A Way in the Wilderness

A few weeks ago, my family and I traveled to southern Montana for a short vacation.  As we drove into the Paradise River Valley, which escorts the Yellowstone River through the upper Rocky Mountains, the snow began to fall, blanketing the landscape.  As backwards as it seems, a whole world comes to life in the dead of winter.  Entire forests of trees throw snow from branch to branch; waterfalls each strike a pose and hold it for months; the northern lights dance the night away; and creatures big and small come out to play.

Of all the beauty we encountered in Yellowstone, I was most attracted to the wildlife and their tracks, which are much easier to spot in the winter.  At various points in our journey through the forests of Yellowstone National Park, we came across tracks of all kinds: deer tracks and wolf tracks, the tracks of elk, bison, and snowshoe hare, and lots of snowmobile tracks.

All these tracks crisscross hill and vale, so it came as no surprise that every once in a while, we came across another creature’s tracks.  Now, if you come across, say, a wolf’s tracks in the snow, chances are you’ve stumbled upon the middle of the tracks: neither at their beginning or end.  And though you may pause briefly to imagine where the wolf came from, the curiosity that really captures you is, “Where is it now?!  Where is it going?!” 

In the winter—with a blowing wind and a warming sun—tracks are a fleeting thing… a momentary glimpse into where something has been and where it’s headed.  Just as we experience these snapshots of past and future in the snow, we encounter them in our own lives: passing moments of awareness of where we’ve been and where we’re going.

Now feels like such a moment, if ever one existed… a chance for each of us to pause, look one way, look the other, and then allow ourselves to be pulled forward into goodness and grace.  This is the process of sanctification; of constantly being made more Christ-like.

There are places I’ve been through the course of my spiritual becoming that I don’t plan on going back to.  There are spiritual places I’ve thus far only dreamed of going… that’s where I’m headed.  Some have trod this way before me, and it’s their footprints I prepare to step into now.  Others will follow my tracks, stepping where I have stepped.  But all of us follow the steps of the Way-Maker who prepares us a way in the wilderness.

Tracks in the Snow

- by Su Tung-po

To what should we compare human life?
It should be compared to a wild goose trampling on the snow.
The snow retains for a moment the imprint of its feet;
the goose flies away no one knows where.