THE JOURNEY HOME Going home, on my first day out I managed to travel all the way from Ein Karem to an inn just to the north of where my road met the main caravan route from Jerusalem headed for Nazareth. It was a goodly ride, but on the plus side I estimated it would cut about a day’s journey from my total travel time. With Amos at my side, courtesy of Zachariah, and by what seemed like pure luck or perhaps Amos’ planning, we managed to reach the inn in time to spend the night. The next morning, Amos met with the leader of a caravan headed north towards Nazareth, Capernaum, and the villages about the Sea of Galilee. Because I was so young and Amos was reckoned to be my man servant, the caravan master assigned us not to the caravan he …show more content…
Because of its size, our mini-caravan made for a rather amicable group. Even better, three of our group were young children, all girls. Except for me, all my adult colleagues on the trail were unattended. Me, I had Amos, whom Zachariah insisted go along as my protector. “He might be old,” he said, “but armed with a Roman short sword, Amos is rather …show more content…
Be that as it may, for those of us who were separated out, there were other positives: being in a smaller group meant less toileting traffic in the night, and that meant less debris and animal dung tracked in and out of the campfire circle. For our trail boss, the leader of the larger caravan had selected the most stalwart of the young males in our group, a lad named Jereb. Fortunately, when we settled in about the campfire that first night, we discovered he was not only a born leader, but also one of the very few in our group who had traveled with numerous caravans before. He started our orientation with a list of items his boss had given
Stephen Richards once said, “When you do what you fear most, then you can do anything.” Joseph Campbell has written a three stage theory that every hero in a story goes through, a journey if you will. Every journey is different, but it's always structured around his formula, a hero will: separate from his/her known world into a new one, they'll challenge opposing forces or complete a series of tests, and lastly they return to their world again with a gift. Going along with this formula I've gone through my own hero's journey, and succeeded.
It was our fifth day in the Philmont Scout Reservation in New Mexico, the halfway point of the trek. I as the Crew Leader was responsible for the other 11 members of the crew, including 4 adults. I was in charge, and amazingly the adults rarely tried to take over, although they would strongly advise me what to do in some situations. Phil, with the exception of me, the oldest scout and the Chaplain for the trip, was my second. Together we dealt with problems of making sure everyone carried the right amount of stuff in their pack to who had to cook and cleanup each day. The trip had gone well so far, no injuries, and the worst problem had been a faulty backpack. As I walked I thought about the upcoming campsite. Supposedly this one had running water from a solar powered pump—so had the last night’s site but the tank was too low to use for anything but cooking because the of how cloudy it had been of late. But today was bright and shinny, and hot, so I didn’t think there would be a problem.
As a child growing up in an agrarian community, every day I would ride my bicycle around the country roads exploring. I would ride for hours, without a care in the world simply pedaling away. On my bicycle, I felt invincible. Like a rocket ship blasting through space, my only cares were to explore and discovery. I was mesmerized by beauty of the sky and landscape passing before my eyes.