This is my last installment on the “Thru-Way” series, at least for a while. I’ve learned a lot from my time hiking through some good conversation, a handful of holy verses and a few trips down memory lane. For those interested in hearing more about the west-to-east rim Zion hike alluded to in ‘Part Thrill’, here are a few great links to Joe’s Zion Website and the Zion Adventure Company’s version of the “Trans-Zion-Trek.”

Approaching the season of epiphanies, here are a few of my “aha moments” and rude awakenings on the journey:

1. The physical hike is only a piece of the journey: it’s a bit like taking a picture along the hike and giving it to another person who may never step foot on the trail, and then expecting them to just “get it.” But while there’s no substitute for the real thing, in some sense your hike was just a solitary event, and that hike only lives on fully in your memory. Only by going back, either to the place or in the story – and only by letting the journey’s mystery unravel and unfold deeper – will you strip away its layers of mere romance and get to know what that journey is revealing, for all its strengths and weaknesses, as well as your own.
2. Basking in the splendor of nature (and its needs) is important, and of the utmost importance. But that alone doesn’t change the facts on the ground for our other dilemmas: addictions, failed relationships, financial burdens, and other responsibilities. Nature can teach us to re-center, and survive physically, but it can’t make us care more about the things we choose to neglect. That comes with putting words (or verses, if you will) to the journey, and what it means for our relationship to our neighbors and our land (and water)…which leads me to the third “epiphany.”
3. “We will not save what we do not love.” This was a quote made famous by geologist Stephan Jay Guild, but it’s one that really speaks for itself. Any real connection between a person and a place adopts true meaning when that person sees that place as a neighbor which, like people, needs protection, care, and advocacy. Otherwise, the trail winds up like a trophy that we’ve conquered, and not a friend that we’ve traversed with. In other words, it’s easy to dismiss the world as unimportant, until you love it. Perhaps that’s the premise at the root of the most famous Christian verse ever: John 3:16.
4. There’s a time for a loop, and a time for a one-way trail that doubles back…This is fodder for a future post (but all you “loop-hikers” – you know what I’m talking about!)And now, for what it’s worth, is the main point:
5. There is a time for a thru-hike, and a time for a section…This is the key thread of this four-part series, and arguably the most practical….If I ever find myself overwhelmed by life, by a holy book, or by a particular task or place, I am reminded that this grande journey of a life of faith requires the distinction between thru and section…and being ok when I’m not sure which is which. This reminds me of the famous Serenity Prayer, and my ever-so-subtle (ahem, crude) adaptation:

“God, grant me the serenity to accept the trails I cannot tread, the courage to hike the ones I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. Amen.”