On the Road Again

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Some adjustments for modern times have to be made, of course. At Mecca, the traffic gains speed crossing a dry riverbed called Wadi Muhassir, in keeping with the tradition that the Prophet spurred his camel through this pass. In Mexico City, pilgrims visit the Basilica of Guadeloupe to see a cloak on which the revered image of the Virgin reputedly appeared in the 16th century. They approach the basilica on their knees, but once they're inside, they view the sacred object from a moving walkway.

The pilgrim boom has also raised environmental concerns. Take the Indian Wheel, a sacred circle of stones 80 feet in diameter, in Wyoming's Bighorn Mountains. Created some time between 1200 and 1700, it is a spiritual destination that attracted fewer than 6,000 people annually before 1990.

But in 1991, after a burst of publicity, 14,000 people came; then 30,000 the next year, then 70,000. As they walked around the wheel, their feet hollowed a trench a foot deep. Indian leaders are concerned. It is a place for spiritual seekers who want to pray, they say; if youíre simply curious, please don't come.

Yet like those before us, we are compelled to seek. Our view of what is sacred may differ from that of our ancestors. What we revere as ritual may repeat ancient patterns or create new ones. But what really matters is thinking about where we're going and why, and discovering something about ourselves along the way. The need for a place and a time to reflect, to contemplate, and even to pray is as crucial as ever. As Martin Palmer writes in the new book Sacred Journeys, "True pilgrimage changes lives," whether we go halfway around the world or out to our own backyards.

Disneyland? Perhaps.

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