DAYS 80 - 82 - En route to Norfolk, NE - 1589 miles from home

Good grief.

What a weird expression? What could it possibly mean for "grief" to be "good"?

Stay with me on this one.

Today is Rosh Hashanah - the second most sacred day in the year for us Jews. The "head" (rosh) of the year. We open the year, we celebrate new beginnings, by opening the gates of awe: commemorating the creation of life itself by marking a time of introspection and teshuvah: a word that we take to mean repentance, but that literally means "returning." In the lyrics of the great Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach, this is the time of year to "return again / return to the land of your soul / return to who you are / return to what you are...." In ten days time Jews will collectively take up this returning on Yom Kippur: a day of fasting, prayer and vow.

To be clear, I'm a spiritual weirdo - an equal-opportunity person of faith: daughter of German Jewish refugees, an interfaith chaplain and a longtime Zen student... so my "shul" right now - my temple - is the open road. And/but... Today I'm especially feeling the ways in which this pilgrimage, perhaps like all pilgrimages, is fundamentally about teshuvah.

Return again, return again, return to the land of your soul.

As I walk through different communities, along different back roads, bunk down in different homes, community centers, church basements, this returning seems more and more to mean passing through the land of grief. Almost as if one cannot go home again ("return to the land of the soul") without remembering what has been lost.

With all of our hosts along the way, we laugh, we eat, we tell stories... And so often those stories revolve around illness. Injury. Bereavement. Just yesterday I learned of another new friend's loss. The last I saw her, miles ago, we were all celebrating. Today, many miles further down the road, I just wish I could hug her tight.

To break bread with others is perhaps to have our hearts a little bit broken by each other's misfortunes - and then to have our hearts a little bit restored by each other's good company, by our mutual abundant resilience and love.

This is good grief.

It is not a dead end. It is the path itself.

Blessings on the turning of the year, everyone!

Day 81: A dirt road near Meadow Grove, NE.

Day 80. Milkweed along the Cowboy Trail (deliberately planted, as the signs tell us, to support Monarch butterflies.) - Make a wish?

Day 81. Autumn is coming. Cowboy Trail outside of Meadow Grove, NE

Day 81: Lemon-lime Gatorade is disgusting. Unless - despite the evidence of autumn - you're under a hot sun walking through a muggy afternoon - in which case: Gatorade is AMAZING.

Day 81. Tilden, NE.

Day 81. Bob surprised me with Rosh Hashanah gifts: bread for Tashlich, and a candle. (Shabbos candles are apparently hard to come by in these parts.) (I love that the candle scent is "clean linen" and the bread is "hearty rye"!)

Day 81. The Elkhorn River - Riverside Campground, Neligh, NE.

Day 82. Bob heading off for the last leg of the Nebraska Cowboy Trail. Meadow Grove to Norfolk.

Day 82. The end of this trail. Norfolk, NE.