Tomorrow, I will be in Spain. I fly into Madrid, from where I’ll make a quick jump over the border to St-Jean-Pied-de-Port in France. There, my pilgrimage begins. I walk west, over the Pyrenees, and reenter Spain. After my feet carry me roughly 500 miles from the Basque lands to Galicia, the journey culminates at Finis Terrae, the End of the World.
As usual, I don’t speak the language and am embarking alone with limited funds. Internet access will be sparse, if it all.
Catch you on the other side.
"The road is arduous, fraught with perils, because it is, in fact, a rite of the passage from the profane to the sacred, from the ephemeral and illusory to reality and eternity, from death to life, from man to the divinity."
- Mircea Eliada
Walking itself is the intentional act closest to the unwilled rhythms of the body, to breathing and the beating of the heart. It strikes a delicate balance between working and idling, being and doing. It is a bodily labor that produces nothing but thoughts, experiences, arrivals.
... [T]he mind, the body, and the world are aligned, as though they were three characters finally in conversation together, three notes suddenly making a chord. Walking allows us to be in our bodies and in the world without being made busy by them. It leaves us free to think without being wholly lost on our thoughts.
- Rebecca Solnit, Wanderlust
The regular course of studies, the years of academical and professional education have not yielded me better facts than some idle books under the bench at the Latin school. What we do not call education is more precious than that which we call so. We form no guess at the time of receiving a thought, of its comparative value. And education often wastes its effort in attempts to thwart and baulk this natural magnetism which with sure discrimination selects its own.
...
It is natural and beautiful that childhood should enquire, and maturity should teach; but it is time enough to answer questions when they are asked. Do not shut up the young people against their will in a pew, and force the children to ask them questions for an hour against their will.
All men dream: but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dream with open eyes, to make it possible. This I did.
Having seen the film, I had been familiar with T.E Lawrence, the man and his story, before reading Seven Pillars of Wisdom: but I had no idea of his skill with the pen. This book – excelling not only in historical and military account, but also in literary merit – establishes himself as one of the greatest men and truly one of the most talented writers of the 20th century.
A recommended read, Lawrence’s book is a crucial work in understanding the conflicts in Arabia today.
In these pages the history is not of the Arab movement, but of me in it. It is a narrative of daily life, mean happenings, little people. Here are no lessons for the world, no disclosures to shock peoples. It is filled with trivial things, partly that no one mistake for history the bones from which some day a man may make history, and partly for the pleasure it gave me to recall the fellowship of the revolt. We were fond together, because of the sweep of the open places, the taste of wide winds, the sunlight, and the hopes in which we worked. The morning freshness of the world-to-be intoxicated us. We were wrought up with ideas inexpressible and vaporous, but to be fought for. We lived many lives in those whirling campaigns, never sparing ourselves: yet when we achieved and the new world dawned, the old men came out again and took our victory to re-make in the likeness of the former world they knew. Youth could win, but had not learned to keep: and was pitiably weak against age. We stammered that we had worked for a new heaven and a new earth, and they thanked us kindly and made their peace.
The wilderness pilgrim's step-by-step breath-by-breath walk up a trail, into those snowfields, carrying all on back, is so ancient a set of gestures as to bring a profound sense of body-mind joy.
- Gary Snyder
Guitar Whitey’s Ridin’ Free is a collection of stories about the author’s sixty-some years on the rails. A Seattle native, Whitey started riding during the Great Depression, making him a “cross-over” hobo – one who rode both steam and diesel trains. The book is a wonderful testament to the wandering spirit. Certainly somewhere up there in my top 10. I would recommend it to all.
If it's true that you only go around once, then ,maybe you'd best get at it and do it -- while you still can. You can always go back to school at any age. If you are of the adventurous spirit and feel you should test yourself -- then go for it -- get out there and adventure on life. Go for broke. Go ahead and do it. I would urge you to hop a freight trains while you still can. Never mind where it's going or where you'll end up. Get that first ride under your belt and see how you like it. Get out on the highway, stick your thumb out and see what happens. Forget about a destination, just travel. Hike down some railroad track to the far horizon. Test yourself to see how far you can walk. Try spending a cold night out somewhere without blankets. Peace Pilgrim crisscrossed this country on foot for 23 years, as an older lady, with no sleeping gear. She didn't even wear a coat.
Take a vagabond trip carrying a bedroll, but take no money, and take no credit cards. Not even a quarter for the phone. See how long you can hold out. You may be surprised to find out who your friends are. Try floating down some river on a homemade raft, Huck Finn style. Take a job on a boat, any kind of boat or ship as a workaway, never mind where it's going. Try some hellishly hard job of work (physically demanding). See how long you can tough it out.
Hike the Pacific Crest Trail. Beat your way through Canada on up to Alaska and try for a job -- any job, with no concern for the pay. Canada and Alaska come about as close as you'll ever get to a "lat frontier."
Find your own adventure. Take the risk. Be a dare-devil. Try something new and scary. Try giving your money away. Go for it. Express yourself.
I find myself standing in the midst of an eternity, a vast and inexhaustible present. The whole world rests within itself -- the trees at the field's edge, the hum of crickets in the grass, cirrocumulus clouds rippling like waves across the sky, from horizon to horizon. In the distance I notice the curving dirt road and my rusty car parked at its edge -- these, too, seem to have their place in this open moment of vision, this eternal present. And smells -- the air is rich with faint whiffs from the forest, the heather, the soil underfoot -- so many messages mingling between different elements in the encircling land.
...
Things are different in this world without "the past" and "the future," my body quivering in this space like an animal. I know well that, in some time out of this time, I must return to my house and my books. But here, too, is home. For my body is at home, in this open present, with its mind. And this is no mere illusion, no hallucination, this eternity -- there is something too persistent, too stable, too unshakable about this experience for it to be merely a mirage...
