An easy day, the additional reward for yesterday’s shortcut. I was already locked in to stopping at Santa Claus (yes, that is actually the town’s name), so I rolled with a delightfully short day. I lounged around St Meinrad this morning, listening to the bells toll first for morning prayer and then for mass, and then strolled to neighboring Fulda for coffee at the Village Hut (the Marathon gas station’s accompanying store). The town watering hole, Louie’s Tavern, was already up and running at 9:40am, but I passed on that experience.
Another 90 minutes of walking separated me from Santa Claus, generally following a minor road due west through cornfields. In other words: the usual.
As I checked in to my lodging for the night, a few people clustered around the counter to ask me about the walk. I knew it was coming, even before the conversation started, but it didn’t take long: “What’s your cause?”
I’ve been walking pilgrimages in Europe for years, and while people occasionally pursue that walk with a larger, official goal that their journey is in service to, it’s a rarity. That doesn’t mean a person’s rationale for embarking on pilgrimage is unworthy of discussion; indeed, it’s often one of the most common starting points for discussion between two pilgrims who meet on the trail. Those motives, though, tend to be internal or deeply personal–a transitional moment in life, coming to terms with a loss, striving to effect some profound change. Or maybe it’s just a good vacation!
Here, though, the norm–to the extent that a norm can exist, when such a thing is so infrequent–seems to involve people walking to promote a larger cause. To offer one example, another walker on the ADT, De Fournier, is currently somewhere in Kansas, heading eastbound. We’ll likely cross paths at some point. Her story is crushing–her sister was killed by her husband, in front of their two children–and that has inspired her walk. She is working to spread awareness about domestic violence, visiting women’s shelters along the way. Like other walkers, her trek involves a fundraiser, both to support her walk and her cause.
On pilgrimage, modern pilgrims often push back at the notion that the destination–say, Santiago de Compostela–is what matters, arguing instead that the journey along the way is where the meaning materializes. For walkers driven by a cause, that daily manifestation of purpose shines through all the more brightly.
And so, inevitably I flinch when the question comes. What’s my cause? Well, I stumble, I’m from Portland, Oregon. I’ve spent a good chunk of my life in the Pacific Northwest. We’re mostly liberal out there–at least west of the mountains–and the country seems as polarized and divisive as ever. I just want to talk to people, lots of people, to hear stories and hopefully offer a new touchstone that people can evoke when thinking about Americans in other parts of the country. I’d like to make a contribution, modest as it might be, instead of engaging with my country in the way that I normally do otherwise, of late–with fatalism and derision.
People nod along to that. They get it, they do, but it’s unwieldy and untidy. A woman at the St Croix Marathon responds: “I remember, this one guy, he brought in this huge sheet he was having people sign in support of his cause. And we all signed it! That was really neat.”
I suppose, though, that this is my sheet. I hope you’ll all sign it at some point.
Technical Notes:
- No ADT waymarks today
- The Marathon gas station and Village Hut shop are both right at the turnoff for the Fulda Shortcut Rd. Louie’s Tavern is just a bit further on
- Santa Claus town actually has a ton of facilities–two supermarkets, a pizzeria and sub shop, and some assorted other shops. It’s the best place to restock between New Albany and Evansville
