The Moments

“For the pilgrim, the traveler with a deep purpose, this is the moment of truth, when the search for the real takes you to a place that pierces your heart.”

-The Art Of Pilgrimage

These are the moments that have pierced mine:

The afternoon I went hiking in Tongariro National Park, and spent hours sauntering, then running, then climbing through the thickest greenery I’d ever seen. With my green shirt and camo shorts I felt like I became part of the forest, whipping through the trees with my pack light on my shoulders, ears following the sound of trickling streams, eyes pealed for the birds that flew kamikaze fashion across the path in front of me. Every moment was pure joy, every straining muscle was a song of thankfulness, every touch of the plants on my skin as I passed was a blessing.

The moment I walked into the white church in Dannevirke and sat down in a pew, listening to the music and the prayers of the people for the first time in what seemed like ages. I felt so far from home, and yet here, on the other side of the world, my heart recognized a similarity, and for a moment the pain of distance and the comfort of the familiar washed over me and left me unable to stop crying. I spent the whole service in tears, as waves of emotion rolled over me and smashed me into the bedrock of who and what I am; a soul bound in flesh, who aches to shed the barriers of skin and bone and join a greater chorus. It wasn’t sadness, and it wasn’t happiness. It was a coming home.

The day I decided to climb Ben Lomond I faced another layer of what I’ve come to call my “dragon skin.” On the hill up to the start of the path I thought “wow, this is rough. Maybe I won’t go all the way to the top.” On the first few miles of the trail through birch forest, with my Achilles tendons feeling like they were about to snap, I thought “maybe I’ll just go up to the tree line.” After I broke out of the forest and into the sunlight with miniscule snowflakes falling down around me I stopped to marvel, and to have lunch, and thought “maybe I’ll just go back after I’m done eating.” But I didn’t. These negative “I can’t do it” thoughts haunted me all the way up that mountain. Every time I’d get to a point when I had to just stop and breathe, I’d look up and convince myself that I was just going to go a little farther, just to that next hill, just to that next boulder, just to that next turn in the path. Finally I made it to Ben Lomond Saddle, the base of the mountain’s tip, the place I told myself I’d be proud of if I could just make it there. And then I looked up and saw how close the top was, and looked down at my exhausted body, my bruised knees and blistered feet and said “I can’t go back now.” I forced myself up that last precipice, occasionally scaling it with my hands and feet because the boulders and the incline wouldn’t let you up any other way, but up I went. The moment when I finally touched the cairn at the top and looked around, breathless, I felt like time stopped. I’d done it. My heart felt like it might stutter to a halt at any moment, I felt like I’d been run over by a truck, but my mind was flying out over the endless expanse that spread out below me. I threw my fear, my doubt and my pain off the top of that mountain, and I came down clean.