When setting out, there are often times where there really isn’t a trail or clear route to the top of a mountain. Cross country approximation to the top of a well-known peak isn’t to be taken for granted. It isn’t just a concern about losing your way or getting off your bearing. It is largely about pace and energy conservation at altitude to maintain your way. Even if by successive approximation until at the top.
Create in me a clean heart, O God,
and renew a right spirit within me.
Cast me not away from your presence,
and take not your Holy Spirit from me.
Restore to me the joy of your salvation,
and uphold me with a willing spirit.
Ps. 51:10-12
Another long walk back. From a high desert summit plateau just West of the Mojave. Places like this help me with perspective about individual significance and value. It’s sort of like looking up at the stars in wonder. As if our comparative individual size and stature have full bearing on our relevance or rarity. Other than size, what “weight” or significance does a person have among far-off places like this? Since we are self-aware sentient beings with the enormous significance of a different type. Are we not valuable and meaningful in the grand scheme of things?
A ‘sub-atomic’ speck in the universe from one perspective and individual singularities from another.
Alone on the long walk home. On a 12-mile loop with much of it off-trail. Along ridges, over small mountain rises and through wide-open fields. Deep in thought yet situationally aware. Here and there heading off to a false path like so many times before. Persistent and successive approximation. Listening to the wilderness, watching the time and weather, paying close attention to my body knowing full well its exposure, limits, and weaknesses.
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