My grandfather had less than a week left to live, my dad told me, as I began shifting my direction back home for the summer. My budget for the Walk was of course severely limited, and Dad wasn’t recommending that I seek any emergency flight home– as my grandfather, who hasn’t remembered any of our names or faces for years, was gasping through some difficult final breaths.
After catching a ride to Phoenix, to spend a handful of days with beloved friends the Shamhart family, I found a Craigslist rideshare to Los Angeles, which delivered me into the caring hands of Pamela “Maravilla” Samuelson on the evening of June 18, 2010, the 25th anniversary of my mother’s death from cancer– the date I’d originally set to arrive to the White House– the day Grandpa George, after whom I was named, passed away.
I slept outside that evening, on Pam’s porch, relaxing into the fresh coastal air seeping into Pam’s Hollywood Hills home. I awoke the next morning to an introduction to Pam’s hello. Pam had been recommended to me seven months earlier by Alissa Eva, a Bay Area friend whom I’d originally met at a meditation course in the lush hills of central Mexico. Alissa & I had remained in contact, and after I’d reached San Francisco on foot, within a minute of meeting up with me she somehow felt compelled to tell me that I needed to meet her friend Pam, in L.A.
Alissa placed Pam & me into contact via Facebook, and as is the case with many of the people I’ve felt directed to across the miles, I somehow knew I’d be meeting Pam in L.A. I arrived to L.A. on foot in mid-February, and Pam was out of the country for weeks. I wandered into some confusion that I wouldn’t be meeting Pam (??). I continued on my way out of L.A. a few days later, not really considering not meeting Pam. Then suddenly, months later, I’d received a Facebook invitation from Pam to attend a weekend spiritual healing course that she and a friend were hosting, June 18-20th. Perfect timing.
Having arrived late the previous evening, the following morning I joined nearly a dozen fellow students at the course. We worked on meditative, healing exercises. Charo, my first partner, a woman from Spain, ended up telling me that she “sensed” the presence of my grandfather, who’d died less than 24 hrs earlier, over my right shoulder. I’d not told any of them anything about my family, so this was quite a revelation– especially given that Pam’s course had absolutely nothing to do with any sort of “readings” of spirits beyond.
I met and worked with some of the most amazing people during these brief few days in Los Angeles, with Pam and friends. I also finally was able to witness a crowd of people my age who love their L.A. lives– markedly different from the endless torrent of transplants who relocate to the Pacific NW and elsewhere, seeking “liberation” from Los Angeles.
Toward the end of my handful of days in the palm of Pam, she brought me to an aerial acrobatic workshop she was teaching, in an up-and-coming co-op, near LAX airport. I met the owner of the co-op, Andre Freimann, who explained to me that he was converting his leased space, an old airport hangar, into a co-op for classes ranging from sewing to aerial acrobatics. Mission Control , built from a hangar which dated back to Howard Hughes’ construction of Spruce Goose– (the hangar’s original purpose) was now being renovated with frequent 20-hour, labor-of-love workdays by Andre and Derek, his business partner, to build their dream. A man my age, Andre was also pouring all of his available resources into his dream.
As I’d soon be returning home, I’d been keeping in contact with my father almost daily. Spiritually, Dad was not in good shape. He was experiencing an enormous amount of stress with my grandfather’s recent passing. Though I knew it wouldn’t be effective for me to “offer a hand” to pull my beloved father up from his misery, talking to him about where I was, and what I was seeing and doing were sufficient to redirect the destructive pattern of mind into which he’d fallen. I told Dad about Charo telling me of Grandpa’s presence above my shoulder. And as I was talking to him from Mission Control, I revealed the current in-progress story to him. All of this utterly fascinated him– tying up the pinnacle of his interests and redirecting him toward a very positive state of mind, out of the mud of misery he’d been dirtied in in recent weeks.
By the end of the week, Barbara, beloved cousin born shortly after my mother’s passing, and named for her, was leaving from her college home in Orange County, headed home for Grandpa’s funeral. Barbara picked me up, and we enjoyed a 15-hour drive back home, in which we talked at length, getting to know each other much better than we ever had at any other point in our lives.
We all came together in time for a funeral led by Pastor Michael White, who had also led my mother’s funeral, 25 years earlier. With the advent of easy video, we saw a variety of funny Grandpa moments compiled by Dad, pulling us from our sadness and leaving us with the best, fun memories of Grandpa.

