Pilgrimage to Self

The forty-five poems in this volume are about leaving the familiar, walking into a new landscape, and returning to find that the old
neighborhood we left behind appears to be the
same, but how we see it will never be. And that,
changes everything.

Three years ago, I walked the French countryside
from Paris to Chartres. I was leaving and returning at the same time, leaving my current home to return to my ancestral roots. It was with great excitement that I embarked on this
adventure. I would be walking in the authentic
ways of the generations that preceded me. Knowing
there was more this journey still had to reveal, I signed up for another week of walking in France in May 2009. Under the weight of my backpack, more serious lessons shed light on who I was, who I was not, and who I might become.
A shift was occurring in both my body and my inner spiritual terrain, and there was nothing
I could do to alter its momentum. Change happens. The experiences of both pilgrimages ultimately led me back to myself. This book is poetry from the path...my actual walking experiences and the lessons that life had in store for me.