13

Dale arrived in Santa Barbara with a surprise—Whitney! Whitney had taken three days off work to walk with Dale and me. Their arrival helped fill the void of Ron and Sandy Briery’s departure and ease the shock of soon losing Deb too.

I needed a day of rest—my first in nearly three hundred miles—and Dale and Whitney spent the time mulling over what route to take next.

The forty-eight-mile walk from Mission Santa Barbara to Mission Santa Inés crossed the rugged Santa Ynez Mountains. Missionaries had followed three different trails over the mountains, none good.

One trail, called Arroyo Burro, was an old Chumash Indian footpath through the wilderness. It was a three-day walk requiring full camp gear, food, and water. I could carry, at most, six pounds, and even that little amount of weight was painful, as sensitive nerves in my abdomen and shoulder, damaged in liver and lung surgeries, became irritated. Dale and Whitney weren’t keen on carrying three days of camping supplies for three people, and quickly nixed the idea.

A second mission trail through Refugio Pass would require a three-day walk along ten miles of beach, careful planning, and luck. The ability to complete the beach leg of the walk would depend on tides and weather. Whitney also discovered that the beach north of Santa Barbara was home to an endangered bird, the western snowy plover, and the beach would be closed wherever and whenever it was spotted nesting in beach scrapes. Even if we were successful maneuvering around changing tides and nesting birds, after walking the beach, we would still have a steep twenty-mile climb over the mountain.

Ron’s hiker’s guide followed a third route—a two-day walk through the San Marcos Pass. It was the most direct, but also the most terrifying: an exhausting and steep two-day walk up twisty Old Wells Fargo Stagecoach Road on a deadly stretch of pavement described by the local newspaper as littered with “gratuitous gore.” The thirty-two-mile paved road was mostly a two-lane no-passing zone without a shoulder, following tight and blind switchbacks cut into the mountain. Rocks tumbled down as cars sped by day and night.

This was the route Dale and Whitney decided we should walk.

The first nineteen-mile day, Dale and I walked in sheer terror, leaning toward the mountain to keep from being hit by speeding cars. Dale and I looked at each other, wondering if we should have left Whitney at home.

Whitney, infused with the immortality of youth, was unfazed and seemed to relish the excitement. Halfway there, I glanced back and was aghast to see Whitney walking in the traffic lane, expecting cars to slow, or move over.

The next morning, we wouldn’t let Whitney walk with us, which was okay because by then Whitney had become bored with walking.

Dale and I set out walking at sunrise, and the San Marcos Pass was even more dangerous than the day before, with drivers blinded by the morning sun. We had walked no farther than a quarter mile when Dale stopped suddenly and picked up a blue bicycle flag beside the road. “A gift from God, to aid in our protection,” I said with a smile. With his bright yellow shirt, the newly found blue flag waving above our heads, and blinking headlamps, we felt a bit safer. We chuckled over the difference in our attitude and Whitney’s and how, as we grow older, our sense of the value of life deepens. By midafternoon, Whitney had decided not walking was more boring than walking, and rejoined us to walk ten miles to Mission Santa Inés. We received a hearty reception and a healing prayer from Franciscan pastor Gerald Barron. I was still shaking from the frightening two-day walk, and I lit a candle in gratitude for our arriving safely at the mission.

The mission was named after Saint Agnes (Santa Inés), one of the best-known early Roman martyrs, beheaded in AD 304 when she was just twelve years old. Legend has it that when the son of a Roman governor sought her as his wife, she refused, stating that she was already betrothed because she had dedicated her life and heart to Jesus. It is said the Romans forced her to become a temple prostitute for the Roman pagan religion before her beheading.

I lit a second candle for Saint Agnes. The pain she must have gone through as she clung to her faith. I wondered if my faith would be as strong or if I would be as courageous.

The next morning, Whitney had to return to work and caught a train to San Francisco, but Dale walked with me another four days—long enough to lose three toenails and develop painful blisters on both feet, despite wrapping his toes and feet in duct tape. We walked hours alongside monotonous straight highways and carried food, because there were no towns where we could stop and eat. We passed miles of vineyards and longed to stop to rest in the shade, but they were set back away from the road, and our feet were unwilling to walk even a quarter mile farther than necessary.

We didn’t stop for eighteen miles, until we reached Mission La Purísima Concepción, named in honor of Mary, mother of Jesus. The mission was painstakingly restored by the National Park Service and the Civilian Conservations Corps in the 1930s and was dedicated as a California Historic State Park. It is not an active parish church.

The park ranger gave Dale and me a tour and led us up the rickety old stairs to the bell tower to ring the mission bell. It was a thrill to pull the thick ropes of the giant iron bell and hear the sound vibrate in the quiet country air. With each ring, I felt energy and warmth radiating through me, and I was struck by its healing power. Bells weigh up to two thousand pounds and are the largest musical instrument; it is well known that music can invoke emotional and physical responses that relax, stimulate, and assist in healing. Perhaps that is why bell ringers live long and productive lives.

