24. Pilgrimage Time

I returned to Il Poggio a couple of years later. 

This time I did have a goal and a purpose--though rather ill-defined by normal goal and purpose standards, I guess. 

I was on my way by bicycle and slowly on a pilgrimage to Holy Mountain, Greece, where I wanted to visit the old monasteries and perhaps learn a bit about the use and manufacture of their sacred icons. 

Winter was coming on and I hoped to spend the cold months at Il Poggio and leave for Greece in the spring. I was coming from Santiago, Spain, where I had completed a pilgrimage for an old German woman from Bavaria, who had asked me to do it for her, and I wanted to complete a pilgrimage to Holy Mountain in Greece for a Greek Orthodox woman in California who had asked me to do it for her, so I was no longer a wandering traveler, but A PURPOSEFUL PILGRIM, though I must admit I  I knew very little about being a pilgrim of any sort--purposeful or not--since pilgrimage was not a part of the religious life of my family or friends. So I was inventing my own pilgrimage style as I went.

Elisabetta expected me to show up sometime, though because of my oddball traveling style, she did not know exactly when, but she DID more or less expect me. I didn't know myself when I would be at Il Poggio, but since it had been cold and rainy, I hoped it would be soon.

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