Day 150 & onward - The Lincoln Memorial - 2847 miles from home

Esther Lisa Tishman
2 days ago
6 min read

Updated: 15 hours ago

I'm writing this on a misty morning on what we might call "Day 159." I am now zero miles from home. A week ago, after a day of winterizing and packing up Libby for storage (she'll stay in Virginia until we can come back and get her in a few months), my husband Ezra and I boarded Amtrak and headed toward the setting sun. I started to get the sniffles on the rails... all of which blossomed into a nasty head cold over the weekend. Of course it did! This is the Pilgrim version of coming home from college after final exams and spending the first week of your vacation in bed.

Fun fact, speaking of colleges: the Latin motto for the University of Oregon, my academic home for 20 years, is mens agitat molem. Latin (from Virgil) for "the mind moves matter." Yup. This is what happens when mind and heart move 5 tons of motorhome steel and 120 pounds of pilgrim-lady body across 3 mountain ranges, 2847 miles, 13 states. You collapse on the finish line for a few days.

Friends, we pushed it - an act of sheer faith and will - across 150 days, a collective eight pairs of sneakers and nearly as many rolls of kinesiotape.... Lord knows how many popsicles (Bob) or Pop Tarts (Esther) were consumed. And then, there wasn't any more pushing. Just the rumbling of the train. Just the drizzling of the rain.

In the NyQuil and Netflix haze of the past few days, forgive me for how long it's taken to revisit this blog. I will also be sending out more email blasts - e.g. updates about a January lecture series, a new Substack blog to supplement and expand on this website, etc. (And if you're not receiving emails from us, you can sign up here.) Thanks for your patience with all of that. The gears are slowly starting to click into place again!

Meanwhile:

November 30th, our last day on the trail, was rainy, cold, gray, windy. In fact - the weather was just about the worst we encountered in the entire five months. Which actually tells you how blessed we'd been up until that point. We'd endured heatwaves, thunderstorms, cold - and even a brief spell of snow. But each day there had been a reprieve. A break in the clouds, a cool sunrise or twilight, a rainbow after the storm. Our last day, in contrast, was relentless - as if the heavens had been holding back for us until now. On this last day there would be no spot of sunshine, no clearing of the clouds - just drizzle and gloom. This was not going to be a day to linger at the summit.

We were 22 pilgrims strong at the Lincoln Memorial. The last 14 miles of our trek, from the Whole Foods parking lot in Vienna, VA to the statue of our sixteenth president itself: these last miles were the Forrest Gumpiest of this whole Forrest Gump adventure. Folks streamed in, joining the pilgrimage, all along the way: beginning in Vienna with Sara and Andy, and again at various points in Falls Church, Arlington and the District itself. There were several memorable moments: Mary and Dave appearing suddenly on the sidewalk ahead of us ... and Dave later, rejoining us, at the monument itself - having secured a magical parking spot (he would drive us at the end, wet and chilled, first to hot soup and then back to our rig). Judith pulling up in a car alongside of us - a friend having driven her from Baltimore. Neal, Deb, Jane and Brad materializing right by the Metro. Kristin striding down the street toward us, joining us from her home just a few miles away. Dan and Lise and their three kiddos suddenly appearing near the Arlington cemetery, along with my husband and stepson. Deb's son Jason miraculously joining us in the chamber. And, finally, Rebecca Museido, who had helped host my Zen talk the day before, finding us at the reflecting pool.

I had expected our arrival at the Memorial to be anticlimactic. Pilgrimages are neither rallies nor protests. Pilgrimages end with touchstones and prayer and quiet. And, as I've said before, in some sense pilgrimages never even end at all.

My steady companion for these past five months, Bob Hall, had also prepared me for anticlimax, sharing that through-hikers typically conclude their treks with a photo at the terminus point: trekking poles held aloft, hands touching the marker, broad grins, trail-worn gear and general buff-badassery on display.... but no other fanfare. So I was prepared for a whimper and not a bang.

I wasn't prepared for weeping. Nevertheless, the waterworks started for me at Arlington Cemetery, as we passed the row upon row of identical white tombstones. As always, the route that our trailblazer, Dave Imus, had crafted for us was perfect (check out this Slate article about Dave's brilliant work.) We carved our way through city streets until we rounded the bend by the Cemetery and faced the Memorial Bridge. There are other more scenic paths we might have taken, but this route meant that we walked our last couple of miles in view of the Lincoln Memorial itself... with the Washington Monument and Kennedy Center also in direct sight.

Over the past five months, I've crossed the Tetons and the Great Plains. I've traversed much of the 890 square miles of the Idaho National Laboratory and of course the mighty Mississippi itself. In short, I've seen all manner of gorgeous and pretty and humble and ugly things. But our last couple of miles were sublime: that's the only appropriate word. The last couple of miles made visible the sublime enormity of the human mind and heart: our capacity for the immense acts of faith required first to imagine, and then to build, and lastly (and most difficult) to maintain a Republic.

We crossed the Potomac with the Lincoln Memorial in view - on a bridge flanked by statues representing The Arts of War and the Arts of Peace.

Mens agitat molem, indeed.

People, I was absolutely not prepared for how beautiful this homestretch would be. I was 12 years old during my last visit to the Lincoln Memorial. I have a vague memory of humidity and a striped short-sleeve sweater that was both too warm and too scratchy for the trip. I don't remember grandeur. I don't remember marble and limestone. But on Sunday, November 30th, I was in awe.

In the warm and welcome presence of 21 other pilgrims, I climbed the 58 steps from the plaza to the chamber. I was aware that the space was sacred. I wept again when I read the inscription over the statue of Lincoln:

In this temple

As in the hearts of the people

For whom he saved the Union

The memory of Abraham Lincoln

Is enshrined forever.

After some quiet, some milling about, some photo ops - we circled up. I wanted to say something about the sacred work of the republic - about the mind of faith and the mind of community. I wanted to thank the Universe for answering the prayer of our feet. I wanted to thank all the people - family and friends and supporters - and especially Bob: I wanted to honor the unlikeliest path to friendship I've ever experienced. I wanted to offer words of hope and blessing for the future.

Alas, I don't think I said anything entirely coherent. But there were more tears, and more hugs and more photos.

And then we headed down the steps, and went - once again - our mostly separate ways.

Not on our mailing list? Sign up here to continue to receive updates about our next steps on the long and winding road.