The idea of pilgrimage emerged from my subconscious as I walked along the shore of Cannon Beach.
It was the day after the 2025 election. The idea of the death of democracy through the election of a criminal grifter who didn’t even hide who he was YET STILL WON flipped some massive anxiety switch in my brain. I fled to the ocean to walk the shore, listen to the waves, try to find hope somewhere in my psyche. It was either that or I was done.
It had been a difficult year. I found myself trying to process 1) the death of my marriage, 2) the resulting collapse of River Haven, a cooperative household and organic community along the banks of the North Umpqua River I helped create, 3) the long painful death of a once lover turned dear friend, Doug, 4) the sudden, unexpected death of my lifelong friend Lynn while I raced in my car across town in an effort to collect her for a trip to the emergency room, 5) the overnight death of my spiritual leader, Atum O’Kane, who’d been fine when we’d discussed the agenda for our year long program the evening before I received the call, 6) the surprise death of another long term dear friend, Sharon, the morning after she’d asked me to promise to help her die if it ever came to that, and then, finally, the straw that finally broke me, 7) my need to help my 14 year old beloved feline familiar, Rodney, pass over after an unexpected health crisis.
I was barely able to get myself out of bed or dressed. I lost all sense of purpose. My community was dying off before me. It became simply too much. The power of corruption had seized control and the reverberations were palpable.
I couldn’t organize another Women’s March as I’d done the first time Trump won. I couldn’t make myself attend another inauguration just for the purpose of committing a civil disobedience as I’d also done.
Exhausted by grief, I no longer had the reserves to take to the front lines as I’d done throughout my life. Plus, I’m about to turn 70, I thought, as I walked numbly down that beach. I have two faulty valves and an aneurism. What could I even do now?
Pilgrimage, my brain interrupted me.
The word audible, I could hear it over the sound of the crashing waves.
Pilgrimage. Pilgrimage. Pilgrimage. In rhythm with my weary feet as I moved across the sand.
Pilgrimage?
A journey undertaken as a form of devotion in order to connect with higher purpose. A way to enter that liminal state between levels to learn something about oneself. A journey toward personal transformation.
Pilgrimage? A quest, often taken alone, to visit sacred sites, connect with All that is. Serve a higher purpose.
Serve a higher purpose.
Pilgrimage. On my path toward 70.
I knew what I needed to do.
I had friends who had walked the Camino de Santiago and felt it changed their lives. One of them became so addicted to the energy she felt as she journeyed along with hundreds, even thousands of others, that she repeated the experience twice.
My spiritual guidance peer group, after traveling with Atum to Greece, raved about the beauty they’d encountered, the communion with one another, and the grace they felt every day during their pilgrimage with Atum.
I thought of Mecca– of the hundreds of thousands of believers who make that trek in devotion to their God despite so many odds.
I remembered Tibetan friends speaking of the Kora, a circular pilgrimage made by deep seekers, prostrating themselves up and down, up and down, every foot of the way, along the pathways to higher consciousness. When I later viewed video footage of these pilgrims, I was humbled by their faith, devotion, and tremendous physical endurance. Even the elderly made their way.
Odysseus made what some consider a heroic pilgrimage. Philosophers would have us believe his was a pilgrimage toward death, made worthwhile by love. Maybe for him. But what about Penelope? What she endured waiting for that alpha male to come home, was that her pilgrimage?
No. For Penelope, it was a feat of endurance.
Thinking about Penelope led me to try to come up with the names of female pilgrims and their pilgrimages. Surely, I could remember some of them.
Edith Wharton had done the Santiago thing in the 1920’s before it was quite as trendy as it’s become.
I remembered that Eleanor of Aquitaine had gone on the Crusades, alongside her husband, Louis the VII in 1147. This was a pilgrimage for her. Though it is said that her behavior, riding bare breasted with her retinue of 300 ladies in waiting (300!) after insisting that numerous wagonloads of clothing and jewelry be brought along, was a poor strategic move contributing to the failure of that crusade.
After reflecting upon Eleanor, I drew a blank. My mind couldn’t conjure up any more female pilgrims. Such is the erasure of women in history. It should be easier than this, I thought as I pulled out my I-Phone, turned to the internet.
In the 4th century, Egeria, also from the Acquitaine region (strong women there), is said to have gone on pilgrimage. Between 381 and 384, she traveled all across Europe and the East, visiting places mentioned in the Bible. A pilgrimage was one of the few justifications a woman might have used at that time for traveling.
We know very little about Egeria except that her pilgrimage is the oldest known documented case of a woman pilgrim. And she succeeded. Despite being criticized harshly for traveling alone.
Another amazing female pilgrim, Bona de Pisa, made the pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela nine times. A female monk, Bona de Pisa devoted her pilgrimages to providing charity and support to other pilgrims upon the trail, including tending to the sick and injured. A woman of means, Bona de Pisa founded the monastery of San Iacopo en Podio in Pisa for the express purpose of taking in pilgrims and tending to them.
