Journey of the Resolute Walking is a common thing for us. Walking, jogging, strolling, running, sprinting, shopping are but a few examples of walking commonly seen in current society. However in other parts of the world, there’s a type of walking only done by the devout. It’s a long, laborious, spiritually transformative walk known as pilgrimages. Rebecca Solnit, a writer, joined one of the pilgrims on her journey and wrote about her experience in her work, ‘The Uphill Road to Grace: Some Pilgrimages’. Henry David Thoreau, a naturalist and a philosopher, also wrote about this type of journey - albeit he doesn’t call it pilgrimage - in his famous essay, ‘Walking’. He described his daily walk into the woods and how people may benefit from doing it. However, there are many similarities on Thoreau’s ‘pilgrimage’ and Solnit’s description of pilgrimage. Regardless of what Thoreau calls his journeys, both writers illustrate their journeys as a transformative ‘pilgrimage’.
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They were a part of the great annual pilgrimage with the Santuario de Chimayo as the destination. They would then walk for about 12 miles before joining other pilgrims a few miles from their destination. In spite of the lengthy walk, pilgrims – since the Middle Ages – have often tried to make their journey harder by walking barefoot, with stones in their shoes, or by fasting. Indeed, Solnit found that many of the pilgrims are severely under-equipped. “Their everyday clothes had been something of a rebuke to me that this was not a hike, and many stout people who looked as if they never walked much otherwise persevered (Solnit 54)”. One of the more experienced pilgrims in Solnit’s group had leukemia when he, for the first time, did the annual pilgrimage. This pilgrimage is no easy walk, yet he continues to do this laborious walk
They were a part of the great annual pilgrimage with the Santuario de Chimayo as the destination. They would then walk for about 12 miles before joining other pilgrims a few miles from their destination. In spite of the lengthy walk, pilgrims – since the Middle Ages – have often tried to make their journey harder by walking barefoot, with stones in their shoes, or by fasting. Indeed, Solnit found that many of the pilgrims are severely under-equipped. “Their everyday clothes had been something of a rebuke to me that this was not a hike, and many stout people who looked as if they never walked much otherwise persevered (Solnit 54)”. One of the more experienced pilgrims in Solnit’s group had leukemia when he, for the first time, did the annual pilgrimage. This pilgrimage is no easy walk, yet he continues to do this laborious walk