We are spending two nights in a beautiful setting that is literally a "refuge": Machaseh Retreat Center, in Shoshoni. "Machaseh" ( מַחֲסֶה) means refuge in Hebrew: a word especially beloved by the psalmist, who uses it often as another name for the Sacred: "our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble" (e.g. Psalm 46:1, KJV). So where is the sacred in this pilgrimage? Liberty Walks is nonsectarian and nonpartisan, a civic-minded endeavor. But it is also an act o

Okay. First of all. We are now one-third of the way to Washington. And even so. I've been thinking a lot about pilgrimage and pain. There's a hairshirt  component to traditional pilgrimages - the pebble in the shoe or the impulse to crawl on one's knees, as if the journey toward one's inmost truth required self-emptying. As if authenticity were won through heroic achievement - as if discovery demanded purgation and even penance: the mortification of our 'grosser' corporeal se

Why oh why Wyoming? This landscape is hitting me deeply - and I'm not entirely sure why. It's not just the proverbially big sky. It's not just the Tetons, or the striated sandstone buttes, or the reminders of Close Encounters of the Third Kind and a sudden realization that, in the scheme of things, we're actually not that far from Devil's Tower (340 miles northeast of here). It's also the corrals of horses who stare at me languidly, assess my predatory potential, and then oc

Yes, I'm covering three days in this post.... Apologies, but two of those days have been "zero" days - days to run errands and just to rest. We've been 'banking' miles for a week now, walking our tootsies off so we could linger in a single place - and these past three days have all found their anchor in the same Wyoming town: Dubois. Dubois maybe takes itself just seriously enough. The unofficial motto of Dubois is "Where real cowboys work and play" - and its main street feat

Over the weekend it rained, it stormed (lightning on the mountain top, oh my), it even hailed. We crossed the Continental Divide on Day 45 at nearly 10,000 feet. We were photographed and filmed by our wondrous documentarian Elijah Reed and his pal Löic (they'd joined us for the weekend). In the early morning hours, Elijah filmed a grizzly up close and personal on the road not five feet in front of him. He was in Löic's car, foot on the pedal, ready to gun it as needed. Late

"Manifestation" is one of those new age words that I've always been a bit allergic to... What some folks call The Law of Attraction - the capacity to conjure up the life we desire - implies an ability to manifest your dreams out of thin air. But what if your vision boards and daily affirmations don't bring you the white picket fence and the perfect green lawn? Is it your fault that reality isn't bending to your will? Literally the word "manifest" just means clear or eviden

Writing this on the morning of Day 42, August 14th. We're staying two nights in Ashton, being spoiled rotten by the incomparable hospitality of the Ashton United Methodist Church. Rev. Dale Clem and his wife Kelly brought us into their home, plied us with iced tea and root beer, hot showers and clean laundry - and then the community blessed us with one of the best meals we've had on the road. (Kelly's zucchini lasagna was astonishing... My only complaint is that it was finite

I don't want to blend too many of our separate adventures into one blog post, but the last two days share a common host - the Upper Valley Catholic Community. We pilgrims spent two nights in two different churches in two different parishes, feeling the warm love of the broader Upper Valley community. Given the centrality of pilgrimage in the Catholic imagination (think of the Camino de Santiago ), touching base with traditional images and icons over the past two days has felt

Oh, the luxuries! We really hoofed it last week, adding extra miles to our walks where we could - which wasn't a hardship, because we're still splitting walking/driving responsibilities. The longest hike we each did was still just 15 miles. And yet - the effort paid off massively, with two fully free days to unwind in Idaho Falls. Of course, "unwinding" is a very subjective term. For Bob that meant a little more walking (!!) - but this time, just leisurely strolls ... along t

I'm writing this on the morning of day 37, August 9 , from the Community Church of Mud Lake. We've walked more than 700 miles - with the Lemhi mountains at our side and our back, through windy hilly passes, past dusty hay fields and nuclear research sites, through county fairs and alongside a busy state highway. We've hiked to Sage Junction, where Highway 33 meets Interstate 15. Later this morning we're driving about 40 miles to Idaho Falls. There, we'll bunk for two nights,

