Date: 2004-08-08
From: St.Thomas Episcopal Church,Vernon, NJ

To: Campsite past Cascade Brook
Miles today: 12.8

I had the most amazing experience I've had on the trail so far today. I think. County and I started the day at the church, where the nice woman hosting coffee hour gave us some coffee. We thought about staying for the service, seeing as it was Sunday morning, but we really wanted to get some miles in, so we headed out for the trail, stopped to get breakfast sandwiches and started hitching. A car stopped almost right away. The driver was a cool guy with a dog who worked for the Seeing-Eye Dog Foundation. He asked us if we wanted to go see something cool, and I said yes without even hesitating. He drove us to this place built by his father. I don't even know what to call it--a chapel, or sanctuary, or museum, or park--whatever it was, it was a holy place. He called it Pacem in Terra, Latin for Peace on Earth. There was Jewish and Christian and Eastern symbolism everywhere, quotes built into walls from the Bible, and art everywhere. It turns out that the father is a relatively famous artist named Frederick Franck. His art is owned by many museums, including MOMA and the Hiroshima Peace Museum, where one of his pieces based on the Hiroshima bombing is displayed. The place was unbelievable--maybe the most peaceful place I've been on earth. One of my former co-workers talked about "thin" places, places where the barrier between heaven and earth is thinner than elsewhere, and listed the western islands off the coast of Ireland as one of them. This place was definitely one, too. There was art everywhere, built into the paving stones, in sculpture gardens along the river, in small grottoes and galleries. The building was built with an inverted roof, like the wings of a dove. He had some recent work displayed, too, including huge abstract landscapes on canvas done in ink. They had damned the river so there was a waterfall. One of the recurring quotes he used was a Chinese proverb, "The meaning of life is to see." But the place completely rejuvenated me. The meaning of the trail is to see and this place was a great reminder of that. It was better than a church service. Lukas, the son, gave us a ride back to the trail, and I walked with completely new eyes. We had a big climb coming out of town, with hewn rock steps, and each step felt like a prayer. I felt like if I could concentrate hard enough, if I could see the world differently enough, hiking could be a meditation--the flex of muscle and bone. The key is to be conscious of each step, of where your body is, of what it's doing. To really see. Even pain can be a prayer. If I focus on the pain in my back, and why I might be feeling it, and what God's trying to teach me, I can heal the pain that way, by learning from it. So most of the day was like that, hiking in a state of heightened consciousness. It does wear off after a while, even though I swore it never could. The afternoon was more bouldering, clambering from rock to rock along ridgelines. Oddly, Countys' knee started hurting. He had tried to hike without poles yesterday, which evidently wasn't a good idea. So we decided to stop as soon as we found water. We crossed the NJ-NY state line, after following it for several days. A great feeling to be wiithin six states of Katahdin. We finally got to a stream, but not a very good one. Water has been very scarce in NJ and NY, and the streams are atrocious. But Flare, a southbounder, was already there, breaking logs to start a fire, so we decided to stay. He's a very cool guy, just graduated from college with a degree in native gardening. He built a great fire and we stayed up late, talking.