Marjorie Kemp of the 14th Century, a mystic and writer from Norfolk, had 14 children (good grief!) but then, in her 40’s, with her children grown, managed to convince her husband of her sincerity in wanting to go on pilgrimage.
She spent more than a year travelling around the world, visiting historic and sacred sites. Though Marjorie was functionally illiterate (women were not taught to write), she dictated her famous manuscript, The Book of Marjorie Kemp, which addresses her mystical visions, her “temptations toward lechery” and her eventual trials for heresy.
Her book is the first known auto-biography. It is also considered by many to be the best recorded documentation of what life was like for a (middle-class) woman during the middle ages. I made a note to find it and read.
Closer to home, good ole Shirly MacLaine anonymously joined pilgrims along the Way, then wrote about her insights in her book, The Way: a Journey of the Spirit. I remembered reading it back in the day.
And then, I realized that I had already gone on pilgrimage. In 1994. I hadn’t thought to identify it as such but the journey certainly met the definitions.
I chose Sri Lanka, where Buddhism continued to flourish, because it is rife with carvings, caves, and temples. It is also the location of a documented, still living, cutting from the sacred fig tree in Bodh Gaya where Buddha achieved enlightenment.
Also, I’d yearned for years to visit Anuradhapura, one of the oldest continuously occupied communities in the world. The architecture surpasses even that of the Mayan ruins I so love.
Finally, the people of Sri Lanka survived the colonialization by the British with their dignity and culture somehow intact.
Accompanied part of the way by my good friend, Douglas, I first visited Sigirya, a fortress castle built upon the Lion Rock monolith near Dambulla in Sri Lanka in 459 AD.
One of the only known places in the world to depict females in sacred cave paintings, the series of female apsaras discovered inside the rock as you ascend the mount were painted with exceptional delicacy. The uncredited work is remarkable. I have a framed photograph I took of two of those celestial beauties offering forth their tray of the fruits of knowledge hanging in my kitchen– it is so much healthier an attitude than the one we confer upon Eve and the apple.
And yes, I did manage to rest beneath that ancient giant fig, child of Buddha’s shelter. Its massive branches are supported by posts and wires, it is so old. I gave thanks and marveled at the monkey who stole my sunglasses.
I timed the Sri Lankan pilgrimage to coincide with the annual festival of the Esala Perhera, when a magnificent parade of pilgrims, devotees, and stunningly decorated elephants, carry the relic of Buddha’s tooth during the August full moon from its casket in the Temple of the Tooth to the great tank (manmade lake) where pilgrims set lotus blossoms alight with candles upon the water.
That procession, ending in mass chanting and devotion from thousands of us surrounding the lake as the full moon rose, is the single most powerful spiritual experience I have known.
I went on my second pilgrimage, a Goddess journey across Ireland, in 2022. I planned that journey to visit the ancient centers of Goddess worship, many of them now in ruin or taken over by the Catholic Church. The power of the pagan Goddess is a fearful thing to celibate patriarchy bent on minimizing women. I intended to find her, pay honor her, connect with my roots.
I stumbled upon an old map in a shop of antiquities in Kinsale. It listed the locations of known Sheila-na-Gigs, engravings featuring women exposing their vulvas thought to represent fertility. I added visits to those sites to my itinerary.
One of the Sheilas, discovered in a remote fragment of an old center for women’s mysticism which the church demolished (See Inghean Baoith’s Convent of Women, aka Kilnaboy Church. July, 2016) is still visited in secret on the full moon by infertile women asking the goddess’ blessing. It is a very powerful place. I sat and absorbed the song of birds, the singing of the small brook devoted to Brigid, felt the emanations of centuries of women dedicated to healing work and female power.
I later shared an unforgettable evening of song, Irish whiskey, and then, the surprise unveiling of a Sheila not on my map by the delightful Jo O’Connelly, who rescued her from the demolition of a church decades before. It was a memorable women’s evening. Jo’s daughters, Sheila and Sarah, as warm and welcoming as their mother.
As I walked along the beach, I came to understand that these previous two pilgrimages had, indeed, changed my own life for the better. I hoped that by undertaking this one to which I had actually felt the Call, I might not only do the same, but, might manage to contribute something toward the greater good. I decided to make that a core of my purpose.
I also decided to journey closer to home. America is under siege by a fascist regime bent on weakening the people, seizing control of its resources, consolidating a corporatocracy. My country needs all the help it can get, front lines as well as in private.
I decided to travel throughout the United States, the southern part of it, at least; a part of our country which had voted to put this horrible human being, his minions, and his handlers, in office. It seems a region desperately in need of healing.
Changing spring weather patterns influenced my decision, too. By leaving in March, I could avoid the harsh weather of the mountains and the west via the Southern route, then make my way slowly back through the middle.
In both direction, I would visit holy sites, geographical marvels, and bear witness within our national parks which are now in serious jeopardy.
In each of these energy centers, I decided I would meditate, enter a liminal state, conduct rituals on behalf of our ailing planet and for heightened interconnected consciousness.
This pilgrimage would give me renewed purpose. The planning could begin.
