The roads were slick with ice, the ground was caked with hardened snow, and the stiff winds made an already brutally cold day in the Virginia suburbs feel below zero. Yet people came out by the hundreds.
A group of more than a dozen Buddhist monks who had walked all the way from Texas stopped on Saturday at a Ramada Inn in Triangle, Va., about 40 miles from Washington, their final destination. They were swarmed by crowds, just as they had been at nearly every stop along their journey.
Many of the people lining their route had been following the monks for months on social media, hooked by their seemingly simple message about blocking out the noise of a messy world and finding tranquillity. The weather, no matter how miserable, would not deter them from catching a glimpse of the monks, swathed in saffron and maroon robes, as they walked by.
Kaylee Peters, 44, had left her children with her parents and bundled up so tightly that only a sliver of her face was exposed. She clutched a bouquet of yellow carnations that she had bought at a supermarket — an offering, she said, to show how grateful she was.
“I just want to have a moment of calmness and peace and feeling like I’m enough,” Ms. Peters said, tears collecting behind her sunglasses. She was by no means alone.
The “Walk for Peace” started in October in Fort Worth. and if all goes according to plan, the monks will have covered some 2,300 miles once they reach Washington this week. Along the way, they have delivered soft-spoken lectures to anyone who wanted to listen.
Interest in their journey intensified as word spread on social media, a reminder of something obvious: that the monks were traversing an unsettled country. Political upheaval, conflicts and humanitarian crises abroad, unaffordable living costs and the unresolved emotional toll of the pandemic had left many feeling exhausted, exasperated and struggling to fend off a sense of helplessness.
“Do you see the mess the world is in?” said Donzella Logan, 64, who had traveled by train to the suburbs outside Washington, D.C., from Blairs, Va., near the North Carolina border.
The crowds coming out for the monks have transcended racial, religious, economic, educational and geographic lines. The common thread was a belief that the monks were providing comfort. Some found it difficult to articulate why, exactly, the walk had touched them in such a profound way, but it did, offering hope and encouragement that otherwise seemed to be in short supply.
“It’s such a simple thing, just walking,” said Ms. Peters, a nursing educator who lives in Takoma Park, Md. “Look around at all the people it’s touching.”
The monk leading the walk, who goes by the name Bhikkhu Pannakara, said in one lecture that the goal was to provide a diversion from whatever was weighing on the people they passed. It would cause them to slow down, he said, “and let go of everything.”
The walkers consist of more than a dozen monks from a temple in Fort Worth, Texas, and an adopted dog named Aloka, which means “light” in Sanskrit. Aloka has become a celebrity in his own right, recognized for the heart-shaped mark on his forehead. The monks are usually flanked by support vehicles and local law enforcement officers. They stop at houses of worship, government buildings and hotels, and have relied on donations. (The walk’s organizers did not respond to a question about how much had been raised and the plans for the proceeds.)
Their journey, which followed a winding path through eight Southern states, has not been easy. The winter has been unusually harsh in the South, leaving the monks to contend with snow and ice in places where it would not normally be expected. In Texas last fall, a driver crashed into the caravan, leaving one monk so severely injured that his leg was amputated. In South Carolina last month, Aloka needed surgery to correct a leg injury before easing back into the walk.
Many who came to see the monks in Northern Virginia said they had not only found solace in the monks’ words, but inspiration in their willingness to complete a 2,300-mile journey on foot.
“The sacrifice of walking across several state lines, especially in this weather, is very brave,” said Eros Messick, 24, who had come with a friend to a stop the monks made in Stafford, Va. on Friday evening. “It takes a lot of resilience.”
Ms. Logan, who described herself as a Christian, said she was certain that the monks were on a mission chartered by Jesus, even if they were Buddhists sharing ideals rooted in their faith. “We may not be speaking in the same language, but it adds up to the same thing,” she said.
“It’s a wake-up call,” she added. “It’s God trying to get his people in order.”
A few weekends ago, she drove a few hours to South Carolina in the hope of catching up with the monks. She was too late.
On Saturday, Ms. Logan waited on the side of a road in the cold for a couple of hours. There was no way she would miss them again. “Just to be in their presence is a blessing,” she said. She especially wanted to see Aloka.
Britani Meadows and her daughter-in-law, Amber Boppre, had been saving money to travel from their home in southwestern Utah to join the monks somewhere along their walk. Originally, they wanted to make a road trip of it, but the monks were moving too fast. They ended up flying from St. George, Utah, to Nashville and driving up to Virginia, arriving in Stafford just after the walk had ended for the day.
Everyone had settled outside a government building to hear the monks speak. Some perched themselves atop snow banks for a better view. Bhikkhu Pannakara talked about how pain and setbacks were a part of living, but they should not let that overwhelm them.
“I understand suffering, how terrible it is,” he said. “I’ve been there.”
He asked them to try to create peace in their lives, and then to protect it.
After the lecture and a prayer, as the crowd started to clear out, Ms. Meadows lingered, holding a yellow rose that had been handed to her. She had worried she would not make it there that night, and not just because of traffic. Her brother was in the hospital in Utah, in intensive care. She didn’t want to leave him, but her family said to go and bring back blessings.
She was surprised, she said, by how deeply the monks’ journey had resonated with her. “It’s very out of character,” Ms. Meadows, 45, said. “I’m very logical and this is a very illogical thing to do.”
But these were illogical times, she added.
“The world needs to slow down,” she said. “People are so angry at everything.” The walk, and watching it, felt like an antidote.
Esti Chikirin, an X-ray technician from Woodbridge, Va., said there was something moving in joining the crowd and finding a measure of community. She and Mr. Messick, her friend, helped a woman with limited mobility navigate. They saw others help strangers cross icy streets.
“It’s not every day we’re surrounded by so many people,” she said. “I had issues this week. Someone else probably had issues this week.”
“I definitely did,” Mr. Messick replied.
“In my brain, I’m like, thank God I’m here,” Ms. Chikirin said.
Usually, she said, her mind is riddled with anxiety, worrying about anything and everything, making even mundane tasks more complicated than they should be. She didn’t feel that now. She felt something like peace.
Rick Rojas is the Atlanta bureau chief for The Times, leading coverage of the South.
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