America is anxious. The answer might be a pilgrimage.
Despite unprecedented access to wellness retreats, therapy apps, and self-help resources, nearly half of American adults report feeling more anxious today than they did just one year ago. We're more connected and more informed than any generation before us, yet more overwhelmed. For all of the solutions at our fingertips, we're still coming up for air.
The pace of modern life has become hard to bear, and with smartphones in our pockets giving us unfiltered access to breaking news, the growing stress has become hard to escape. One in three adults says they are experiencing an existential crisis, not just stress, but a deeper loss of footing. Among adults under 25, that number climbs to more than half.
Yet for all our optimization, something essential remains unsettled. We can track our sleep, monitor our heart rate, and meditate through an app, but many people still find themselves asking the same question: Why do I feel so restless?
There is a word for what many Americans seem to be searching for, even if they would never describe it that way: pilgrimage.
In an age of constant noise, there are some things a person cannot stream, scroll, or subscribe to. There are places we must physically go to remember what silence feels like, to step outside the demands of daily life and reconnect with something larger than ourselves.
America has largely stopped building those safe harbors. We've outsourced the need for stillness to spas, the need for meaning to podcasts and self-help books, but none of it is the same. We’ve confused being busy with being fulfilled and have mistaken the pace of modern life for a sign that we are living it well.
But beneath the busyness, people are still searching for something substantial, and they’re beginning to admit it.
Visits to sacred sites, pilgrimage routes, and destinations with deep religious or historic significance have surged in recent years, part of a global faith-based tourism market now projected to more than double in value by the end of the decade. The Camino de Santiago, perhaps the world's most famous pilgrimage route, drew fewer than 5,000 walkers in 1991. By 2024, that number had grown to nearly 500,000 — a third consecutive record-breaking year — with Americans ranking among the top nationalities making the journey.
People are not looking for a vacation; they are looking for an experience that means something, and increasingly, they are willing to travel to find it.
What's particularly striking is that this trend is not being driven by religious obligation alone. Researchers and travel analysts have noted that a growing share of visitors to sacred sites do not identify with a specific faith tradition. They are simply hungry for spaces built around reflection rather than consumption.
A growing body of research suggests that time spent in contemplative outdoor spaces has measurable effects on stress and anxiety, and that the body, not just the mind, responds to environments designed for quiet. We seem to have always known this. We have simply forgotten to build for it.
That may help explain why places like the Gardens at St. Patrick's in Maysville, Kentucky, are beginning to attract visitors from well beyond their local communities. Built around life-size Stations of the Cross, prayer gardens, and spaces for reflection, the sanctuary exists for a surprisingly simple purpose: to give people a place to slow down.
What makes the Gardens notable is not simply their beauty, but the fact that they were created with no commercial agenda behind them. They are the result of a local benefactor's desire to create a place of peace for others and to support the surrounding church and school community. In a culture where nearly every space is designed to sell, entertain, or monetize attention, there is something striking about land set aside simply for contemplation.
But the deeper question the data raises isn't about travel trends. It's about what is driving them.
People do not suddenly begin searching for stillness when life is working perfectly. The growing interest in sacred and contemplative spaces tracks closely alongside rising anxiety, loneliness, and the increasingly common feeling that modern life is not delivering what it promised.
Visitors are not traveling to these places because they have extra time. They are traveling to them because they’re ready to find true rest from the noise of life.
We are an anxious and perpetually connected generation, starved of silence and places that offer it without an agenda. The spaces drawing people back, whether a centuries-old pilgrimage route or a six-acre garden in a small Kentucky town, share one thing in common: they exist not to sell you something, but to give you back something you didn't realize you'd lost.
Katherine Cotterill is the Executive Director of the Gardens at St. Patrick's, a six-acre pilgrimage sanctuary in the heart of Maysville, Kentucky, featuring 15 life-size bronze Stations of the Cross sculpted by Italian artist Reto Demetz. She has been instrumental in bringing the Gardens to life as a destination that serves both the faith community and the broader region, and she continues to guide its growth following the site's grand opening in May 2026.
As a Maysville native who returned home after 15 years working on the West Coast and abroad, Katherine holds degrees from the University of Kentucky College of Agriculture and Golden Gate University College of Business. She brings a background in international business and a deep commitment to her hometown to everything she does at the Gardens.
