THE WALK Part 5

PART 5

Adam and I approach the north turn in the road that will take us down into Chimayo. Its hard to miss tonight. There is a very bright floodlight, with a generator running, on a tall steel pole lighting up the landscape for several yards all around. The rabbit brush and juniper clumps throw strange, angular, shadows in all directions.

The New Mexico authorities go to a lot of trouble to do what they can to help make the walk safe at night with patrols, signs and lights like this. While this light clearly marks the turn off for the pilgrims it is blinding. Seems to take away some of the, I don't know, sacredness of it all.
Then again a light is just a light.

Adam and I cut the corner on the left side of the turnoff. Instead of following the paved road we walk off onto the west sandy shoulder. We pass through a cattle gate, or stile, entrance through the livestock fence. Its a narrow opening, slightly angled, to prevent cows from walking through.
We make it through and begin the last leg of our trip.

Normally this portion of the road can be quite rigorous. Car traffic picks up the closer you get to the Santuario. Walkers are forced to edge along the uneven rocky shoulder to stay out of the way of approaching headlights. But this year the state has paved a wide shoulder to the left of the road. New guardrails have been installed as well. Man this is easy walking! Like our own personal freeway. But now we head downhill. Shins and calves begin earnest aching. No matter. We are almost there.

I have used a wooden cane as a support and aid all along this trek. I feel like a wuss. But on a hike like this arthritis in my knees, hips and legs gets nasty and uncooperative for steady movement. I understand why walking staffs have been in use since past centuries. The stick can help you move along at a brisker pace. You can cheat and make your joints and muscles behave in more of a way you want them to. Over the years I have seen walkers who seemed barely able to stand upright let alone walk. And as if walking alone isn't enough to challenge you I have witnessed pilgrims carrying full sized wooden crosses on their shoulders while others have large effigies of saints literally strapped to their backs. Burdens of choice I suppose. Those people are strong beyond my comprehension.

Adam and I trudge on through the darkness sometimes passing other walkers who are either slowing down or are taking their time valuing this experience step by step. Sometimes walkers breeze past us, their steps quickened by the knowledge that they are almost to their destination.  We pass walkers sitting on the new guardrail taking a break. They are silhouettes to us for now the moon is obscured by clouds again. We nod or whisper words of encouragement to them as we walk by.

As usual I can't let the simplicity of this walk be. I have always wondered what is it that compels human beings to do it. Not just to be moving on just this particular path but to walk pilgrimage trails all over the world.  Over the ages mainly religious motivations I guess. The annual thousand year old holy Hajj pilgrimages to Mecca, and even Chaucer's edgy Canterbury Tales, remind us that walking is the one thing we can do that no one can take away from us.

I think the Buddhists call it kinhin. Walking meditation. But you don't have to believe in anything to make a pilgrimage. A pilgrimage doesn't have to be done as an offering to God or to an ideal. So there the mystery begins. The act of pilgrimage seems like a wavelength that human bodies and souls can plug in to and share.

For myself an important defining meaning to a pilgrimage, for whatever reason it is undertaken, seems to be the fact that it is a voluntary act. Its a personal choice. If your walk takes you where you want to go, or ends badly, fulfills some inner need or not, it is/was your choice to make. It is a way of saying "Whatever may come I have chosen to do this." Lets face it, for many people, there are little or no choices they get to make in their lives.  Some folks have it made. Others never win.

The strange inequities of this life seem to sweep us all along in directions we would not wish to go.

But on a pilgrimage the pilgrim makes the choice to do it. Its freeing in that it feels as if, for once, we get to choose our direction on the big path of reality.

I'll shut up now.

NEXT: ARRIVAL