“It is easy to overestimate how much you can accomplish today. In time, if unchecked, this belief can lead to frustration, doubt, and shame that stifles future risk, and may tempt you to throw away what could have been yours. Do not fear. Reflect. When you look closely, you’re apt to discover how far you’ve come over longer horizons, and how much further you can go still. For even if your steps are small — taken deliberately, humbly, and over many days, they can still take you to faraway lands.”
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In my last post I wrote that I put my journey “on pause” to come home to Minnesota.
That has turned out to be not entirely true. Being here has reminded me that this journey has always been equal parts physical and spiritual. These past three months my explorations inward have been as intense, if not more so, than the hardest trails. And so, I’m realizing that even while I’m here, temporarily off the road, the journey is hardly on hold.
I’ve felt this most acutely in my time reflecting. After all, the scope of what I’ve experienced in the last in 3 months has been immense. A truth that I often forgot while I was traveling and thinking about the place I was, or deciding where to go next.
In total, I hiked in over 30 national parks, monuments, and forests, in addition to driving through or briefly stopping at countless others. These hikes totaled somewhere ~500 trail miles.
These vistas have opened up so much for me - some of which I’ve written about in this blog, but more of which I’m still grappling to understand. And in reflecting back on it all, I’m realizing that so often my internal journey has been inextricably bound to the physical land I’ve walked and the people unexpectedly who’ve shared my path.
As a tool for reflecting on these moments (and also as I search for deeper patterns that transcend the anecdotes that have filled these posts to date) I’ve begun to revisit the images I’ve taken in chronological order. And in so doing, I thought it might be helpful for me, and simultaneously interesting to you, if I shared 1 image from each wild place I’ve been, so you can get a sense of the physical arc of my journey to date. Though I love many of these images, I’m not selecting them to show you my “best” photos. Similarly, I haven’t selected them to show you the most commonly captured vistas (though sometimes they do as well). Instead, each image captures a moment that was imbued with deep meaning for me. A place and time where the inward and outward journey came together and opened up possibilities for me in both realms.
Below, I’ve begun that project with pictures from the first three parks I visited. I will share the rest with you in several separate (and much shorter) picture filled posts.
As I do, I’d love to hear how these images speak to you, and what, if any truths they bring into your mind.
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(1) Grand Canyon National Park (South Rim, Arizona)
(2) Glen Canyon National Monument (Arizona)
(3) Antelope Canyon (Page, Arizona)