The Trail
Every day I walk the trail. My hike begins when my feet leave my bed and it ends when my head is laid down at night. The trail varies in pitch and difficulty. Some sections are well worn and present little in the way of obstacles, while others are strewn with hazards that dog my every step. Along one side of the trail is the sheer face of the mountain up which I climb toward the precious prize which God has promised me. Opposite lies what the old timers call, “the ditch”. It is a sheer drop off the side of the mountain.
When I first began to hike the trail, instinct kept me close to the side with the mountain’s face. A stubbed toe or hapless stumble would send me flinging toward solid rock. I’d stretch wide and embrace the earth just to reassure myself I had not careened off the far edge into oblivion. After some years hiking this way it came to be that rocks no longer seemed to stub me, boulders no longer seemed to slow me, ice no longer seemed to slip me and I looked less and less to the mountain’s side of the trail. Comfort bred complacency.
With my feet finding no challenge in their steps, they gave my eyes free range to wander. Wander my eyes did and oh the pleasurable sights that they beheld: soaring birds, stars at twilight and rainbows after storms. Such sights were a welcomed escape from the monotony of focusing intently on the trail ahead. I quickly learned, however the importance of studying the trail. I was marveling at the way a hawk seems to hover effortlessly when it has caught an updraft just right, when suddenly my left foot kept dropping well after the point I expected it to contact terra firma. I toppled sideways as I realized, with horror, that as I’d walked and watched the hawk, I’d drifted aimlessly to the side with the sheer drop and right off its edge.
I clawed for earth for what seemed like minutes until I crashed down upon my side. Feeling as though I’d been socked right in the gullet, I gasped in mouthfuls of air. Suddenly firm, strong hands gripped me about my shoulders and stood me up on my feet. Still gasping, I managed a measly, “Thanks”.
“You’re lucky that’s all you got; the wind knocked out of you! Now don’t go over the edge again or you’ll hurt yourself or worse,” said a strange shrewd man who, without another word, bounded off down the trail.
I thought, “He’s quite right I ought to be more careful”. And I was for a spell. Yet, as it was, I inevitably found myself distracted again by the pleasurable sights on the other side of the trail away from the tedious mountain’s face. Consequently falling became a bit of a habit. I could go for a while, sometimes weeks, without a spill but eventually, fatefully, I would succumb to the irresistible pull of what laid beyond the edge and it would draw me witlessly into the abyss. Bumps became bruises, bruises became gashes. Every fall landed me farther back on the trail and I had to retread countless miles. In this manner falls were agitating but not enough so as to deter me from granting my eyes license to wander yet again. Until, that is, my first major fall.
Like all the others it came upon me suddenly and without warning. One moment I was striding along and the next I was careening downward. Only this time I didn’t fall a bit, I plunged and landed not on the trail but on a boulder in the trail. I can’t be certain what all broke but the sound my body made when it contacted solid stone was sickening. Quickly, my mind abandoned consciousness and I knew not the world.
How long I was out, I can’t be sure. When I awoke I dragged myself off the boulder and to the mountain’s face. There my first excruciating recovery journey began. As I remained helplessly on the side of the trail, many hikers came upon me. Some dressed my wounds, some fed me, some passed by without so much as a glance and some stayed at my side for days. The message anyone who spoke to me delivered: “Be more careful”.
Yes of course, that was it. I had been reckless and stupid. With a bit more focus and self discipline I would study the trail ahead and resist the temptations that lurked beyond the edge. Healed, humbled and acutely aware of the danger a fall could present, I set out with a renewed resolve never to fall again. I made it thirteen months. In a moment of utter insanity thirteen months of disciplined hiking went out the window.
I had come upon another hiker and as we shared a similar pace and both rather liked the notion of company we agreed to buddy up for a spell. At first it was a okay, as we walked close together in order to share discussions. As we became increasingly comfortable with silence I found my buddy’s eyes wandering perilously and I cautioned him against his wanderlust lest he go over the edge as I had done. He assured me he had no desire to see I or he go over the edge, yet insisted one could enjoy the view without real fear of danger. “Just don’t walk off the bloody cliff man,” he said casually. I thought, it really is pretty obvious where the edge is. Surely I could sneak a peek at the grand scenery without being drawn too close. After all I’d gone thirteen months watching nothing but dirt pass beneath my feet and sky pass overhead. I deserved a bit of treat didn’t I? So I let my eyes drift aloft and around and oh the sublime scene they beheld. A storm was roaring about an adjacent mountain. Great bolts of lightning danced within the thunderhead. It was delicious to my deprived senses. I was in a moment, intoxicated. Intoxicated so much so that I never noticed the trail bending, my feet maintaining course or my friend’s moment too late cry of, “watch it!” that was the last thing I knew before I was bewildered and falling.
My crash pad this time was not even the trail, but a precipice jutting out from the mountain’s face. I knew if the source of the agony I felt wasn’t enough to end me I would simply starve to death as no one would see me here. Wincing and whimpering piteously I mustered no resistance to the darkness that enveloped me. I welcomed the end, believing anything up to and including death was better than to exist in such misery. I had fallen. I was an idiot. I deserved to be destroyed.
Such were the thoughts that occupied my tormented mind as I awaited death. Agony was interrupted abruptly when a man appeared literally out of the sky. Certain I was experiencing a hallucination and further convinced of my impending demise, I was reluctant to respond to the soothing voice which greeted me, “Hello there! You’ve had quite a fall. Don’t try to move just yet. Let’s have a look at you”.
