I gratefully step off the lava onto the ground. The sun-warmed glassy rock has scraped my boots and knees for the past two hours. The loose scoria is soft to my worn feet. I take my bearings, lake to the south, forest ahead, and fantastically endless lava behind me. I know there is a trail somewhere ahead, eagerly I press into the forest to find it. I have been battling the memories of my past and the uncertainties of my future. As I dedicate my mental energies to finding the next stable step ahead my abstract brain scrounges for meaning, for significance, for purpose. It finds it by unearthing past years and reviving them in memory.
I swing back into conversations by swimming pools and on doorsteps. Sunny walks in quiet parks, and chilly strolls through forgotten hills. Happy times, smiles that came from deep eyes and nervous fingertips. The million-dollar feeling that comes after a successful night. And the other feeling, the second guessing, and third, and fourth which comes after a failed one. Memories of pain, both received and given. I hear the voices of rejection, sometimes my own but also those rejecting me and my carefully crafted life philosophies. Am I wrong or are they wrong? I hear my own voice, hesitant when it should have been strong, strong when it should have held back. These are wounds (opportunities?) I’ve left behind, learned and healed from… mostly.
The trees surround. My ears hear nothing in this vacated landscape yet they ring with churning thoughts. I press onward. Each set of points from the past draws a trajectory into the future. Each personality interacting with my own to create a new and unique version of myself, one conditional on the influence of another person. An edition of myself no longer publishable as friendships, relationships, come and go, fading behind me like boulders that for some small moment shape the course of a stream. Yes, I know the paths I have chosen. I accept what I left behind. I force down the ghosts that will never be. What lies yet ahead? With all those declined possibilities what path am I on now? What will I become? I trip through some fallen branches and into a clearing. Lake, lava, and forest have come together. In late summer the water is low, leaving me with a long empty mudflat for a beach.
With a broad expanse of thought I look beyond the dead ends to line up the path I did take. Where does it lead? Is there a clearing wide enough to let me see the distant destination? No. In spite of the broad expanse of the mudflat and the wide waters of the lake a ring of tree-covered hills shrouds the distant horizon. I can’t see what lies around the trees, or over the hill. I know only the next three months. I know that somewhere beyond the hills lies the mighty peak, namesake of this wilderness and the ultimate object of my desires. I know there are cliffs, and maybe a few creeks, my understanding of the coming experiences marks those as near certainties. I think there will be other voices, new ones certainly but maybe also some of the old, even if only as echoes, with the words becoming ever harder to discern.
What is the end point? Where am I going? I imagine that each time I left a crossroads I choose the harder path, the lonelier, the uphill fight, the miles of broken lava flow. This will create of me something stronger right? It will lead me someplace more precious, more incredible, more noble, perhaps more abundant? Do I have any promise of that? I plot my future but cannot find the end. It fizzles a short distance away. I take a few steps down the beach and it fizzles a little farther. Only by traveling will I see farther. It’s time to get on the trail. I know it’s there, a few short steps into the trees passing parallel to the beach. It’s so smooth and clear, I should never have left it to enter the lava. I could go right, deeper into the wilderness where I intentionally seek the uncharted. Or I can go left, where after 3 or 4 miles I will find my car, exactly where I left it. I am tired. Too many voices, too many paths, not enough decisions. I sit and eat a sandwich.
That helps me today.