My friend Arthur Crowell owns 50 acres of deep woods in Franklin County, Missouri, 40 miles southwest of St. Louis. He bought the property four years ago and named it Sage Mountain. Arthur is driven by his unwavering vision to coax enough structure to make this wild place hospitable for campers and rock climbers and pilgrims in white vans. So far that looks like a large gravel parking lot, thoughtfully placed signage and four miles of trails that the wild continually tries to reclaim. His home when he’s here is a 1980s RV with a DIY solar shower, a CrocPot and a generator chugging under a tree.

“You’re always welcome to spend as much time as you like on the mountain,” Arthur told me a few months ago, when my itinerary was germinating. “We can set up a vision quest or a sendoff ritual or a ceremony about letting go of something that no longer serves you. Whatever feels right.”

That’s mostly how I’ve been assembling my itinerary: offhand invitations and whatever feels right. So I came here with my two-wheel-drive van, apprehensive about the last mile of bumpy and muddy gravel roads. Yesterday Arthur, Tamar and I hiked all over Sage Mountain in its lush summer foliage, with Tamar’s long elastic leash wrapped around my waist. We ascended at times and descended at times. But the mountain part of the name is also a metaphor. Early visitors heard the mountain’s call, and the mountain whispers its own guidance. WIth sacraments like that abounding, one might except to leave transformed.

Arthur shared those words over dinner the night I arrived. We ate delicious CrocPot stew served with a wide-bladed chef’s knife. There’s also a story about an anvil — full name the Anvil of Hope — hauled to a cave with a track-wheel loader. I weighed the probability of my own transformation. Surely over 48 hours on land with several energetic portals, and given my metaphysical leanings, the odds were in my favor. I wondered what the next spiritual station would feel like, what the parting of the next veil would reveal. The face of God, perhaps.

Here is what happened instead on our long hike around Sage Mountain yesterday: Arthur pointed out intriguing mushroom formations and spoke of the power of walking slowly and intentionally. He picked persimmon leaves for tea. I untangled Tamar’s leash from her legs a hundred times. I silently fretted about the freelance assignments that I’m late on because I haven’t settled into a routine on the road. There were plenty of bushes but none of them burning. I did not feel my higher self rejoice or my lower self relax its grip.

This morning I watched the wet parking lot and the dense trees around it emerge from dark to light. I contemplated the layer of Missouri mud that made it from Tamar’s paws and my boots onto the floor of our van. I remembered other times when I was pretty sure I knew how the divine would arrive for me and what the result would be. You know, because that’s what’s supposed to happen for us pilgrims with metaphysical leanings and Sufi tattoos. Plus, that’s how the divine arrived those other times, bringing ecstasy and sweetness and if you squint you can see a ladder with angels descending.

I’m not sure whether I read it somewhere or coined the term myself years ago: God shopping (n.), predicting with confidence the direction of spirit and whether the soundtrack will be harps or songbirds. Later, when I’m wiping the mud from the floor or driving to Liberty, Mo., I will say a prayer of gratitude that God does not confine God’s self to the small circle of my imagination.

THANK YOU: Huge gratitude to Arthur Crowell for being a self-proclaimed dreamer, caveman and most of all storyteller. Bless you, brother. You are the voice of the mountain.

“If I want certain things to happen in my life, I really just have to do them.” — Emily Kenway