Silly me. I should have already known this lesson. The path IS the message. And right now, what’s showing up on the path is a pretty heavy dose of paralyzing fear.

We still need pilgrims, but now rather than claiming the land we are traveling on we need to restore our relationship with the land with every sacred step or pedal stroke.

As much as I love the Declaration of Independence I wonder if we will be better served now by a Declaration of Inter-Dependence.

I have noticed in recent years that more and more people are replacing their one word titles with a long list of descriptors to let their readers know “what they are.”

This has always felt more like a movement than a project. Projects have plans. Movements follow energy.

Such a journey takes great intentionality—not in the sense of planning, but in the sense of listening, moment by moment, for the next right step.

“In our family, there was no clear line between religion and fly fishing.” A River Runs Through It, by Norman Maclean

Kalos Kagathos. Beauty and virtue or beauty and goodness. That is the philosophy underlying the gymnasium in ancient Greece. Those are the words that finally made my double major in college make sense.

Americans are increasingly looking for opportunities for personal transformation and going by foot, by bike and by canoe or kayak on adventures of self-discovery.

Seriously, listen to that statement: In America, taking a walk across the land is a luxury reserved for only the very well off. Somebody forgot to tell Forest Gump that!

Do you love because it is the right thing to do or do you love because your soul is on fire and your heart is aching to dance with the divine?

“Pilgrimage may be thought of as extroverted mysticism, just as mysticism is introverted pilgrimage.”

‘Brian, it sounds like you are approaching this with a “ready, fire, aim” strategy.’ I wasn’t sure what he meant. “Think about it, Brian,” he said. Finally, I stated the obvious. “Oh, you mean I am firing at my target before I really know what my target is.” He smiled and said, “Bingo.”

Two little fish are swimming and an older fish swims up and says, “Morning kids. How’s the water?” The two fish look at each other and one says to the other, “What the hell is water?” What world are we swimming in that we are blind to?

We are tourists on vacations. We are de-tourists on pilgrimages. First major detour just around the corner on this Pilgrim Hostel pilgrimage project.

Guns may provide the fatal bullet, but a lack of trust is actually what is killing us. Pilgrim Hostels are one small attempt to create a culture and a community of trust.

My soul seems called to something I might name as “nurturing a pilgrimage culture.” There is a lot I don’t know about what that means yet, but two pieces are quite clear to me.

Pilgrimages don’t actually start the day you take Step One on some specific route. Pilgrimages start the day that you DECIDE when you are going to take Step One.

I started writing under the Pedal Pilgrim name in 2013 as I followed this nagging sense of call to nurture and discover a new form of spiritual practice and belief in America.

Those were the words that originated in my blog the night after I conquered Trail Ridge Road, the highest paved highway in the world at 12,173 feet, on a bicycle loaded with fifty pounds of gear. I had ridden that same route twice when I was thirty years younger and absent the gear.