These words came to me, not from me, but when they struck me deep in my organs I needed to spread the impact. I’ve changed a word or two for reasons of the author’s privacy.
I’ve been gone, as you know, looking for time away to recalibrate. Instead, I found myself drawn to the resonant frequency of my mother and played her my best rendition of the dutiful son. There was another sound while I was there: the telephone ringing with the offer of the Golden Ticket. You’ll recall I told you I assumed that that show had also already left town.
So I went for a hike to think things through.
For some reason, the sun was shining in an uncharacteristic way and I looked across the Sound to Peaks in the Olympics that I had summited many summers ago – Mt. Constance, Mt. Mystery, Mt. Deception – fitting names for my meditation. Still just Spring and clad in an abundance of snow.
I know that world – of snow washed pure in the thin air – a sterile environment. I recall the steady crunch of crampons and ice axes in the hard pack. And the long glissade down after so much effort to gain so much height.
And I thought of the path chosen and how many years I spent trying to find that road through the woods. And now having found it, I reckoned that it would be very difficult to glimpse it should I go astray again.
So I was polite in my refusal…”If you had called me even a few short months ago, my response may well have been different, but I have made some choices…” declining the Ticket, the different elevation it would provide, and the not so splendid isolation.
And so onto the road less chosen. Eschewing financial security for the adventure of saving the planet one small case at a time.
Keep on trekking, my friend.
How many of us recognize the right path when it opens up before us? How many see it again, many miles down the road, looping to rejoin, offering another chance at its adventures? How many have closed their eyes at this point? Or turned them downwards, seeing only the step next taken…
Keep on searching, my friends.
