- 6/19: Miles 1026.9-1043.3 (16.4 mi.)
- Total ascent: 3084′; descent: 2349′
- 6/20: Miles 1043.3-1057.2 (13.9 mi.)
- Total ascent: 2644′; descent: 1057′
Today is Father’s Day, which coincides this year with the summer solstice.
What I wish I could say to my dad, particularly on this day, is that I’m reawakening to abundance. I’m feeling less depleted and less fearful than I have in a long time.
Grief has a shadow that is long and difficult to see. I have been living in fear of what could happen, not in awe of what could happen. I’ve been so worried about upsetting the apple cart that I hesitated to move it beneath the apple tree.
Something a good father, mine included, teaches is vision. Prosperity, especially beyond the financial sort, requires one to construct an authentic, realistic, pride-worthy image of one’s future self.
That is a tall order, probably too tall for the teens who are first saddled with it. But that future self target can, and probably for nearly everyone, does change. It’s only human, in other words, to have multiple, evolving, and interlocking identities.
Many famous artists and naturalists were also writers. Thomas Cole deepened his allegorical series of paintings about man’s “boats” of life with a prose poem. John Muir, Benjamin Franklin, and a million other heroes of mine are celebrated as explorers and inventors as well as writers.
A second and complementary skill fathers teach is determination. Most visions materialize only with persistence. They must be planned, labored, and saved for. Again, visions can evolve and complement one another, but only insofar as the visionary can give adequate attention to each. Attention is not neatly or particularly divisible.
I would reassure my dad, were he here, that the trail is continuing those lessons in fine form. I am practicing setting and sweating goals every day, many times per day. I am inoculating myself by doing so in many small but still challenging ways, so that I can more confidently and efficiently tackle my “real world” visions.
I have so many advantages. I have the determination. When I can learn and combine that masculine skill of vision with its feminine half, receptivity, I will be much closer to my best self.
I have a wise old man in my corner and long, lush trail ahead of me. I am excited for this time of abundance.