So this is it, I thought. One is greeted by angels when one dies.
As if reading my mind the man assured me, “You may think you’re seeing things. You’re heads taken a fine lick. No worries. We’ll have you out of here in a jiffy”. After poking and prodding a bit and talking quietly to himself as he harnessed me, he disappeared into the sky once more. With a start I found myself lifted upward. My senses, that had long since dissipated, rushed back announcing their arrival with searing pain and the realization that I was not indeed perished. The minutes it took to hoist me felt like days and were not without discomfort, yet when I was hauled over a ledge and found myself lying on the trail once more I felt intense relief. With what little strength I could muster I managed the words, “Who are you?”
“Ah sorry I suppose I was a bit distracted down there and forgot to introduce myself. Call me Silas”.
Tearfully, I thanked him.
“No worries man. Falling is part of the journey”.
“Ha, I laughed sardonically. I doubt you’ve fallen quite that far”.
“Don’t fool yourself, he said. Everyone falls. Now some folks after they fall keep doing as they’ve done before and find themselves in the same fix again. But there’s a better way to walk the trail for those willing to learn. There now I’m getting ahead of myself. Let’s get you comfortable and see to dressing your wounds”.
“Why are you doing all this?” I muttered through pained gasps as he sat me upright against the mountain’s face.
“Because someone once did the same for me” he replied with a kind reassuring smile.
So began my first season with a true traveling companion on that life changing stretch of the trail. Days passed and I slowly healed. Silas helped to pass the time by telling me his story, eerily similar to mine, fraught with falls, well meaning travelers who offered admonitions void of guidance, ambivalent passers-by apathetic to his fate and finally the pivotal event that changed the way he walked the trail. He described the day a man had found him in much the same shape he’d discovered me and rather than offering the weary advice we both had heard countless times, “Don’t fall anymore”, taught him how to walk a new way. That new way, which Silas practiced and preached, was odd. “It began, he said, with acknowledging that I want to fall”.
“But I don’t want to fall” I protested.
“You don’t want the pain that accompanies the fall. Rest assured you want to go over the edge. Why else do keep longing and looking for what lies in the ditch?”
It seemed absurd and felt unnatural to say, but something within me proclaimed peace when I finally said it. “I want to fall”.
“There now, Silas declared, if you start each day stating that simple fact you’ll be amazed at how much easier it is to resist the allure of all that lies beyond the edge.”
Healing progressed slowly. As I practiced admitting powerlessness over my lust for the things in the ditch, Silas shared the other steps he took to walk the trail well, just as they’d been taught to him. Soon I was walking again. As we walked together Silas would ask me what I was feeling, what I was thinking, what I was thinking about doing. Initially I was horrified to admit that even as we walked I often fantasized about the soothing sights I’d enjoyed so many times when I walked alone. Yet, I discovered that when I made these troubling confessions, the very nature of which were insane, I became acutely aware that I did not wish to follow my desires over the edge. The more honestly and intimately I described my desires the more real the danger they posed appeared and the greater my will to resist them grew. Likewise, Silas took time each day to share his thoughts, feelings and desires. In this way, we traveled together each helping the other to walk well.
One day I broke from a spell of self reflection, another of Silas’ steps toward walking well, and said, “It must be comforting knowing you’ll never fall again”.
Silas stopped mid stride. He appeared startled, even angry, then breathed slowly and regained his gentle countenance. “The moment you believe you cannot fall, rest assured you will”. His words were firm, yet spoken in love not condemnation. “If we are on the trail, we are never more than a couple of steps from the ditch. Until the day we stand on the summit, we will experience falls. I fall. But if we walk alongside a brother, there will always be someone to lift us up again.”
A precious few years I was blessed to journey along Silas’ side. He shared his wisdom, made good his promise to haul me out of the ditch and taught me to haul him out when even he succumbed to insanity. Together we walked well; until one day our walk was interrupted by weak cries from beyond the edge. Side by side we inched over and peered down. Some distance below a man was strewn upon a lower section of trail clearly hurt from a recent fall. I stepped back awaiting Silas’ instructions to set safety and watch as he descended to perform the rescue. I was shocked when instead Silas opened his pack, produced another set of rescue gear and handed it to me.
“You’ll be needing this” he said.
“But, aren’t you going to help me?”
“I have for a season. Now it’s your turn to help another. It’s the final and most important step.”
“Are you coming down with me?”
“You’ll catch up. Or I’ll find a new traveling companion for this stretch of the trail. I won’t go it alone”.
With that Silas stepped back, set safety and watched as I slipped over the edge and into the ditch. As my feet found solid ground my spirit was apprehensive. I couldn’t keep myself out of the ditch, how in the world could I help another man I wondered. No sooner had the thought appeared than it was chased away by the muffled moaning of the fallen man. I asked if I could give him and hand and he nodded feebly. After checking him over carefully I was relieved to find he was far more scared than hurt. “Here let’s get you away from the ditch and up against the face here”.
“What ditch?” the man replied.
“I’ll explain that later, for now why don’t we fix up something to eat? I’m hungry and by the looks of it you’ve been here a while”.
“I’d like that. Say man, who are you?”
“Call me Silas”.