We hit California ground running Wednesday night, following our ten days in Mexico, where for the fifteenth consecutive year, we completed a pilgrimage, with our Huichol friends, to their sacred desert. This year Federica fulfilled her obligations in the desert, which I had promised to help her do, as I had done with her husband Joaquin, who finished two years ago. When I mentioned to my son, before leaving, that this might be my final year going, he reminded me that I say that every year. Will it be true this time? No guarantees, but I feel done. Sandy, on the other hand, asks each year, "Do I really want to go yet again?" But by the time we are ready to say goodbye to the fire there, she is already talking about next year's journey.
What does it mean to feel done? It's not that there's nothing left to learn, far from it. But I've gone more than any one person can expect to go in a lifetime, and I don't ever want to feel that going is routine. We go for the magic that lives there, and I don't want to experience the place as another day at the office. More materially, I don't want to deplete the medicine that grows there. Beyond all that, there comes a time when one has had enough experiences, and it's time to use that experience in the world, for the benefit, one hopes, of others.
Also, these last three years, a good chunk of our night in the desert has been taken up with the family drama involving Joaquin, Federica, and Joaquin's mother, Dona Basilia. Adding to the drama this year was the participation of Federica's father, Don Mariano, whose eleventh hour inclusion in our band of pilgrims was uncertain until the morning of our departure from the rancho. Federica definitely wanted him with us, while Joaquin seemed doubtful, when we discussed the subject the night we arrived at the rancho. I set myself the task of dreaming a solution to the dilemma, and my sleepless efforts the first half of the night yielded four clear images that would later play themselves out in the cold desert night. But do we really want to spend such large quantities of sacrifice, effort, time and money, just to have our Huichol friends recycle the same problems?
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