backcountry grace

This week I’ve spent most of my time in my head asking big questions and thinking big thoughts. I’ve been taking big bites of ideas that I have about the work I do and trying to metabolize them into clarity of direction, into actions.

It’s like seeking out a vista. I’ve been tugging at an incline with the soles of my boots to find a clearing where I can see the whole stretch of landscape and discern the way I ought to go.

The vista feels important to me today. But I need to remember that there’s a difference between the big views of purposeful trajectory, and the simple day-to-day quest of tuning my next step to the trail.

The greatest challenge for me with entertaining vista-sized-questions is finding the courage to come back down and do the thing with the clarity I’ve attained. Sometimes I want to settle in where I can see everything but touch very little, rather than carry on with my project of placing dusty footprints along the whole stretch of trail.

May we each find the clarity we’re after. And then may we each find the courage to take a thousand confident steps, or a dozen, or just the next one.

And through it all may we trust in backcountry grace, which is the assurance that straight lines are an abstraction, and that good work happens with twists and turns and grit and sweat.