By RAHN ADAMS
MORGANTON, N.C. (Jan. 21, 2026) – When was the last time you drove anywhere unfamiliar without using GPS? Really? It was that long ago? Jeepers.
Despite the frigid temperatures Friday morning, Timberley and I hopped into Pearl, our little white car, and drove somewhere we’d never been – 85 miles and 90 minutes away – and we didn’t get lost a single time. That’s a miracle when I’m behind the wheel, even with GPS.
Two-and-a-half hours later, we returned home by a different route, again on unfamiliar country roads through Cabarrus, Rowan and Iredell counties without making any wrong turns. And this time we weren’t in a hurry, so we were able to enjoy our ride through all that fallow but beautiful farmland.
It was a win-win situation. I trusted the disembodied voice giving us directions, and I didn’t even have to think. I hadn’t had to do any serious pre-trip planning by consulting road maps, and I didn’t have to bother Timberley to fumble with her phone and plot our turns through Piedmont farm country.
More importantly, we didn’t have to take the wider but more congested interstate highways that most other motorists chose to travel between, say, Troutman and Kannapolis that day. We took the roads that at least appeared to be less traveled. So, you see where I’m headed here, right?
Of course, once we got back to Interstate 77 south of Statesville Friday afternoon, I turned off Pearl’s navigation app. I was confident that I could find my way home from there, as I’ve driven I-77 and I-40 numerous times over my 50 years of licensed driving. Holy cow. A half century on the road.
Yes, I’ve traveled many miles since the summer of 1976 when I embarked on this long strange trip beside the license examiner in my yellow ’74 Gremlin. His name was Fred – the car, I mean. For years, he was my trusted companion until he started hitting the sauce, a quart of Quaker State every other day. He just had to have it. Still, Fred the oil-guzzling Gremlin taught me more than just the rules of the road. He taught me to be humble.
One way we learn is through repetition, by doing something repeatedly until we can do it without thinking, like driving a car or riding a bicycle or putting one foot in front of the other to run or just to walk. We learn by covering the same ground and by following the same paths time and again.
However, in the absence of repeated practice, we must find something or someone we can trust to guide us on the roads we choose. I relied on technology to guide us Friday – more precisely, on a GPS-enabled smartphone linked to our little car’s computer and its in-dash video screen.
At the same time, many of us look for someone with experience to lead us, a person who seems both trustworthy and true. But if we’re not careful – or mindful, to put it another way – we might find ourselves following leaders for the wrong reasons, whatever those faulty motivations might be.
I’m a good enough writer to know that I’ve probably lost you by now. What in heaven’s name is he talking about? you might be asking yourself. Or if you’re like the tuxedo cat or little kid in those social media videos, it’s What the hell? Yes, I’m looking for a roundabout way to say something.
On Friday, Timberley and I went to Kannapolis to see a group of Buddhist monks on their Walk for Peace from Fort Worth, Texas, to Washington, D.C. We had been following their progress across the South and their pilgrimage’s perils for several weeks, and we wanted to support their mission.
I’ll speak now only for myself, not for Timberley. While the experience of waiting two hours in frigid temperatures to see the venerable monks process up Mount Olivet Church Road through huge Carolina Memorial Park cemetery to their midday break intrigued me, it wasn’t life-changing. Not yet, anyway.
As a former journalist, I’m used to seeing and interacting with notable people from different walks of life, and that’s what these honorable men have literally become – walking celebrities – for as much as they try to avoid that status. Or maybe social media has simply made their images too familiar to me.
I’ve read random Facebook posts that compare the monks’ 120-day, 2,300-mile Walk for Peace to fictional idiot Forrest Gump’s mindless cross-country runs – you know, until he is too tired to run any longer and he just wants to go home. But it’s not the same thing. These mindful pilgrims know where they’re going and why. Many of us can’t say the same thing about ourselves.
As far as that movie goes, the real issue is why all those people follow Forrest Gump back and forth across America, from the slopes of mile-high Grandfather Mountain to the depths of Death Valley. After all, he freely admits he’s running “for no particular reason.” But then he adds, “Somebody later told me it gave people hope.” Indeed.
And that’s what I saw Friday outside Mount Olivet Church – several thousand people in need of hope during these dark days, as well as folks from various walks of life in search of someone to guide us all toward if not world peace, then simple peace of mind. The monks talk the talk through their leader, and they also walk the walk.
To be honest, I did experience an instant, just an instant of … well … let’s call it rapture on Friday. A moment of something like ecstasy. I saw a single flash of brilliant color – maybe from a shot of adrenaline in my bloodstream – when I caught my first glimpse of the monks’ saffron robes down the brown hill, across the sacred expanse, through the leafless trees and past the parked cars between them and me.
It could have been a burst of light from someone’s camera. Or maybe, just maybe that’s how hope or peace or loving-kindness – or something more mysterious – feels inside, in a cemetery on a hillside, on the coldest day of the winter, with or without a smartphone to guide me. Amen? Or as the venerable monks would say, sadhu?
Today is going to be my peaceful day.
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[Author’s note: The WRAL-TV story (linked above) about the Walk for Peace features an interview with our new friend as of Friday, Dr. Lee McCorkle, who stood near us and recorded on video the monk’s procession past us. Our thanks also to Lee, a Charlotte-based singer-songwriter, for introducing us to his music as Leisure McCorkle. Look him up.]