June 2, 2013 Day 13 — Sandy Spring to Silver Spring (13.5 miles or 27,000 steps)

A delicious Saturday night dinner at Tony and Bruce Evans with guests Trish Cope and friend Ron sets me up well for today’s 13.5-mile walk between two springs–Sandy to Silver Springs, MD. (The former actually has a spring.) However, I’m not too eager to slip my fragile feet back into shoes after yesterday’s barefoot freedom. I think I hear screams from both feet as they hop back into the saddle. 9:00 Meeting for Worship at Sandy Spring Meeting helps the transition. We sit in profound silence enjoying the breeze from open doors and windows. What a beautiful Meeting House.How familiar the silence feels–an experience in kyros time (full presence), an endless sense of no time passing at all, except the clicking of the clock, I’m reminded of my long days on the Camino de Nathaniel South path where time doesn’t exist.

At break of Meeting, I introduce myself and explain my journey. Rich Engler, a Westonian of the 80s, attends so that we can reconnect–a fine student who now has become a fine young man with family and a child in the Sandy Spring Lower School.

The four of us, Toni, Bruce, Rich, and I, set off together. We cross the Meeting House grounds, enter the Friends Home campus, move on to the school campus, and finish with the infamous ropes course kingdom in the woods, The Adventure Park. I think I’m entering Ewok Country. What an amazing setting!

Goodbyes are harder when the time together has been exceptionally rich, and it has been. Route memorization today is simple–Route 182 followed by Georgia Avenue South straight to tonight’s hosts, Ann and Richard Fieldhouse.

At the junction of 182 and Georgia Avenue, Harry Hines, high school class of 1966 at St. John’s, and I meet. A little quick Subway stop refuels my empty tank, and off we go together. It may not be in the 90s today, but the air is nevertheless noticeably heavy. (I remember this humidity from my 1967-1971 chapter in Washington when I was an undergraduate. Now I remember why I moved north to PA.)

Reminiscences from our St. John’s Days flow easily. Harry and I are only recently reconnected, so the 45 years of separation provides us with many stories to catch up on. Harry is wearing his “Walking with Nathaniel” hat proudly, a gift I offered him last June at our reunion. He empathizes with Nathaniel’s struggles and wants to learn more. I share freely.

We part company after traversing the I-495 Capital Beltway, a tangible sign that the greatest distance of my pilgrimage is over, but a week of many meetings in DC with walking times between them is about to begin.

May my experience in kyros time both on the Camino and in Meeting today guide my conversations this week in Washington. May I speak from a centered and grounded place, letting each word that emerges testify eloquently to the integrity of Nathaniel’s life and suffering.

Luckily I make it in time to today’s destination to watch a rain storm arrive with force as I sit in the dry safety of  my new hosts’ home. How sweet it is to be indoors!