The Trail To Clarity

I recall once when desiring to go for a hike in a place I once lived in Arizona. I remember driving down a road I like very much. One had to drive to the end of the paved road and turn onto the dirt road and you'd go for a ways.

There were many trails that sprang off from that dirt road - some to the right, some to the left and some seemed to be promised but when driving to the end of the road do not exactly appear. Still, the drive was beautiful.

One time I felt drawn towards a place I could see and feel from the road. I felt that the place was a mystery - meaning that it had promise but I didn't know what - almost like being attracted to a question mark.

I recall parking my car - never having gone up that trail before. Walking and walking and walking and walking - brought my water with me and the important trail snacks that one brings to keep up your energy and strength and portioned it out to myself in the appropriate amount - I'm sure many of you bring these kind of granola things and whatnot.

I recall that the trail started out wide and it got narrower and narrower and at some point I realized that I was off the trail. I just hadn't realized that I was being drawn to someplace that was other than what what I thought.

I backtracked, found the trail again and kept going forward and then much to my amazement the area that I was being drawn to - the trail did not go there.

I had the impression that the trail had been diverted because it felt to me like the trail ought to go there - maybe it did once - but once the trail turned off I stopped and said to myself - do I really want to go through the forrest off the trail.

You know when you step off the trail you might harm other life forms - plants or even lichen that is not always visible to us because it likes to take the color of what it exists on so that it might grow in compatibility with what it is upon.

I looked in that direction and then I stopped to do something that I've been trained to do. There was no one else on the trail so there was plenty of space and time.

I stopped and turned gradually to the left. Imagine you're in the center of a clock and you turn from twelve to eleven and then to ten and so on in that direction - very slowly - feeling how much heat I had in my body and much to my amazement I had the most heat in my body for returning from whence I came.

Of course, that's the direction to take and I may tell you other tales about that in time. So I walked back down the trail feeling the heat all the way until I got back to my car.

I wondered for a time why I went down that trail and why so much time was involved. I realized some time later that day that it was a trail of decision. Be of the land, be on the land, be for the land. That's the decision I made. Perhaps you have made your own that came about in an unexpected way as well.

Goodlife.