By Tim Deenihan ‘92

There is so much I’ve learned over the last two weeks on the Notre Dame Trail. So much that will be impossible to describe. They can be implied, inferred. But to be fully understood, they must be experienced.
  
Two weeks ago, it took five hours to drive from South Bend to Vincennes. In the two weeks it took to walk back, I met the chairman of a council of Native Americans and, with him, prayed to the Creator for guidance and safety. I met a young girl transferring from Purdue University to Notre Dame to begin her pre-medicine studies. I met her parents. I met a woman whose children had been to Notre Dame and who learned we would be passing and so who set up a small cooler of frozen popsicles.

Her house was lovely—old fashioned white board with a wrap-around porch amid cornfields as far as the eye could see. One in our party asked if we could keep her in our prayers, and the woman said we could, and we shared her prayer with Whoever it is that hears the requests of us humans.
 
We met young folks and old. Months ago, long before the Trail but directly in preparation for it, I found myself talking to a young girl at the register of an Office Depot. At a glance, she was any high school kid working the sort of tedious job high school kid’s work, one of the hundreds of faces you pass in a day assuming you know their story, assuming you are the hero in your own story and the people you pass are extras. Speaking to her, I learned that she was fighting leukemia. It was a good reminder, before this thing even began. There are no extras. Everyone has a story. Everyone is a hero, just in stories we don’t know.
 
Last night, with our journey freshly complete, I stood in line at the bookstore waiting to order a coffee for the road up to Chicago. An older gentleman saw my t-shirt and, with an immediately infectious grin, came up to me and asked if I had walked the Trail. I told him I had and he shook my hand and gushed “Wow! I thought about doing that, but then I thought, no, at my age that’s prob’ly not such a good idea.” He’s Harold Hoffman ’49, 91 years old and spry as all get-out. He gets back to campus once a year, and he wanted to be there to see us come in. There’s nothing like the simple joy of shaking the hand of a 91-year-old man who timed his yearly pilgrimage to coincide with mine. To welcome me back to the place we both call home.
 
I’ve learned much over these past two weeks, and probably much more that has yet to bubble to the surface of my thoughts. I’ve had the time to reflect on some life decisions. I’ve had time to consider what it is that I call faith. I’ve had the time to speak to God, and the space to ask God questions, and the quiet to listen for answers however they may come.
 
And some have come.
 
And some are left for me to determine, like the arrows telling me only that I must choose a direction and make of it what I will.
  
I miss the people I have come to know these last two weeks, these mushy titans whom you’d never expect to see cry. The giant bear of a cardiologist and the sharp CEO and the guy from the championship football team. Or the quiet, self-proclaimed proletariat architect or the rarely quiet activist or the woman who nearly backed out in self-doubt just days before we began. The priest, the brother. The two sisters who left us far too early for my liking in order to return to their ministries elsewhere.

The other doctor and the surgeon. The joy of watching the 70-something-year-old ironman proudly cheering on his 70-something-year-old missus when she joined us the final couple days. The administrators from the University whose feet carried their hearts home. The aviator and the student and the quiet firecracker. The husband and wife, never far apart. The writer. The husband, father, and volunteer arborist. The one who fought back. The one whose blessed life of highs has seen more than its fair share of lows and who meets every day with laughter and the powerful love of her family. The one whose heart bubbles genuine praise and blessings like Tinkerbell sprinkling fairy dust. The one who made it his mission to be a pain in my ass and who laughed at each and every one of my jokes. The little one, half my size, who out-walked and out-biked me every day; whose lightness of being is an astonishing tribute to the heaviness of missing.
 
All these lives.
 
We are better for each other. And we are better for each of the pilgrims who grew our numbers over the last five and three days, and even the last day itself, reminding us that there was always someone new to meet, to hear, to introduce ourselves to, to offer encouragement to and draw encouragement from. 
   
To go on this pilgrimage, I had to let go of who I was. The same can be said for returning from it. I’m not on the Trail anymore and it’s time to let the Trail go. I’m home. In the real world. Which is, of course, where faith and courage and character are called upon to meet the challenges of life. If you are one who believes that Jesus was the Son of God, it’s worth remembering that he was undeniably the Son of Man—that whatever the bliss of heaven, he lived and struggled and walked the earth, got dirt under his fingernails and drank tea made with questionable water.
 
We mustn’t spend our days, not even our hours, holding on to what we were. We have to let go, we have to choose a direction, left or right, so that we may become what we will be.

Tim Deenihan wrote blog posts capturing his experience on each day of the Notre Dame Trail—read more of his insights here.