Where Pilgrimage Begins: Our Lady of Bella Vista
Where Pilgrimage Begins: Our Lady of Bella Vista
By: a.d. elliott | Take the Back Roads - Art and Other Odd Adventures
.png "Our Lady of Bella Vista Shrine at Dawn")
Dear Henry,
Years ago, I learned about the Camino de Santiago, and something in me stirred immediately. The idea of walking nearly 500 miles across Spain, step by deliberate step, called to me in a way I couldn’t quite explain.
I can point to the rational reasons. I was born in Spain. I love journeys. I love learning. I love the idea of following an ancient path worn smooth by centuries of prayers, blisters, doubts, and quiet revelations. But if I’m honest, the truest reason is simpler and far harder to justify: for no particular reason at all, I want to walk it.
At first, the Camino felt merely impractical. Then came the accident. After that, even a light backpack became difficult, sometimes impossible, to wear. Slowly, the Camino slipped into what I think of as the Things I Have Lost closet: dreams folded carefully and stored away, not abandoned, but no longer reachable.
For years, I left it there.
Then I learned about the porter system, where your bag is carried ahead for you and where beds and breakfasts await at the end of each day. For the first time in a long while, the Camino returned to the realm of possible. Not easy, not immediate, but possible.
Of course, when I priced it out, reality asserted itself again. This would not be next year, or even the year after. It would require time, saving, preparation, and patience.
No matter. I need to work on my Spanish anyway.
As I began thinking seriously about preparing for the Camino, my thoughts drifted closer to home. If pilgrimage is about intention rather than distance, surely there were smaller ways to begin. I started researching shrines in the United States, places of prayer and devotion woven quietly into the American landscape, and thought I might train my heart on those paths first.
My initial plan was simple and hopeful. The day after Easter, I would drive to Prague, Oklahoma, to visit the National Shrine of the Infant Jesus of Prague. The icon has long been dear to me, and Prague is only a half-day’s drive away, manageable, meaningful, and full of intention.
And then, of course, the world stopped.
COVID-19 unraveled my carefully folded plans, as it did for so many of us. Roads closed. Doors shut. Pilgrimages, both literal and spiritual, were postponed indefinitely.
The other day, feeling mildly sorry for myself, I voiced my frustrations to Father B. I may have fussed. A little. He listened patiently and then, instead of offering grand solutions, simply waved his hand toward the door of his office, toward Our Lady of Bella Vista and the charming outdoor Stations of the Cross nestled quietly outside.
“Begin here,” he suggested.
So I did.
It was not the Camino. It was not hundreds of miles, nor even dozens. It was a short walk on familiar ground, beneath open sky, along a path I had passed many times before without truly seeing. Our Lady stood in her stone grotto, hands open, inviting not motion but presence.
That, it turns out, was the lesson.
I had assumed perseverance would be the first thing pilgrimage would demand of me. Instead, I was asked for patience, patience with my body, with altered plans, with the reality that sometimes the road narrows instead of stretching out.
Pilgrimage, I am learning, is not about distance traveled but about willingness to begin. Sometimes the first step isn’t taken across a country, but across a courtyard. Sometimes the holiest road is the one right outside your door.
And sometimes, Henry, you don’t go where you planned to go.
You go where you are called to start.
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About the Author
a.d. elliott is a wanderer, photographer, and storyteller traveling through life
She shares her journeys at Take the Back Roads, explores new reads at Rite of Fancy, and highlights U.S. military biographies at Everyday Patriot.
You can also browse her online photography gallery at shop.takethebackroads.com.
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