Meseta

[davidson]

I'd like to throw my 3 cents in about the meseta, that large long looming
plain which can be drop-dead beautiful with its wildflowers, nasty with a
horrible wind & rain (or sun), and a wonder with its expanse.


In the 5 pilgrimages that D Gitlitz  & I have been on with college students
the meseta has invariably been _the_ place when the students began to learn to
recognize what had brought them on the pilgrimage. they thought it was a study
abroad program for college credit -- which of course it was, but it always
became much more. And their new growth can always be traced back to the
slogging through the meseta.

In the mountains they had concentrated on the trail, on the up up up (not as
much as david & I had to concentrate on the up), and on the beautiful scenery
(many of our students had not seen such large hills before). They looked at
everything with wonder of the new, of the unknown, of the beginning of
pilgrimage.

When we hit the plains, the students were freed. They didn't have to look so
carefully at the trail. They didn't constantly look way up. The days blended
into one long experience of a repeated scenery. And thus they were freed to
concentrate on themselves. On the inward journey.

After having been part of some powerful changes that have stemmed from those
several days of _apparent_ boredom , I can tell you that the time may be the
least boring of all. It's the time when you body's demands take a back seat in
the pilgrimage trek.

For that reason: take the level road when it is offered. Don't reject what may
seem so plain, but which is really a backdrop for the most important journey
of all: that of the inward pilgrim.


On a more mundane level, I want also to add that some of my fondest memories
of people on the Road stem from that meseta: the old couple who let us sleep
on their floor in 1974 and again in 1979 -- because there were no refugios
then; the woman who stepped outside her door to milk the cow so I could put
some in my coffee that she had offered to make. The priest who plays the organ
and pulls out all the stops (ha, ha, pun ) when we stop by on our 4th trek;
the view of the hawk soaring across a limitless sky.


Linda Davidson
dgitlitzaaol.com