A Pilgrimage to Beauty

Written by Nicki Johnston

Last year, our family planned our summer trip around the Well-Read Mom pilgrimage to Our Lady of Champion. We chose our dates and itinerary so that we would be in Wisconsin for the Solemnity of the Assumption. This year’s vacation began with the April 8 solar eclipse. We drove down to Texas for eclipse day and then headed west, letting my 4th grader select national parks where he would like to use his free pass. 

We visited family and friends, camped eleven nights in four states, attended Mass at six different churches (two of which were basilicas), and delighted in our boys’ first visit to the Pacific Ocean. But until we visited the Channel Islands, I hadn’t considered our trip a pilgrimage.

While waiting to board the ferry in Ventura, CA, we met sisters from the Handmaids of the Heart of Jesus who visited various national parks on what they called “A Pilgrimage to Beauty.” I loved this phrase and adopted it for the rest of my family’s trip. This nearly 5,000-mile road trip with our family of six and all of our camping gear crammed into a minivan felt very different than the quiet walking pilgrimage I made with fellow Well-Read Moms in Wisconsin last August. Yet it was a pilgrimage nonetheless.

As we journeyed through the American Southwest, we marveled at the order with which God created the universe—such that we could know years in advance precisely when and where a total solar eclipse would happen—and then were still overcome by the tremendous splendor of witnessing totality with our own eyes. We spent a morning trudging through the Chisos Basin in Big Bend National Park to arrive at the spectacular view known as “The Window”—and then stayed up late at night to stargaze in the remarkably dark night sky. 

We rode on a ferry alongside dolphins in the Pacific Ocean to Santa Cruz Island, where we camped with island foxes (which live only on this one island in all the world) and hiked to Smugglers Cove to explore tidepools and experience firsthand the sea creatures my landlocked sons have only read about in books. We stood in awe at the grandeur of the Grand Canyon, witnessing the sun rise over one of the world’s most magnificent natural wonders, humbled by the thought that He who created the universe and all of these wonders in it is the same one who would come to us later that same morning in the tiny host at Mass.

Our trip also included a literary pilgrimage to experience and appreciate the beauty of manmade things like churches and books. After we left the Grand Canyon, we drove to Santa Fe, New Mexico—a place I had wanted to visit since reading Willa Cather’s Death Comes for the Archbishop for Well-Read Mom’s Year of the Giver. As I stood before the Cathedral Basilica of Saint Francis, I recalled the moment toward the end of Cather’s book when Bishop Latour (based upon the real Bishop Lamy, whose statue stands in front of the magnificent building) notes that “No one but Molny [the architect] and the Bishop had ever seemed to enjoy the beautiful site of that building—perhaps no one ever would.” Yet here I was, along with countless other pilgrims and tourists, very much enjoying the beauty of this manmade church, so different from—and yet complementary to—its natural surroundings.

Well-Read Mom illustrates the beauty of nature and manmade things in the two books offered to us for June. The adult selection, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, is about natural wonders, while one of the Family Supplement books, The Seven Wonders of Sassafras Springs, focuses specifically on manmade wonders. My family’s Pilgrimage to Beauty included both, and God uses both to draw us to Himself and others.

As I reread Death Comes for the Archbishop, being inspired to do so by my time in Santa Fe, a quote from Bishop Latour at the end of Book One struck me:

One might almost say that an apparition is human vision corrected by divine love… The Miracles of the Church seem to me to rest not so much upon faces or voices or healing power coming suddenly near to us from afar off, but upon our perceptions being made finer, so that for a moment our eyes can see and our ears can hear what is there about us always.

Stepping outside our daily routines through travel or pilgrimage can make our perceptions finer. But a much less expensive and more accessible means to this is reading. Books like Pilgrim at Tinker Creek help teach our eyes to see and ears to hear God through the natural world right outside our door. The Seven Wonders of Sassafras Springs illustrates the importance of always seeing the people who are about us and the transformative power of hearing their stories. 

These books help us recognize marvels, a word defined in The Seven Wonders of Sassafras Springs as “that which arouses awe, astonishment, surprise, or admiration.” And the takeaway from these books is that we can encounter marvels exactly where we are, just as Bishop Latour enjoins. Annie Dillard willingly explores her own Tinker Creek, while Eben—the main character in The Seven Wonders of Sassafras Springs—seeks wonders within his community as a means of earning a trip outside of it. Along the way, though, he discovers “one-of-a-kind marvels” “as unimpressive and ordinary” as the town itself. By doing so, he not only gets to take the train trip he has always longed for but learns that “small things can be a prize, too,” and pledges to keep looking for wonders upon his return home.

This emphasis on the local, small, and seemingly unimpressive rang true for me as I returned to my ordinary home after the extraordinary sites of our trip. And so, this year, I plan to take a pilgrimage in my own state. I’ll walk the “Kansas Camino” to Pilsen, home of Servant of God Father Emil Kapaun. I won’t encounter any oceans (other than waves of wheat) or canyons (certainly not grand ones) like I did this spring, nor will I end up at a Marian apparition site like last summer. But this pilgrimage will be full of unique beauty—an opportunity for Divine Love to correct my limited vision and help me always perceive what is about me—and I know there will be plenty to seek along the way. 

About Nicki Johnston

Nicki Johnston is a home educator, a CGS catechist, an avid reader and an amateur naturalist. She lives in Kansas with her husband, Graham, and their four sons.

About Well-Read Mom

In Well-Read Mom, women read more and read well. Our hope is to deepen the awareness of meaning hidden in each woman’s daily life, elevate the cultural conversation, and revitalize reading literature from books. If you would like to have us help you select worthy reading material, we invite you to join and read along with us. We are better together! For information on how to start or join a Well-Read Mom group visit our website wellreadmom.com