In Serra's Footsteps
By
John-David Black
In October and November of 1998, I walked the entire
distance of the California mission chain from San Diego
to San Francisco. My motivation for doing the walk was to
make a religious pilgrimage of prayer and meditation. The
inspiration for doing the pilgrimage was the life of Junipero
Serra. Actually, it began in 1995 while I was visiting
Mission Carmel near Monterey. While I assisted my in-laws
in setting up the sanctuary of the church for a concert, I
pointed out to my mother in-law how well kept the mission
was. She noted that part of the reason this mission got a lot
of attention was that Junipero Serra was buried there. When
she pointed out to me that I was at that moment standing on
the grave of Father Serra, I looked down at my feet and
saw the grave marker. In what can only be described as a
powerful religious experience, I was suddenly filled with an
unexplainable sense of inspiration and awe. I knew next to
nothing of the man or of California Mission history. But this
experience was so intense, that I determined then and there
that I needed to learn more of that era of California history.
The study of the life and times of Junipero Serra proved
very inspirational to me. During this period, I began to
consider doing a pilgrimage to the missions on foot who
built the missions. When I noticed that Father Serra also did
a pilgrimage on foot from Vera Cruz to Mexico City when
he first arrived from Spain, that clinched the idea for me. I
chose to do a pilgrimage in honor and emulation of Junipero
Serra. Consequently, I chose to do the walk much the way
he did. (He brought nothing with him on his journey of over
200 miles and trusted God to provide for him and his
companion along the way.) So I left San Diego with a
daypack, one change of clothes, no sleeping bag, a few
necessary items, and enough money for about three or four
days. Then I simply walked back to San Francisco where I
live. It took about two months to get home. (I also walked
from San Francisco to Mission San Francisco de Solano in
Sonoma. About 60 or 70 miles north of San Francisco.)
I did not have more than a couple of lodging arrangements
lined out in advance, though I did have a few friends who
knew I was coming and offered to put me up for a night or
so. What few arrangements I did have were several days'
walk from each other. Everything I needed was provided
for me along the way, but only as the need arose. It was a
difficult journey at times. The most difficult aspects were
managing the fatigue and pain in my feet, missing my wife
and kids, and trying to figure out the route I was to take as I
walked.
My longest day was forty-six miles, my shortest was twelve.
On average, I walked about twenty miles a day, though
about four times I had to walk over thirty miles in a single
walk. Three times I was forced to walk through the night
after walking all day because there was no place for me to
stay. When that happened, I just walked to the next place I
knew I had a place to lodge.
Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the trip was the
overwhelming influence the pilgrimage had on my own
spiritual journey. This was not at all expected, and I am still
processing the effects of the pilgrimage on my personal life.
I discovered that the mission chain in California may be
composed of late medieval relics, but there is something still
active about those old missions in a spiritual sense. I thought
I was walking the El Camino Real out of a nostalgic respect
for the history they represent. But by the time the pilgrimage
was over, I discovered that the spiritual milieu of the
missions had deeply impacted me and that they, in some
strange way, were exerting a level of spiritual influence in
California even today.
I had grown up a Protestant. But this pilgrimage worked a
distinctly Catholic conversion in me. The mechanism of that
conversion was the very real experience of a Catholic belief
that Protestants generally reject: The doctrine of the
Communion of Saints. It is the belief that the faithful who
have departed this life continue in heaven to labor alongside
those who are alive on earth. More than the inspiration they
inspire by their godly lives, the faithful departed are actively
involved in shaping the spiritual milieu of the world by their
prayers and intercessions for those of us who are alive on
earth.
By this view, Father Serra and the other friars of the mission
era still labor in prayer for the welfare and spiritual benefit of
California. Though some would think that it is foolish to
assert such a notion, my experience on this walk confirmed
that Catholic belief in me. There was a definite sense that I
was not walking alone no matter how far out into the
countryside I got. Each time I arrived at a mission there was
a very peculiar sense that made me feel as if someone there
was welcoming me and was overjoyed that I had arrived.
