To our ever-growing Pilgrim community,
On June 4, 2018, I was in Esmont, Virginia—a tiny village in the Piedmont Valley of the Blue Ridge Mountains. I had awoken after very little sleep, over the moon about what that day signified. It was a beautiful, green day as summers tend to be in Central Virginia, and I was living in a historic bank building that shared space with the village post office. I had spent the spring resting under the shade of centuries-old paw-paw trees, checking my PO Box while wine drunk in my skivvies, and writing thousands and thousands of words. It was the perfect place for creative inspiration with high ceilings and giant windows that let the sunlight pour in.
One year ago today, I reflected on all the miles (and stories) I’d collected so far that year, and expressed endless gratitude to Hayli—a woman who was fluent in my dreams and vision for Pilgrim Magazine from the very first conversation we had.
It was the day my biggest dream—Pilgrim Magazine—came to life, breathing new life and purpose into both of our journeys.
The idea for Pilgrim Magazine was born in the Amazon in the summer of 2015 following weeks spent tracking what researchers believe is a new saki monkey species deep in the Peruvian jungles, and partaking in a series of ayahuasca ceremonies with a well-respected shaman. I was laying in a tambo one morning after ceremony with eyes fixated on moths with the body mass of small birds when the idea for Pilgrim dawned on me. In that moment, everything made sense. I found my purpose in the Amazon and couldn’t wait to bring it to life.
It took three years to actualize this dream—something I often share with other dreamers as a reminder to not give up. Our ideas and dreams need nourishment and devotion, time to become rooted and time to flourish. Sometimes we need partnerships to bring our dreams to tangible fruition. I was fortunate to have the support of Alix, our brilliant designer, and Hayli, who began as our editor but became far more—a true partner in the Pilgrim mission—with a mutual desire to inspire others through storytelling and a keen commitment to giving storytellers a platform to share their stories. We wouldn’t be where we are today if it weren’t for their belief in this dream.
For three months, Hayli and I worked hand in hand across time zones—navigating the challenges that come with bootstrapping a dream and building it from scratch—and faced editorial and design challenges together. I was on Eastern time; she was on Dublin time. And we used the time differences to our advantage. In the month before going live, Hayli often stayed up all night ironing out the development wrinkles, while I tapped into the community of storytellers and writers I’d long been collecting through my journeys to find a perfect collection of stories which became part of our launch.
When we went live one year ago, we had an incredible collection of stories and photo essays from authors who lived all over the world—from the Pacific Northwest to Vienna, Austria—who wrote about people and places, discoveries and epiphanies, jungles and mountaintops.
Together, we brought Pilgrim to life. But, we couldn’t have done it without you.
The last twelve months have been a wild ride. I spent the first part of 2018 traveling across three continents. I attended a women’s writing retreat in the island paradise of Zanzibar, where I snorkeled in marvelous coral reefs, tasted peppercorns right off the tree, and took a Swahili cooking class. I ventured high into Colombia’s Cocora Valley in search of the world’s tallest palm trees and a seventh-generation taita, journeyed through whitewater on horseback, and danced in perfectly seedy bars full of tequila and gauchos. I let my senses guide me through Istanbul’s markets and mosques, giving equal intrigue to the scent of native spices, Whirling Dervishes, and the Muslim Call to Prayer. I was in a minor car accident in Casablanca just before having one of the greatest French feasts of my life. And I spent two weeks traipsing around Andalusia and the Algarve with my best friend, renting cars on a whim to drive the Portuguese coast, discovering white villages we’d never heard of, and wearing vintage sequins and crowns to a mountaintop palace with distant views of the Atlas Mountains and the Strait of Gibraltar.
Soon after the grandest adventures imaginable, as life would have it, my world crumbled. The Universe handed me countless challenges that followed our launch—a broken heart, an unexpected loss of work, a car accident that left me stranded at a roadside motel for weeks in Pinedale, Wyoming’s arctic December, and, just weeks ago, the tragic loss of one of the greatest friends I’ve ever had. Hayli and I’s experiences have been hauntingly similar, but together, through our hardships, we’ve endured. We used love, loss, the loss of love, tragedy, and our community to inspire and shape us, and to foster deeper connections with the community for which we are so very grateful.
Because we believe in the powerful effects of storytelling, we are so grateful that we get to share our experiences with you. Tragic and beautiful as it is, this is the human experience.
To our storytellers: Thank you for finding our publication worthy of your stories. We are continuously blown away by the ideas and pitches and drafts you share with us. Good lord, you are brilliant storytellers. Your stories have the potential to change the world, one heart and mind at a time. And have no doubts, that is the entire purpose of Pilgrim.
To our readers: We cannot thank you enough. Thank you for taking the time to read our stories—both the vignettes and long-form narratives. Thank you for returning, again and again. Thank you for sharing our stories and publication with fellow wanderers, lovers of the written word, and curious minds.
One year in, this is only the beginning of our journey, together. We are Pilgrim only because you are Pilgrims. And we cannot thank you enough for joining our pilgrimage, for sharing your pilgrimages, and for inspiring a movement of pilgrimages, sometimes in those who hadn’t yet considered themselves Pilgrims.
Together, we are Pilgrim. Together, through storytelling, we can change the world.
Here’s to the human experience. Here’s to the next journey around the sun. And here’s to our collective journeys—and a lifetime of seeking meaning in all we do.
Much love and all the cheers,
Ashley M. Halligan
Founder, editor, curator of stories
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