A Wayfarer on Life’s Journey

It might have seemed a calamity to a pilgrim planning to spend the next three months walking in California. Instead I saw the funny side of it and decided that maybe it was a sign that I needed to use my trainers instead, choosing to initially walk north along the coast towards San Francisco, rather than heading inland towards national parks and high Sierra Mountains that might still be in the icy grip of winter.

Barry and Marianne Winfield

Hopefully I’ll get to explore the likes of Sequoia, Kings Canyon and Yosemite National Parks later when it is warmer.

Waiting to welcome me at LAX Airport was my friend and former motoring colleague Barry Winfield, he and his school teacher wife Marianne opening their hearts and Redondo Beach home to a weary traveller.

Their home is an oasis of peace although after the tranquillity of Findhorn I felt battered and shattered by the surrounding spaghetti of roads, highways and overhead power cables, the innumerable shops and malls all shouting messages of materialism and more, more, more. The system isn’t about people but consumers and conspicuous consumption. It’s exhausting.

And yet it was exhilarating to bask in warm Californian sunshine in the state that was my Utopia as a young student at Whittier College, dishing up sea, sun, fun, surfing and fast cars. Now there are many more cars and it seems to me that they’re all too big and mostly inappropriate. Do we need so many luxury 4x4s and giant pick-ups in a crowded urban area? Admittedly I also counted more Toyota Prius hybrids than I believed possible, one nearby driveway decorated with His and Hers’ versions in contrasting colours.

Marianne made a joke about ‘conspicuous conservation.’

This might be the epicentre of consumerism but I’m discovering that getting something as simple as a functional local SIM card for my phone can be a challenge despite swiping my credit card on a $60 a month deal – it is easier in both Britain and South Africa. But this is a temporary hiccup.

In the past 24 hours I’ve walked beaches with Barry and Marianne, picnicked in a park overlooking the ocean, worked out in a local gym and best of all I’ve visited the Wayfarers Chapel at Palos Verdes, restoring some of my faith in the church and religion.

It is the most inspiring modern church I’ve ever been in and is made almost entirely of glass, serving as a memorial to Emanuel Swedenborg, an 18^th century mystic and theologian who celebrated the interconnectedness of all life and respected differences and other religious traditions.

Designed by Lloyd Wright, son of renowned American architectural pioneer Frank Lloyd Wright, it is inspired by the cathedral-like majesty of the redwood trees in northern California, the surrounding coastal redwood trees dominating and creating a sense of the wonder and immensity of the universe.