This experience was consistent even when there was not a
living soul who said a word to me. At first, I dismissed this
inner experience as affectation, the mere emotion generated
by arriving in a mission after a long and arduous walk.
Eventually, however, the continued experience of this
peculiar intuition forced me to reconsider what was
happening. Could it be that I was feeling the prayers and
encouragement of the friars who labored to establish the
spiritual foundations of the Golden State?
I was privileged to stay for a couple of days at Old Mission
Santa Barbara, the only one of the missions to remain in
continuous use as a church and friary, and always under the
custody of the Franciscans. One of the friars, a good friend
of our family, was so touched by what I was experiencing
as I walked that he entrusted to me a first-class relic of
Father Serra: It was a certified piece of bone from Father
Serra's grave. He told me to take it with me to the rest of
the missions along the El Camino Real and expressed the
belief that Father Serra would walk with me on my journey.
I accepted the responsibility of carrying this valuable
treasure, regarding it at the time as no more than a touching
gesture of support from my Franciscan friend. Certainly, it
was an important symbol to me of my desire to identify with
Father Serra. Given my Protestant upbringing, however, I
was a little incredulous about the idea that Father Serra
would be walking with me as I left Mission Santa Barbara.
However, as I walked the remainder of the state, that
almost haunting sense that I was never alone on any part of
this journey was even more pronounced. In fact, on the leg
from Mission Santa Barbara to Mission Santa Inez, I had a
provocative experience that initiated in me the conviction
that Father Serra had taken note of my pilgrimage to the
missions and my "quest" to discover the spiritual foundations
of the Golden State. I came to believe that he was praying
for me if not walking with me in the spirit.
The leg to Santa Inez from Santa Barbara posed a logistical
problem. The main road through San Marcos pass was not
a suitable road to walk on. There was no shoulder and a
dangerously high volume of traffic. Consequently, I chose to
hike over the coastal mountains on a dirt access road. It
was a distance of forty miles and entailed a 4,300-foot
climb and a 2,000-foot descent into Solvang. Since there
was nothing but wilderness in between , it would have to be
done all in one walk. It took seventeen hours and I had to
walk through the night. I left Santa Barbara around noon
and started my ascent up the hill around 2:00 in the
afternoon. I climbed continuously until 9:30 that night. I was
so exhausted by that time that I could hardly stand. It was
very warm and hard to carry my own water as my pack
was extra heavy. When I started down the backside of the
of the mountains, I began to realize the extremity of my
situation. Walking down hill is extremely hard on one's feet,
and after a short while, both feet were starting to swell and
were in great pain. I was running low on water and there we
no facilities out there of any kind. I still had more that six
hours of hiking left before I would reach Mission Santa Inez
and when I got there before dawn, it would be closed.
About this time, I distinctly heard a voice speaking. It was
an inner voice but it was audible enough to make me turn
my head to see who was talking. The voice simply said,
"Let's pray for John!" Almost immediately, a sense of peace
and security came over me, and I felt that I was not alone
out there in the wilderness in the middle of the night. The
next day when I called my Franciscan friend at Santa
Barbara to let him know that I had made it safely to Santa
Inez, he told me that as he was dropping off to sleep the
night before, he was suddenly filled with an urgent sense that
he needed to pray for me. He got out of bed and kneeled in
prayer and asked that heavenly assistance would be granted
me as I walked. I asked him what time that incident had
occurred; it was at the very time I heard a voice calling for
prayer on my behalf.
Some would dismiss such things as nonsense, but I was
certain that this experience was not imagination or
affectation. That and other similar experiences along the
way were responsible for initiating the conversion that I
have spoken about above.
The spiritual blessings I received on my pilgrimage were a
great impetus in my decision to enter the Catholic Church.
After a period of initiation and preparation, I was baptized
and confirmed in April 1999, taking "Junipero Francis" as
my confirmation name. I continue to be inspired and blessed
by the witness of Blessed Junipero Serra.
John-David Black lives in San Francisco with his wife
and sons.