This blog post was written by Albert Lozada and is used by his permission. To follow his regular posts on the 2018 Climate Walk, please visit the Climate Pilgrimage page on Facebook.
Day 49 of #TheClimatePilgrimage: Today a group of the pilgrims traveled back to Slovenia for a burial of ashes and ceremony for Alan Burns. We chose to honor Alan Burns in Mislija, a little mountaintop town where Alan spent one of his last days on the Pilgrimage, and one of the most beautiful places we have stayed so far. After the burial in the simple yet beautiful cemetery, where Alan has a headstone, we climbed up to the edge of the mountain and held Alan’s spirit in a circle in the snow, offering reflections Quaker style on what his life meant for us and for the world. We were privileged to be joined by Slovenian friends who had the opportunity to meet Alan; our friend Father Primoz Jakop generously traveled from Ljubljana to help facilitate the ceremony. It is traditional that pilgrims who pass away while walking are buried where they last walked, and Alan remains forever a committed climate pilgrim in this way.
Three members of our pilgrim community kept the path unbroken by walking from Fischamend to Hainburg. They managed to cover thirty kilometers together. They passed through a beautiful national forest, where they spoke about Alan as they continued his footsteps toward Katowice. Though these pilgrims only briefly knew Alan, as with so many others he encountered on his journeys, they were deeply affected by him.
