Days 96 & 97 – 10/10-10/11 – Boardman to Biggs Junction, OR – 68 miles

Modern pilgrimage, for all the echoes we’re fond of highlighting, is awfully different from its medieval predecessor. That’s hardly a controversial statement. I wonder, though, if we’ve ever fully grappled with the profound ways that flying (or taking the train or bus) home–as opposed to walking home, making that same long journey in reverse–fundamentally alters the experience.

Alexander John Shaia first got me thinking about this. In his book, Returning from Camino, he encourages pilgrims to reframe Santiago (or Finisterre/Muxia) as the turnaround point, as opposed to the destination. It’s a notion that aligns with the popular wisdom that the Camino really begins in Santiago. On a personal level, it’s the lasting impact of the pilgrimage, as opposed to the instant gratification in the Praza do Obradoiro, that matters most.

Medieval pilgrims, at least the ones who lived and decided to return home, as opposed to starting over in a new town somewhere along the Camino, had weeks or months to grapple with the question of how they might integrate the experience into their lives. And the harsh reality is that they didn’t have a lot of options available to them upon returning home; the wide array of self-actualization outlets that we enjoy today was still centuries away. They had an easier job ahead of them and a generous runway to pursue it.

It’s easy to understand why “bringing the Camino home” is the unshakable challenge troubling pilgrims in the aftermath of their journey. Their return is a whiplash-inducing car crash.

I’m thinking about this because, for the first time in my life, I’m walking home. Home isn’t detached from the journey; home is the journey. While I have my Finisterre-like epilogue with the continuation to the coast, that’s just a few days of walking tacked onto the end of a massive walk. It’s for the symbolism and the photo opp, and to satisfy my completist nature.

I certainly wouldn’t have chosen to spend the better part of two days walking on I84 if I could avoid it, but a route from Boardman to Arlington that Google Maps had assured me would work instead kept running into private property. Eventually, I had to bail and improvise a not-entirely-legal return-trip to the freeway, in order to avoid even more prolific infractions. And once I made that move, I was in for the duration, as I already knew that no viable alternative to I84 existed for walking from Arlington to Rufus. Only the last handful of miles from Rufus to Biggs Junction would be a break from the freeway. The upside of all of this, though, is that I spent practically zero time considering the route. I never consulted the gps. I shut down the part of my brain that reacts to movement and external stimuli; when you’re on the freeway for hours, you’ve just got to turn that all out. And in the absence of all of that, memory was able to operate unfettered.

One of the biggest discoveries I’ve made about how this changes the experience is that, by walking home, I’m also in a way walking through my life. Medieval pilgrims might not have traveled more than 10-15 miles away from home in their normal lives, but most people today have a wider zone of influence. And this means that the towns radiating outward from the ultimate destination are imbued with memories and significance beyond most of the places encountered earlier on the trip.

In Ontario–learning how to lasso with a group of students as we spent a week living on a ranch in nearby Unity. In Baker City–playing a pick-up game of soccer as we broke up the long drive. In Pendleton–lunch in a restaurant that I discovered no longer exists, a loss that triggered a surprising pang. One of the more painful high school sports losses that I’ve witnessed in Irrigon. Another reminder of a championship defeat in Boardman.

Looking ahead to within 100 miles of Portland, the memories come faster and in greater volume. The near-disaster in Horsethief Lake, mitigated only by the heroic rescue. A painful trip to an emergency room. Milkshakes and an escape room in The Dalles. A swimming hole in Mosier. Early morning coffees in Hood River en route to the annual senior class trip.

It’s not unusual, of course, for pilgrims to reflect on memories over the course of their walk. The difference here, I think, is that the memories are embedded in the physical route, connected in a far more tangible way to the journey itself. They are layers of meaning superimposed on a scroll, the classic palimpsest analogy at work. And in the process, some measure of cohesion is achieved between my life and the walk. This journey isn’t something alien and separate, a liminal space wholly distinct from my “normal” life, something that requires reconciliation. There’s an essential continuity, threads interwoven into one unified whole.

Five miles from Biggs Junction, I descended the offramp from I84 and took a quick break at the Sinclair in Rufus. From there, I enjoyed a small reprieve from the freeway, instead following a minor highway linking these two small towns. Midway through that walk, I encountered a fascinating story about Rufus’s history. In 1945, the tide had turned in Europe, and the Allies were marching towards Germany. Plans were afoot for the next stage in the war, and this required crossing the Rhine River. Given that the Germans would almost certainly wipe out the bridges, the Allies needed another way. The US Army Corps of Engineers worked with private companies to develop a new kind of floating bridge that could be easily transported, assembled, and installed.

The army wasn’t going to give these pontoon bridges their first live test in Germany. They needed a reasonable facsimile for the Rhine, and they found it on the Columbia. Three units were stationed in Rufus, suddenly dropping 3000 soldiers into the small town, before the tents and supplies had even arrived. The townsfolk rallied, making sure the troops were fed until everything was in order. And then, the drills began. By the time the soldiers–and the bridges–touched down in Germany, they were ready to roll.

This is the other thread woven throughout the walk–the stories of ambition, boldness, bravery, and competency that run through American history. The stories that I have encountered abundant evidence of, all along the way. Increasingly, even among the most jingoistic pro-America crowds, it feels like an overwhelmingly pessimistic sentiment runs through conversations about what the US is capable of today. We have lost some fundamental belief in our capacity to do big, good things as a country. The left is so attuned to America’s moral failings–some entirely legitimate and others that are more complicated–that it inspires cynicism and an impulse to toss the patriotic baby out with the bathwater. The right is so convinced that the government is inefficient at best and corrupt and incompetent at worst that, on the occasions it gains power, it turns that worldview into a self-fulfilling prophecy. And yet, right here in Rufus, there was yet another reminder of the remarkable things we are capable of on a national level, both the big, defeating the Nazi army, and the small, feeding a pack of soldiers for as long as necessary.

It’s worth noting that home and America aren’t just discrete threads; in certain regards, they’re one and the same. And this, too, is a fundamental difference to this walk compared with walking in Europe. In making this journey across America, I have reshaped the relationship I have with my own country and my place within it.