Friday, January
23.......Mazatlan, Mexico
Five days ago, on the morning of January 19th, I
crossed the border at Nogales, Mexico and began a year-long journey through Latin America.
Perhaps it might have been auspicious to begin writing this journal then but I felt unable
to do so. I needed to disengage myself from the hectic momentum of planning and
preparation required of a long expedition traveling in multiple countries. I was also
weary from a recently too busy life and wanted freedom from schedules and promises. Four
days of driving south through northwestern Mexico, via the states of Sonora and Sinaloa,
was good medicine. Long, straight roads through flat landscapes of monotonous vegetation
allowed my mind to quiet and decompress from the intensity of my last months in America.
But more than that, during those splendid uneventful days I also the begin the process of
becoming a wandering pilgrim once again.
Over the past fifteen years I have gone upon eight of these
extended pilgrimage journeys. Traveling for periods of six to eighteen months, I have
bicycled and hitch-hiked, ridden buses and trains across nearly fifty countries on five
continents. The goal of my travels has been to visit and photograph hundreds of sacred
sites, pilgrimage shrines, and holy places. My purpose has been both personal and social;
I have visited the sites for my own spiritual enrichment and I have photographed them so
that other people might vicariously journey to them through my photographs.
The first of my pilgrimages, in the fall of 1983, took me to Easter
Island, 2200 miles off the Pacific coast of Chile, and Machu Pichu in Peru. Now, years
later, I will return to these places as well as visiting many other sacred sites that my
researches have revealed. Driving south through Mexico, Central, and South America (and
then returning) I will visit fourteen countries and travel more than half-way around the
world. Plotted on the twenty-four detailed road maps I have brought along are nearly 200
sacred sites. From past experience doing these long, multi-site pilgrimages I expect to
visit as many as 90% of the sites on the maps. Additionally, as I travel, I’ll learn
of other holy places from shamans, priests, archaeologists, and wandering pilgrims like
myself. How long will these travels take? Many friends have asked that question but I have
no answer. I am giving myself a full year but ultimately the duration and the direction of
my pilgrimage is in the guiding hands of spirit.
What are these guiding hands of spirit? Readers acquainted
with writings concerning my earlier pilgrimage journeys will know how strongly my steps
have been guided by a higher power (copies of a lengthy manuscript telling stories of my
previous pilgrimages is available by contacting the address given at the end of this
journal or elsewhere in this web site). For those persons just beginning to follow my
journey, let it be known that a most wonderful magic is alive and highly active in the
realms of the sacred sites. Each individual sacred place has a character, a unique
quality, a luminosity or spirit that can be accessed and communicated with. According to
the clarity of a person’s intention, it is possible to gain guidance and spiritual
teachings from the wise spirits of the sacred places. Throughout the months of writing
this on-going journal of my Latin American pilgrimage I will often speak of such
site-specific spiritual presence's and the wisdom they have helped mature in me. Yet no
amount of words or descriptions that I write could ever substitute for the actual
experience of these spirit presence's. To really know these things of which I speak, one
must leave for awhile one’s normal life and embark upon the pilgrim’s path.
Hopefully, this journal will inspire, motivate, and empower others to walk for awhile this
joyous path.
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