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Home2021June02

June 2021

Places, Roadtrip

For the Love of the Blues—an Ode to Home in the Blue Ridge Mountains

Must be the way Virginia’s still in my voice—fermented like a glass of Sweet Mountain Laurel unpredictably spilling and pooling around cadences that warrant a double take on this side of the continent.

June 2, 2021
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LATEST STORIES

The Fishing Widows of Bay St. Lawrence: Part 1
The Fishing Widows of Bay St. Lawrence: Part 2
The Fishing Widows of Bay St. Lawrence: Part 3
The Fishing Widows of Bay St. Lawrence: Part 4
The Fishing Widows of Bay St. Lawrence: Part 5
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It's been a long time since we've shared a new pie It's been a long time since we've shared a new piece, so we're excited to share our latest — a 7-part series about the fishing widows (and mothers) of a village called Bay St. Lawrence in Nova Scotia, by Mary Jane Doherty, a film production professor emerita at Boston University.

Her piece, including excerpts from her film, explores the perpetuity of the women who've largely taken over the local fishing industry in the wake of their husbands' (and, in some cases, sons') deaths, helping to positively impact lobster fishing regulations (and, therefore, lobster populations and the prosperity of local fishers), while maintaining family traditions and, ultimately, overcoming the challenges brought forth by geographic isolation and tragedy.

"And the men in their family, Margaret explained, suffer to this day from addictive tendencies.

'Now our children show the signs. You see, the men don’t take care of themselves. We Buchanan women, we’re in good shape. None of us drink, we just work.'

....But they choose to live in Bay St. Lawrence, to build a community and a carefully nurtured sense of family among the villagers, based less on the nuclear family structure and more on their common heritage. They have the wherewithal to step back, see their own world and then love it."

You can read the first part in her Pilgrim Magazine series below.