Another good-bye awaited me at Mission San Luis Obispo. Work duties called, so Dale caught the Amtrak train back to San Diego. He vowed to be back by the time I reached Carmel, and walk the final two hundred miles with me. I was sad to see Dale go, but we were both relieved when Deb Dawley’s job interview in Houston was scheduled in three weeks, and she agreed to drive QRandom until he returned.

I took a day off in San Luis Obispo. My sprained ankle hadn’t had a chance to heal, and I wanted to soak my swollen foot in ice, buy food, and clean QRandom. I didn’t like days off; they reconnected me with the mundane, and I wanted to stay connected with God.

However, the day of rest allowed me to spend a few quiet hours at the mission, and I sat lazily in the warm sun out front near a fountain with grizzly bear sculptures, a reminder that Father Junípero Serra had founded Mission San Luis Obispo two miles from the Valley of the Bears, where hordes of man-eating grizzly bears terrorized the Chumash natives. The Spanish gained the goodwill of the locals by killing a large number of the enormous beasts and sharing the meat. There have been no grizzlies in California since 1924, but there are many black bears, and I shuddered the next day when I saw caution signs to watch out for bears and cubs.

I was nearly at the halfway point. I had walked twenty-six days and 382 miles. Meg Grant arrived that evening to walk with me to the next three missions—San Miguel, San Antonio, and Soledad—which were the most wild and remote. Her friend JoBeth McDaniel came along to drive their small, lime-green conversion van, which had a miniature kitchen sink, gas cooker, and refrigerator in the trunk, and a pop-up container on top for sleeping. It promised to be quite an adventure, and I could hardly wait to get going. But I also needed to take a moment to savor how far I had come.

I had learned that with a journey of this magnitude, you can’t look too far ahead, or you’d just get overwhelmed by how much is left to do. Instead, you focus on the now. Each step is always in the present, the next step is always in the future, and no one knows when there will be no more steps and the journey ends.

To walk purposely was to experience wide-eyed wonder, the magical kind that we left behind in childhood. Peace washed through me, stilling my mind. “Perhaps this is nirvana,” I often thought to myself.

What I had experienced on the mission trail was what travelers experienced two centuries ago—life as it once was. There was silence and a slowness in walking. But sometimes, even walking, I felt I was moving too fast.

I tuned out the nonessentials, all the busyness that distracts us from the one thing that matters: our connection to God, to spirit, to the source of life. Instead, I flowed with nature’s more primal rhythm, one oblivious to hurry and rush.

I didn’t want to miss anything. The essence of life is undiluted experience. In the sounds around me—the warbling of bird song, the rustle of wind—I heard the voice of God. When wildflowers closed their beauty for the night and opened to the rising sun, I saw God. God was everywhere and in everything.

Walking had become intoxicating and hypnotic, filling me with an ever-present sense of well-being. The cadence of walking became my entire world, and I felt as if I were vibrating. There were brief moments when I became one with nature, with soul, with God, and I understood that I was a child of God, imperfect and ignorant, yearning for wholeness.

Walking connected me with God and made me feel whole.

On a long walk, people walk alone, together. After several hours and many miles, a person walks in silence. The walk becomes deeply personal and each person a solitary walker. On long stretches of flat, seemingly endless roads when there was nothing to break the monotony, Meg would put on earphones and listen to music, but I was cautious and preferred to listen to traffic, ready to move out of harm’s way in a split second. I filled monotony with short, soothing repetitive prayers, like “God, Love” and “Jesus, Mercy.” I paid attention to breathing, a conscious, mindful synchronizing of breath, word, and step.

I had become accustomed to walking alone. I never let down my guard, and I paid extreme attention to my surroundings. The mission walk was a walk of faith, and I was in God’s hands. I accepted risk but was determined to not be foolish.

It was a four-day walk from San Luis Obispo to Mission San Miguel, and Meg and I arrived on the first day of spring. The interior of Mission San Miguel was a burst of color. The walls were painted by indigenous Salinan artisans, under the direction of a master builder from Monterey, and frescoed in vivid blues, greens, and gold crowned by red-brown horizontal bands atop a burnt brick floor. The color was still vibrant and fresh after two hundred years.

The mission trail, too, was a canvas of spring color. Wildflowers in every hue of the rainbow lined the road, but yellow seemed to dominate. Franciscan missionaries scattered mustard seeds as they walked, from a sack with a small hole in the bottom slung over their back. They purposively created a kind of map for those who came after them, and yellow flowering branches of wild mustard grew everywhere. This was deeply symbolic, of course: Jesus compared faith to a mustard seed, which is a small seed that grows a plant so large that birds nest in its branches.

There is something about spring that causes one to seek renewal and transformation. Each day on the mission trail I felt reborn.

This morning, I had looked heavenward, and a morning hawk soared overhead. I felt its heart beat within my heart, and in our one heart I felt the presence of God that connects all living things. The out breath of the animal world sustains the plant world; and the out breath of the plant world sustains the animal world. God breathes life into both.

Now Meg was up ahead, and as I walked I noticed two crows following me. They followed me for hours. They circled above me, disappeared awhile, then flew from behind and squawked loudly, to call attention to themselves. They flew ahead and sat on fence posts, waiting for me to catch up. They laughed at me. They played with me. They cheered me. I wanted them to stay, but they flew away. I missed them.