RIP: George Calvin Throop, Sr., 1924 - 2010

Juarez, the most dangerous city in the world, is but a stone’s through across the Rio Grande from El Paso. The Rio Grande is such a skinny river, that Luis Camacho, one of a handful of locals who hosted me here in EP, told me a person could easily wade across it. This past weekend, I was at the banks of the Rio Grande, looking straight across, seeing the people and reading the street signs of neighboring Juarez, where murder, police corruption, and grave fear amongst the innocents are part of the local daily reality in the virtual anarchic/mob-ocratic metropolis. Of course, I was reading the street signs from the safe side, El Paso, the second safest large city in America. The contrast seemed to tear at me from within: we’re in a safe zone, El Paso, where even the mayor of Juarez lives, and there were all of these people living in chaos just across the Rio Grande– a river far more narrow than almost any neighborhood street. The grave injustice to the overabundance of innocents is just not right. The narrow line is bordered by a high wall, and countless Border Patrol, a very prison-like environment, where the most serious crime that condemns you into the anarchy of the prison is to simply be born on the wrong side of the fence.
“El Paso is America’s best kept secret,” says Celia Pechak, professor of University of Texas – El Paso’s graduate physical therapy program. Professor Pechak has lived in many parts of the country (including Seattle) as well as other parts of the world, and has been in El Paso just a couple of years now. She explains that the winter weather is superb, the mountains are in their backyard (causing El Paso to horseshoe its way around them), El Paso is very close to White Sands, snowy mountains in New Mexico, and more. Summers can get a little hot, but the dry heat is vastly preferable to east coast humidity, and generous winds will often mitigate the powerful sun’s punishing summer impact. Indeed, having spent some two weeks now in the El Paso-Las Cruces corridor, I completely comprehend Celia’s points.
Locals easily rank among the friendliest people I’ve come across so far. The majority of the population is Hispanic, and many of the second and third generation children and grandchildren born here, on the safe side of the fence, still maintain the strong tie to the Spanish language. There are parts of the El Paso area which are so Hispanic, that I’m spoken to in Spanish when entering a store. I actually really like this– as I often think of the extended periods of times I’ve spent in Latin America, and am very optimistic about my next opportunity to return.
Though I’ve stayed with a variety of hosts here in El Paso, I’ve received more hospitable invitations here than I’ve been able to accept. Having arrived here just as the weather was reaching triple digits, with long, lonely, often waterless stretches ahead of me, I’ve decided that El Paso is the place from which I’ll be returning home for the summer– something I’ve felt called to do for the past thousand miles. I’ve left off on the southern end of Dyer Street, near Fort Bliss, and I will continue my Walk of Inspiration Across America from this exact point when I return to El Paso. For now, feeling the calling to return home, I’ll soon be accepting a series of rides which will bring me back home, to my family.
Intuition has worked in some most fascinating ways for me: I followed the “God Compass” within me to leave my job of seven years in 2007; to spend eight months traveling and volunteering through Latin America; to meditate deeply and do much volunteer work back home; to plan, prepare, and embark on a Walk of Inspiration Across America in 2009; to return home to visit my grandfather after reaching California’s central coast, this past fall; and now– to return home again, where my family awaits me. We’ll see what comes to pass…

On the left: El Paso, the second safest big city in the United States. On the right, Juarez, the most dangerous city in the world.

From El Paso's Franklin Mountains, around which the entire city of El Paso curves, is the view of downtown El Paso and the high hills of Juarez