Note: A longer-form version of this story was a runner-up for the Montana Prize in Nonfiction, selected by the University of Montana's The Literary Journal in 2022.
"Where do I even begin? It’s been a long, challe "Where do I even begin? It’s been a long, challenging, strange year for everyone in this world. Looking back and, even, looking ahead, it all still feels surreal. There have been many lessons in every fold, but every fold has also left us with deep scars and, for some, even deeper revelations. A year ago feels like a lifetime ago, but there are moments within that year that also feel like yesterday. Time—a fleeting conundrum and precious, nonrenewable resource—how I savor, worship, and fear you and your ephemeral, quantum ways.
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Our two-year anniversary, June 4, 2020, came and went as we quietly sat in the shadows, contemplating our purpose, our vision, and our responsibility. It felt tone-deaf to continue publishing stories when the world was in such chaos—living through a global public health crisis and very necessary revolutions catalyzed by racial inequality and inequity here in the U.S. Earth was crying, and her inhabitants were too. So we took a vow of silence.
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Y’all, we’ve gone through so much—together. Through these collective crises, we’ve grown more resilient; we’ve been awakened, recalibrated, reshaped. We are now on the cusp of significant change. And we can decide who we’ll be on the other side of this tumult. Will we recoil into a comfortable state of shelter, or will we expand? I hope for the latter.
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While our core values remain intact, we’ve expanded upon the beliefs from which Pilgrim was born and take a vow to always seek stories with purpose—that encourage mindful journeys, respect local cultures and communities, cultivate awareness about and lessons in conservation and sustainability, and restore a sense of humanity. We vow to relearn and share hard truths, give voices to marginalized people, be allies to those who need us, and become advocates for change." — @contemporarypilgrim
“There have been waves of colonization that have “There have been waves of colonization that have plagued the Amazigh throughout history. Romans first invaded the north shores of the continent in 146 BC, then Arabs arrived from the East in the 7th century CE and spread west. Finally, Europeans came in the 18th and 19th centuries from France, Britain, Spain, and Italy. Independence came in the 20th century and today, the Arab culture and language remain dominant.
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While some progress seems to have been made on paper in some places, reality is another matter. Promises of education being offered in their language, along with the use of Tamazight on official documents like driver’s licenses haven’t always come through … In Libya, under Muammar Gaddafi, you were not allowed to give your child an Amazigh name. The language and flag were banned and you risked imprisonment or even death for breaking these oppressive laws. While things are still uncertain there, the Amazigh are hopeful that they can finally be free from persecution. In Morocco, you can display the flag and speak the language without risking arrest, but the pressure to assimilate in other parts of Northern Africa is strong.
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‘There is no animosity regarding all this because this is history. We simply say we no longer want to be colonized. We need to be respected. Our culture is still alive. Our language, customs, traditions, clothing, food. We still live in our homelands. We want to keep our language and our customs. We want to live with Arabs in mutual respect,’ says Lounes.” — @vanessadewson
“Born in a small village in the High Atlas Mount “Born in a small village in the High Atlas Mountains of Morocco, Hassan was destined to become a goat herder like many of his peers. He began caring for the flock of a rich family as soon as he was done with primary school at the age of 13. But everything changed the day he spotted a group of foreigners being guided on a mountain trek.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
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‘I liked that image—a man leading people. Similar to a shepherd,’ he recalled. ‘I saw that and I started to dream: Why not me?’⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
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When Hassan shared this dream with his father, his father told him that he could not be a mountain guide. ‘You are a shepherd and you will stay a shepherd for the rest of your life,’ he said.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
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Hassan explained that this refusal was based on fear rather than disdain—because the secondary school was so far from the village, where they knew nobody, and they had no money for things like transportation, rent, food, books, or clothes. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
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“That’s why he didn’t want me to go. Because it’s hard. I told him, ‘I will try, I will just go and do it.’”
In her debut piece for Pilgrim Magazine, writer an In her debut piece for Pilgrim Magazine, writer and photographer @vanessadewson captures the story of a resilient Amazigh mountain guide named Hassan—@hassan_tour_leader—who traded a destined life of goat herding for the dream of leading people into encounters with the beauty and cultural richness of his homeland.
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“Our guide Hassan’s eyes narrowed when he told our group that his people—the Amazigh (pronounced Ah-ma-zeer)—do not like to be called Berbers. Up until then, his tone was light and friendly as he introduced himself, so I was thrown off when I sensed veiled anger. He explained the term Berber comes from the Greek word ‘barbaros’ which we know as ‘barbarian’ in English. Once that sunk in, it wasn’t hard to see why Berber is not a welcomed term, though it is used freely and nonchalantly to identify the Indigenous People of North Africa.
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Hassan opened my eyes to not only the struggles of his people but the beauty of his language and culture. When we crossed the High Atlas Mountains south of Marrakesh together, I could sense that Hassan felt a deeper connection here. He switched from the jeans he wore in the cities to loose harem pants. The way he spoke to the women in the rug-weaving coop was like they were family. These were his people.”
Our latest piece comes from writer and photographe Our latest piece comes from writer and photographer @dean_hinnant, who writes about seeking out the reawakening of a post-lockdown America by way of curiosity, a rediscoverd sense of self-preservation, an unmapped roadtrip, and his camera. His piece features truck stops, city streets, rodeos, Pride parades, mountain towns, and other pockets of the United States.
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"...it raised the question of what would it look like to show an entire nation come awake? Like the first moments of the anesthesia wearing off? Cities opening their doors, folks going on first dates, people laughing and smiling with friends in parks, families reconnecting with their loved ones, who wouldn’t want to witness something like that? After a year of countless tragedies, who wouldn’t want to see a reemergence within the United States?
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To sit, hours on end, in a time capsule that does nothing more than move soil beneath you while the light of day makes its usual path across the sky dazzles the senses on both ends of its journey."
An excerpt from the 3-year anniversary letter writ An excerpt from the 3-year anniversary letter written by our new editor, Rachel Estes, in celebration of our reemergence as a publication and all the current trials—and beauty—in our earthly world:
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"In many ways, the last year feels like a dream, one entwined with beauty and pain, highlights and lowlights, a lopsided ratio of wild to wonderful and back pockets holding modest yet invaluable sums of nonmonetary richness. While there’s a very large part of me that’s relieved to count 2020 as a thing of the past, to be halfway through another year that’s seemingly nearer to 'normal' than we’ve felt in a long, long while, there’s another part that feels quite nostalgic, having both lamented and relished the sudden shift of things that shoved grief and hope between the same margins. Among other things, I’m grateful this long strand of months and days stayed true to the tradition of those before them in neglecting to look anything like I’d expected.
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As Pilgrim grows into its third year as a publication, I can’t wait to see what’s bound to unfold, the stories that will take shape as travel resumes with progressively fewer restrictions, and the ways we’ll each grow more and more into ourselves as dreamers and visualists and writers and poets and people—together.
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To the storytellers here who’ve ‘stuck with it’ amid this strange and unusual season, you are invaluable and I’m immensely grateful to know you. And to those on the outskirts, dreaming of someday baring your soul to the masses in black and white and technicolor tales—this space is for you, too. Start where you are; the timing is just as ‘right’ there as anywhere else. And, most importantly, never underestimate the life-changing power of a roadtrip. (Or talking to strangers. Or a good microbrew.)" — @_rachelestes
"I watch the water artistically move along the coa "I watch the water artistically move along the coast, swirling and bending like free-flowing calligraphy." — Liam Brennan
"The intertidal zone is a special place, an interf "The intertidal zone is a special place, an interface where land meets the sea. On the Bay of Fundy, the intertidal zone can extend for many horizontal kilometers, offering a unique glimpse of the ocean floor. This otherworldly landscape is home to aliens like hermaphroditic barnacles and sea stars with the ability to regrow limbs. Other than the 'regular' marine residents, the intertidal is also visited by a great variety of 'land-based' birds (like the semipalmated sandpiper) and mammals who feast on the ocean’s richness when the tide is just right. With a great variety of organisms from both the land and sea, the intertidal region is inevitably home to rich connections and unique relationships." — @liambrennnan
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