The Macro and the Micro
Crunching snow, compressing grains with the hydraulic movement of each leg, pulled up and moved forward by the fulcrum of the hip flexors. Hour by hour passes as the skin track cements itself into the slope until the next precipitation falls, wind hammers it clean, or a cold night passes and recrystallizes all the grains that you and your companions depressed the previous day. Putting a skin track into the hill often feels like Sisyphus and his boulder, only I imagine Sisyphus probably put in a darn good footpath or trench throughout the years. We don’t get that satisfaction either.
When city planners plan a bit too much, you’ll see “desire paths” worn in as shortcuts around 90 degree sidewalks or through well-intended meandering footpaths. Every ski tour the players get to put in their own desire paths, “let’s go above that rock band, let’s sneak through those blue spruce trees, and avoid losing any elevation while you’re at it.”
This past April, during a few days at the Asulkan Hut in Rogers Pass, Canada, my co conspirators and I had plenty of opportunity to establish desire paths in a region completely new to each one of us. The architecting of these paths and skin tracks lends itself to reflection on the full-value journey with Christ. When Jesus met the two conversationalists on the road to Emmaus, was that path so foreign to them that between their conversation and tracking the road they missed out on the person of Christ? Or Saul on his path to Damascus, as he was walking with visions of violence on the mind was the road all too familiar before God encountered him?
As I develop in backcountry navigation there’s a growing level of confidence in plotting out the desire paths of the day. I have become less worried about the micro and more concerned with the macro. I used to spend 5 minutes of every 30 checking my progress to see whether or not I was directly on trail. These days, I’m more comfortable holding onto the macro - “we are going to this peak, we want to avoid these terrain traps, we want to gain the ridge, and cross over to the east aspect around 7k.” I am seeing parallels in the full-value journey with God. Where I have tended to be self-obsessed with the micro - growth in discipleship, managing my moral performance, weighing my good actions versus my bad actions that day, and measuring myself against the mental image of who I think I should be - I am now content with holding only the macro - go where Christ goes.
In this way, the discipleship journey has been simplified. For those “who have been crucified with Christ,” there is now no decision to be made other than to go where Christ goes. We’ll find ourselves in all sorts of micro-terrain along the way, times of grief, joy, loneliness, abundant companionship, loss, and plenty, in every moment, may the resolve be to not lose the macro for the micro. On this full-value journey, may Christ so transform our hearts that each of our desire paths lead to “Just a closer walk with Thee.”