Matthew Arends -- Image and Pilgramage

The summer after my freshman year I attended a class with Dr. Redick, A Pilgrimage on the Appalachian Trail. This class, though at the time I didn't understand how, truly was a pilgrimage. In Pilgrimage, the traveler goes away from the hubbub of everyday life and enters a liminal place, the Threshhold of what is "concrete" and what is spiritual, or rather the threshold is what is spiritual and what is beyond ourselves. The pilgrim decenters himself while at the same time improving oneself through struggle and hardship and encountering other around him. I didn't understand that I was doing this though. I didn't get the talk of Communitas and Liminality. I was simply hiking and talking with other hikers, sharing food, and putting one foot in front of the other. However, three years later I am here talking about these same topics and I find that I truly did encounter those around me, experience them, and make stories with them that I will tell my entire life. The Pilgrimage along the Appalachian Trail was a pilgrimage I will never forget.