Mission San Antonio was a four-day walk from Mission San Miguel, and I arrived at sunset on the thirty-fourth day. I felt humble in the presence of its beauty. The mission was nestled against the impenetrable Santa Lucia Mountains, which rose to the west and eventually plummeted in coastal cliffs. It was the most remote of the twenty-one missions and the least disturbed. It was quiet, romantic, and felt abandoned.

I listened for the ringing of bells at sunset, as had been the custom. The bells were silent, and the grounds appeared empty. It was all mine, and as I inhaled its air, I felt I was entering an altered state of being.

In the summer of 1771, Junípero Serra traveled south from Monterey over rocky summits and thick chaparral to establish his third mission here in the Valley of the Oaks. Then, as now, it was a place of unparalleled beauty and solitude. There was no one in sight. Undaunted, Father Serra hung a large bronze bell on an oak tree and rang it vigorously, calling out for all who heard it to “come and receive the faith of Jesus Christ.” A lone, solitary Salinan approached out of curiosity and listened to the dedication mass. Father Serra showered him with gifts and affection, and was confident this “first fruit of the wilderness”¹ would tell others and bring them to the mission. He was right. Later in the day, many members of the tribe arrived, bringing gifts of pine nuts and acorns. They stayed and energetically helped the missionaries build a church and dwellings. The mission prospered and grew, just as Father Serra had envisioned. The mission became famous for its fine horses, and the Salinans renowned as expert vaqueros.

Mission San Antonio seemed vacant when Meg and I arrived. The entry door facing the road was locked. We stood under the bell tower, wondering what to do. In the center niche of the old bell tower hung the first mission bell made in California. It was two feet in diameter and weighed five hundred pounds. It hung silently above me, waiting to serve.

On the door was a quote, in Spanish and English, from Father Serra: “Siempre adelante, nunca retroceder. Always look forward, and never look back.” I smiled. Walking was a physical reminder of this wisdom. If you look back while walking, you trip and fall.

We knocked again and a lovely woman with soft, angelic eyes and silver-gray hair unlocked the door from the inside. “You can come with me or go around back through the courtyard. We lock the front door at four o’clock, but the back door is always open.” Meg followed her inside.

I lingered in front, under the bells. To the east, perched atop the hill overlooking the mission, was the Hacienda, William Randolph Hearst’s private hunting lodge designed by Julia Morgan, the principal architect of Hearst Castle. With its gold dome it looked like a blinding ball of fire lit by the setting sun, as intense as Moses’ burning bush.

A full moon rose in the east as the sun set in the west, bathing the mission in light. As the day slowly faded into night, I walked the grounds, mindful of the notorious population of rattlesnakes that resided in the tall grass, and I looked for mountain lion and bobcat tracks in soft dirt under towering oak trees in back.

The mission had thirty bare, monastic rooms with a communal shower and restroom. The rooms were empty; Meg, JoBeth, Deb, and I would be the only guests.

The chapel was left unlocked at night, its priceless treasures unguarded behind a heavy wood door that hung on eighteenth-century hinges made of iron forged at the mission. I pried open the door, and recorded Gregorian chants softly descended from the rear balcony; a small light flickered to life near the altar. Lighted candles faded quietly along the back wall.

I sat in silence and became prayer.

Holiness hovered in the air, and when I listened with my heart, I heard the faint echo of a choir. Juan Bautista Sancho, the Franciscan missionary who lived here twenty-six years and is buried at the foot of the altar, composed sacred music and assembled a Salinan orchestra and choir who were among the finest musicians in nineteenth-century California.

The monastery was arranged in a quadrangle around the mission garden. I sat mesmerized by its beauty. It was getting late, and I had a brutal nineteen-mile walk the next day, but I couldn’t leave.

I lingered in the garden on a bench next to the ancient fountain majestically lit by the light of the full moon. Creatures of the night arose from the quiet of San Antonio Valley to worship the moon, and the air was alive with the sound of crickets, night birds, hoot owls, and the mission’s two feral cats, Rosario and Spirit, romping in the Italian cypress trees next to the fountain.

Centuries of Franciscan priests have left behind a holy world of serenity and peace. I sat with eyes closed, breathing the holiness.

        Lord, make me an instrument of Your peace. Where there is hatred, let me sow love; where there is injury, pardon; where there is doubt, faith; where there is despair, hope; where there is darkness, light; where there is sadness, joy.

            O, Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console; to be understood as to understand; to be loved as to love; For it is in giving that we receive; it is in pardoning that we are pardoned; it is in dying that we are born again to eternal life.²

That night, I knew I would never be the same again, and my soul would be forever restless. For the remainder of my life, I would be consumed with an insatiable desire to walk and follow the bells of St. Francis.

My body succumbed to deep sleep.

I dreamt and saw my lungs clearing and opening.

I dreamt and saw my cells releasing six years of toxins and my blood becoming pure.

I dreamt and saw new, healthy cells replacing damaged cells all through my body.

I dreamt and saw soothing moonlight mend my broken body and cleanse my spirit.

I awoke fresh and whole.