An unexpected visitor

From my perspective, the daily pattern is largely the same - I pack, say goodbye to my host, walk, and find a new host for the evening, eat, wash and sleep. I know what needs to happen but can't expect those whom I encounter to immediately know their role.

I entered Bulgaria in a good deal of snow that persisted for many days. In modern and efficient Dobrich, an Orthodox priest told me of a monastery 34 kilometers toward historic Varna. I understood it to be isolated and in a forest and though there was a symbol for it on my map, I had discovered so many errors on the map that I couldn't trust it for accuracy, so had a only a fuzzy idea of its location. The sky was dropping fat wet snowflakes and the wind blowing fiercely from behind me, but the distance not so great as to require all of the daylight hours and I didn't feel overly stressed about the situation. The best laid plans...

It did take all of those daylight hours to reach my destination and for nearly all of them, I was completely alone. Rather that lie on the country lane, the villages I passed that day branched off a kilometer or two leaving me no opportunities to escape the elements for even the smallest amount of time. Ugh. Added to this inconvenience to my desires was the deep drifts that barred my passage, often much deeper than the length of my legs. Double ugh. Exhausting effort that day. Tea, soup, a warm place to sit for a while... this reward could only come when and if I found the monastery. A dented, faded, handwritten sign (a Cyrillic world again) miraculously poked out of a drift to be tripped over, but was in a confusing location for its arrow to clearly indicate the way and the snow too deep to reveal the trace of the presumed track for the stated 500 meters. The triple ugh came when the wind shifted just enough to be directly in my face. In the shadowy haze of the dusk, I could just make out the edge a forest in the distance. This was close to madness - I couldn't even take a compass reading to pretend to rely on with comfort. The nearest hamlet was still many kilometers away. How do I get myself into these situations??? I took comfort in counting my steps for an idea of distance covered, though of course the length of my pace was skewed from the effort of breaking trail, so the math was unreliable anyway.

After I was certain that I long passed the 500 meter mark, I had a growing concern that I was completely in the wrong place, still being several hundred meters from the edge of the forest. Before I could let the sense of doom digest, I realized that I was standing on the roof of a car buried in the snow. I could make out the trace of a fence surrounding what I could believe was a parking lot, then realized further that the first tree that I could make out near the forest was really a large wooden cross. Well if that's not a sign of a monastery, what would be? Full on into the wind, this last distance passed remarkably quickly with the great sense of having a clear destination. The size of the forest was obscured from the plain above because of being in a deep glen. Once below the elevation of the surrounding land, the wind eased and I could see more clearly, though the mix of evergreen and hardwoods made the dusk appear even darker. Winter wonderland... a small white church with a colorful dome sat in a bowl beside a pond. several outbuildıngs harmoniously placed, and best of all, in a large wooden buildıng nearest to me - a light shone through a window and whisps of white smoke came from the chimney. Yeah.

As I took those last quickened slippery steps down the slope toward the buildıng, elated as I was, I had to check my jubilance - I saw the occupant of the lighted room as a lifesaver, but whoever it was had no idea of my presence on his doorstep much less my trials to get there and even less about the real intensity of the storm being protected in the glen. I was an uninvited guest in a isolated monastery and needed to conform to some type of protocol. Through the frosted window, I saw a man (not dressed like a typical monk) in a kitchen. I tapped gently and saw him react to the surprise, dropping what was in his hands, obviously startled.

It just took minutes to get me in front of the wood stove with a steaming cup of tea, the encrusting ice falling from me like shattered glass from a window hit with a baseball. The novice monk, I learned quickly (he spoke some English), was alone at the monastery, the prior being unable to return because of the snow. It didn't matter though, the monk happily shared the dinner he was preparing for himself and enjoyed pleasant conversation that easily pushed the harshness of my day's journey from the forefront of my thought. He was in the third of four years of study in theology to become a full-fledged monk and much older being called to the monastic world later in life. He had heard of pilgrims but never met one. On that stormy evening I provided him with an experience he thought his prior monk hadn't ever enjoyed: meeting a real-live pilgrim.

He brought in armfuls of wood to keep the stove stoked all night and then retired to one of the outbuildings to sleep. I slept warmly and soundly before the fire without care of the storm. In the morning, he returned with more wood and made the tea. He told me that during the night he contemplated deeply my unlikely appearance at this particular monastery when he was unexpectedly alone... he quoted a Biblical reference that he gave particular consideration. He told me that Jesus said 'if you turn away a pilgrim you turn away from me'. He found a great sense of satisfaction in my giving him the opportunity to demonstrate that he is true to his monastic calling. The difficulty of my walk that day is put in a different context when that fact that I made the effort is so meaningfully interpretted by a random stranger from whom I sought help on a stormy evening. A pilgrim and host mutually benefitting from the experience... isn't this why the world needs pilgrims?