Short Trip to the Edge

I just had the good fortune of reading an advance copy of an upcoming book by Scott Cairns entitled Short Trip to the Edge: Where Earth Meets Heaven a Pilgrimage. It is the verbal equivalent of a holograph. That is, Dr. Cairns provides a multidimensional experience of his Mt. Athos pilgrimages by combining his mental/physical/spiritual experiences into a single image.

Unlike a lot of modern pilgrims, he insists on hoofing it from monastery to monastery on Mt. Athos instead of riding microbuses and chartered pickups. It is quite demanding since the mostly un-marked trails seem to cover the Holy Mountain like a tangled net. Part of the fun of this book is following his attempts at untangling that net without killing himself. That alone made the book very enjoyable. But there is so much more. We also get to follow him back and forth across the net of his thoughts, aspirations, hopes, fears, etc. while he transparently struggles to untangle all that stuff as well. He is on a true pilgrimage to find a spiritual guide who can teach him to pray and gracious enough to let us tag along.

He awakened something in me. For the first time in my life, and in spite of my apprehension of traveling, I'm finding myself actually considering such a thing.