I keep calling this journey a pilgrimage - but maybe the term is misleading, if it conjures up a merely individual, personal pursuit - a single person after their own "pilgrim's progress." Bob and I - and Ed who just left us on Tuesday, and Kate who will be joining us on Sunday, and all the other lovely folk who will Forrest Gump-style step alongside us for a spell ... we are all walking in our own footsteps, but we're on a collective journey. We're stretching beyond the com

I'm writing this on August 6th, the morning of Day 34, as I sit and cool my heels by the Arco fairgrounds - just next to a plaque that commemorates "Atoms For Peace." It's weird to be writing these words today. Exactly eighty years ago, we dropped "Little Boy" on Hiroshima. Here in Arco, about a decade after Little Boy - on July 17, 1955 - the lights of Arco were lit for one hour by nuclear power, demonstrating for the first time in the history of the world "the peaceful use

I am writing this on the morning of Day 33 - having yesterday walked a mile upwards, toward the moon. Okay... we only gained 1000 feet elevation, and the moon is the National Monument and Preserve, Craters of the Moon. But all the same. I'm feeling dusty and gritty (that lava rock sure does break down into some impressive black powder), and pretty darn good. The walk up along the foothills of the Salmon River Mountains was just delicious. The day started out cloudy and cool -

[written on the morning of Day 32 - August 4th] I'm beginning to think we've got it all backwards. They say: you don't have to like each other - you just have to get along. I think actually the reverse is true: it's impossible to get along unless you manage, one way or another, to like each other. (To find each other's likability, perhaps?) Not an easy task, sometimes. Take the flagpole I saw today. Two flags fluttering in the brilliant blue sky. Stars & Stripes on both, and

[written on the morning of day 31, Aug 3] Little things, big things. We're moving slowly, 20 mile increments, and at the same time we're now closing in on over 600 miles traveled. (Okay, yes, my sister drives that in just a day when she visits me from San Francisco. But, still. We pilgrims are officially badass, I think). Even more to the point - this walk from Richfield toward Carey: little things, big things. Within just a few miles, I started to see the landscape change. A

Quaking Aspens grow fast - 2-5 feet a year, apparently; maybe even more in "ideal" conditions - but still and all: it's quite something, I think, for the owners of the farmstead I passed today to have thought some 20-30 years ago straight into the future... planting the seedlings that would in 2025 provide the only full shade I've yet encountered on Highway 26. What is it to think into the future like that? And were these trees definitely Aspens? I don't know for sure, but th

[written on the morning of Aug 1, day 29...] Pilgrimages are lonesome - but not necessarily lonely. Lonesome as in solitary, reflective. Perhaps a touch mournful. On the road I keep finding myself wanting to photograph a single stand of sunflowers. An open and empty gate. A stop sign, or a calf, finding its shimmering echo in the water. This quality of the Walk sometimes brings me to tears - a melancholy that isn't comfortable, but that even so I wouldn't want to trade for a

People. I'm beat. I'm bunking down in the RV hookup section of a Love's truck stop. My first time "Loving" it... The guys are across the way at a perfectly okay motel called Amber Inn. We are in Bliss. I don't think there could be any more intense contrast between life at this truck stop, and the walk we did today - up on the plains and hills above the Snake River, on Old Highway 30 (until I missed my cut off, and ended up backtracking on E Allen Road) - very few cars - old,

And just like that, we've covered more than 500 miles. The milestone was pretty anticlimactic in certain ways: another long, straight, empty stretch of road. In four hours of hiking, I probably saw no more than half a dozen cars. This was perhaps the loneliest stretch I've walked to date. And yet, our route was none other than the Old Oregon Trail Road, and our destination today was Glenns Ferry: one of the most notoriously dangerous river crossings on the Oregon Trail. Until

I'm sitting here at the Gem State RV Park with a Dead Guy... Somehow this brew keeps following me on my journey.... I first drank Dead Guy in Ashland, Oregon, home of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival and the mothership Rogue Brewery. This was back in another lifetime when I was Shakespeare professor Lisa Freinkel - not Esty Myobun Lisa Freinkel Tishman - not this woman with so many freaking names, and with an open road ahead of her. And then Tammy Jones in Prairie Cit y, Ore