Alone Excerpt: Making the Commitment

NOTE:

I will not be blogging about my experience on the Camino de Santiago during the months of September and October. You can follow me on Facebook where I will be posting occasional pictures and comments. To follow either “friend” me on Facebook or use this link: https://www.facebook.com/brian.heron.73/

Every Monday during this period I will post an excerpt from my book, Alone: A 4,000 Mile Search for Belonging—excerpts that I believe reflect many of the assumptions and experiences that have become the basis for this current Pedal Pilgrim work.

Alone Excerpt: Making the Commitment

Pages 188-189 in Spanish Forks, Utah on the edge of the Nevada desert

It had been six days since I’d left Steamboat Springs nagged by the feeling I was about to hit a crossroads. That day had finally come: there was no sense in riding any further toward Nevada unless I was committed to crossing the desert. I pulled out my maps and connected to the internet to familiarize myself with the 500-mile section looming before me. First I checked the weather forecast. A heat wave was expected in the next few days, driving temperatures from the mid-nineties that I had already been riding in, into the low hundreds. After Delta, Utah, towns were spread out between 65 and 90 miles apart. There were no services, rest stops, or watering holes between the oases listed on the map.

Logistically, it felt doable. As long as I planned well each day, I should be able to leapfrog from town to town. It would require packing about eight liters of water, as well as a full day’s worth of food and snacks each day. That’s about twenty extra pounds to carry, but at least as the day wore on I would be eating and drinking my way through it. I wasn’t too concerned about whether I could manage to cycle across each day’s little wilderness—I was more concerned about the psychic fatigue of attempting to do it day after day for a full week.

As the day wore on, however, I became convinced I had to do this.  A new purpose had risen like yeast in me. I had left Portland over six weeks ago committed to playing out the theme of crossing a wilderness, as I believed it was the right metaphor for the 21st-century Church. As I neared the desert, it didn’t feel right suddenly to take a slice out of this circular pilgrimage. I was leaving home and returning home, and the wilderness seemed like a piece I had to face. How could I authentically say I’d gone down into the belly of the whale on this mythic journey if I bypassed the desert? I would never feel I’d done it justice. My mind was made up; my heart was set. And my stomach was a little nervous.