I am a hiker. I live in Southern California which is a wonderful place to live if you love to hike. