We had been walking for over two and a half hours. The road was flat enough to enjoy now.
A steady pace achieved with less effort. The moon shined down upon us in longer intervals. The clouds seemed to fly north towards our destination. The town of Chimayo where the Santuario is. A two hundred year old plus church with many legends about it. It has been called "the Lourdes of America" for its native, silt like, dirt that can be found inside an uneven concrete hole in the little room adjacent to the main chapel.
In other words Lourdes offers holy water to its pilgrims. This high desert sanctuary has holy dirt. And like the water of Lourdes this dirt supposedly has curative powers. More on this a little later.
We set a good rhythm now. Adam and I seem to walk in unison. I say a few prayers to remind myself why
we do this. Usually I have a reason or a cause to dedicate the walk to. A cure for a friend's illness. World peace. That the mystery of this strange experience called life, or the world, might be revealed.
I feel like a faker in that so many others walk this road for days. Some coming from Albuquerque, a hundred miles away, or even farther. They start a few days in advance of Good Friday. These are the real pilgrims. Compelled by faith, or the lack thereof, that they walk to gain spiritual knowledge, or a blessing, seems to me a sacred undertaking. Name a religion that now exists. It will have pilgrimage as part of its history. Its a universal, human phenomenon.
It is said this pilgrimage thing was begun in 1945 by the survivors of the Bataan Death March. Another story says it was started by the mothers of servicemen in the war then. To intensify their requests/prayers to God for their loved ones safe return home.
And here we are stumbling through the darkness, amateurs. But it is beautiful. The night. The walk. We are lucky to be here. Very lucky. We see the landscape illuminated by moonlight far off to the north ahead of us. Adam tells me he thinks he can see the turnoff to Chimayo over the next set of hills. This is the last leg to the chapel. Its a few miles long. It has a lot of ups and downs offering a compact, intensified, short distance very challenging to weary legs. I tell him we have been this way before and to remember its always further than it looks.
I glance to the west and see the sparkling lights of the place called Los Alamos. This "city" was created in WWII. Made up mostly of barracks then, it was built to house the scientists who came there to develop the first atomic weapons ever used in wartime. The output of their efforts was used to make two bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. They still do a lot of weapons research there to this day for the U.S. government. I ponder the strange juxtaposition of it all. That this intensely spiritual land is home to both faith and fury. It all has a mythlike, darkly poetic, symmetry. I don't know what else to think about it.
It doesn't matter for now we walk. Thanks be.
NEXT: ARRIVAL
A steady pace achieved with less effort. The moon shined down upon us in longer intervals. The clouds seemed to fly north towards our destination. The town of Chimayo where the Santuario is. A two hundred year old plus church with many legends about it. It has been called "the Lourdes of America" for its native, silt like, dirt that can be found inside an uneven concrete hole in the little room adjacent to the main chapel.
In other words Lourdes offers holy water to its pilgrims. This high desert sanctuary has holy dirt. And like the water of Lourdes this dirt supposedly has curative powers. More on this a little later.
We set a good rhythm now. Adam and I seem to walk in unison. I say a few prayers to remind myself why
we do this. Usually I have a reason or a cause to dedicate the walk to. A cure for a friend's illness. World peace. That the mystery of this strange experience called life, or the world, might be revealed.
I feel like a faker in that so many others walk this road for days. Some coming from Albuquerque, a hundred miles away, or even farther. They start a few days in advance of Good Friday. These are the real pilgrims. Compelled by faith, or the lack thereof, that they walk to gain spiritual knowledge, or a blessing, seems to me a sacred undertaking. Name a religion that now exists. It will have pilgrimage as part of its history. Its a universal, human phenomenon.
It is said this pilgrimage thing was begun in 1945 by the survivors of the Bataan Death March. Another story says it was started by the mothers of servicemen in the war then. To intensify their requests/prayers to God for their loved ones safe return home.
And here we are stumbling through the darkness, amateurs. But it is beautiful. The night. The walk. We are lucky to be here. Very lucky. We see the landscape illuminated by moonlight far off to the north ahead of us. Adam tells me he thinks he can see the turnoff to Chimayo over the next set of hills. This is the last leg to the chapel. Its a few miles long. It has a lot of ups and downs offering a compact, intensified, short distance very challenging to weary legs. I tell him we have been this way before and to remember its always further than it looks.
I glance to the west and see the sparkling lights of the place called Los Alamos. This "city" was created in WWII. Made up mostly of barracks then, it was built to house the scientists who came there to develop the first atomic weapons ever used in wartime. The output of their efforts was used to make two bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. They still do a lot of weapons research there to this day for the U.S. government. I ponder the strange juxtaposition of it all. That this intensely spiritual land is home to both faith and fury. It all has a mythlike, darkly poetic, symmetry. I don't know what else to think about it.
It doesn't matter for now we walk. Thanks be.
NEXT: ARRIVAL
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