Tales from the Trail #03: On the letting go of Life …
The following morning I woke (again, after over eleven straight hours of gloriously sound sleep) and somehow knew in my most profound depths of being that I was indeed going to continue my Walk – that I was going to do whatever I had to do to get as far as I could for Peace; one day, one step, or even one ride at a time.* And so it was that I sat down with “Ted” and his kids for a meager but scrumptious breakfast of several pieces of toast ladled with home-grown alfalfa sprouts and a smattering of sea salt. And then, just before I headed out the door to get back out onto The Road, he blessed me again – this time with a large bag of homemade granola to take along for the trip …
Now normally I would have refused such an offering, seeing as how my previous pilgrimages had never allowed for sustenance of any kind to be carried along while walking** … And yet this particular Walk had already proven itself to be an entirely different breed of adventure, and I figured that if my current levels of suffering had changed things regarding the acceptance of offered rides (levels that would probably continue to be endured over the possible course of the next several months, and rides, therefore, that would have to be regularly accepted to make any kind of headway at all along The Road), then taking along a small smattering of foodstuffs for those times when I was sure to once again become physically stranded was probably OK as well – or at least so I thought at the time.
And yet once again, as was so often the case during all my past pilgrimages, even when my own plans were sound &/or my own intentions noble, The Way often called other efforts to the fore. For as I walked northwards along Highway 27 later that very morning, I came across a small travel Bible laying by the roadside – a Bible that had been there for obviously quite some time – a Bible that had been permanently smashed open to a very particular page – a page that happened, upon very first glance, to boldly announce the words of Mark chapter 6, verses 7-8: “And then he called the twelve and began to send them out … And he gave them authority over the unclean spirits. And he ordered them to take nothing for their journey except a staff: neither money nor bread, nor even a pouch in which to carry the same.”
Needless to say, this remarkably timed “coincidence” was more than good enough for me, and I immediately removed the aforementioned gift of food from my satchel, tossed it gently by the roadside (to be later enjoyed by any of my animal friends who happened to be nearby), and thereafter walked onward completely sans sustenance – just as I had during all my pilgrimages beforehand – for the entire rest of my Way.
*In past pilgrimages, my rule about walking had always been similar – “Whenever you can walk, you walk” – and yet up until the day before I had never known a time or place when I couldn’t actually walk; had never known a time or place when I was in such a state of physical disarray that longer-distance walking was (at least in that moment) truly not a feasible option.
**In order to walk a pilgrimage purely “on faith”, it was necessary to follow a number of guidelines that kept the same as pristine as possible – among them the refusal to accept or ever use any money, the refusal to eat even one mouthful more than one needed in that moment to sate one’s basic hunger, and the refusal to take even the smallest portion of any edible offering along for future “just in case” use along The Way.
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