Pilgrimage

​By Rowena Conahan

​This is a popular trail.
 
Even at this early hour,
the parking lot is crowded, 
and I set off
with a caravan 
 
of college students,
large families,
old men and women,
parents wearing babies, 
teenagers, 
children, 
pets.
 
People laugh, hoot, yell.
 
They pose for selfies, 
sing with the radio, 
and carry fat little bulldogs 
across rocky streams.
 
I’ve never been on a pilgrimage, 
but I think I understand 
the essence 
of what it should be.
 
I move slowly
and stop often
 
to press my face to the 
crackled bark of a
towering pine,
 
to admire the wobbly, 
sprawling, green crown
of a liverwort,
 
to reverently stroke
a furry, dew-jeweled 
mullein leaf.
 
People pass me by,
punching their walking sticks
at the ground.
 
I kneel at the water
and watch fish shadows
for so long
that I finally see
the snails
trooping across the rocks 
below them.

But even with any number 
of such devotional stops, 
 
I, too, 
must continue 
the ascent.
 
Mile after mile, 
step after step, 
breath after breath, 
 
my heart surrenders 
its effort to remain 
small and quiet. 
 
The rhythm of the walk calls 
     all of us 
to lay down our thoughts, 
 
that we might carry 
the weight 
of our greater selves
instead.
 
I’ve never been on a pilgrimage,
(before today), 
but I think I understand 
the essence 
of what it could be.
 
At trail’s end, 
I join a congregation 
of picknickers in the temple 
of a remote canyon waterfall.
 
We splash, and laugh,
and drench our heat 
in a mist from above, and
 
all of my judgments
 
     are gone.