run my fingers down the slim metal, tug on the straps, and rinse off the bottom spikes. In two months, these two poles will be my best buddies. In two months, I am escaping the crumbling world around me to walk the Camino de Santiago for 30 days. After the past few years of personal losses and a predicted future of political and humanitarian turmoil, I’m taking a time out. I will walk about 400 miles through Portugal and Spain, adding my footprint to the thousands that have gone before me for over a thousand years. My poles are taking me on a pilgrimage.

I didn’t get a strong calling, only an email from a friend asking me to join her and a small group of friends on her milestone birthday. This was never on a bucket list of things to do before I die. I’m not religious, but random acts of kindness, thoughts, and prayers aren’t cutting it amid an avalanche of human and planet atrocities. I know when I need some spiritual intervention.

I also know I don’t want to rush to the finish line. My long career in travel took me to many popular places and man-made wonders. In later years, I merged service and travel, participating in Global Builds in developing countries. Recently, I have focused on natural landscapes. Now, with the means, the time, and the desperation, I hope to embrace a spiritual experience.

In The Art of Pilgrimage, author Phil Cousineau exemplifies ways of making the ordinary sacred. He quotes fellow adventure writer Brodsky, who warns that questing too earnestly is an error; beauty is a “by-product of ordinary things.”

Cousineau adds, “We can only discover the real thing through deep observation, by the slow accretion of details…openness, attentiveness and responsiveness are the essence of pilgrimage.”

Unfortunately, details are not my forte. I’m eager to engage with the whole picture and have to make a conscious effort to slow down and notice the details. For the past ten years, my New Year’s resolution has been the childhood warning when crossing a street: Stop (distractions), Look (be aware), and Listen (intently).

Therefore, my Pilgrimage will not be a mission to get my completion stamp. I’ve accumulated enough stamps on passports that lie in my desk drawer unnoticed, marking trips barely remembered. I want to observe ordinary things through new lenses, as Martin Sheen’s character eventually does in The Way. I want to travel on an inward path as well as the outside trail.

Online Camino posts and podcasts advise on what to pack, where to stay, and how to manage blisters and backpacks. However, I hesitate to watch YouTube videos of other pilgrims’ trips. I want to make my own discoveries and have my own experience. Make the way, my way.

As enthused and desperate as I am, I feel a little guilty about dropping out, walking away, and unplugging from our troubled world. But I will use this time to renew, refocus, and reset. And on return…resist.

Buen Camino!

*****

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