Off the Trail

Planning for hiking (if not doing much hiking itself) lends itself well to thinking about treks of the life-variety, as well as the natural.  Sometimes I look back at the events of my life as if they were points on a travel journey.  And I can point to one single location and say "There.  THERE is where I stepped off the trail and if I could just go back to there and choose something different, all of this stuff in the middle wouldn't have happened."

And I suppose that, in part, is true.  If I hadn't made the first step off the prescribed trail, I couldn't have ended up in the wilderness.  But, it's not just the first step that's to blame.  It's also the second.  And the third.  And the fourth.  With every step you take away from where you should be, you have a choice.

Keep going through the wilderness.

or

STOP.  Get your bearings, take out your map, figure out where the road is and head toward it.

You can't blame just the first step you took wrong. You have to accept that every step you took after that got you here too, that you had a choice with each one.  And you chose.  But you know what's good about that?

You have a choice with the step you take after this very moment, too.  You can choose to keep going through the wilderness, if you want, wandering around in circles looking for something you think you'll know when you see it. Or you can choose to change direction and follow it till it brings you into the light.  What you chose 50 steps ago doesn't determine that you will be lost in the woods forever.  But what you choose today can determine where you are by evening's light.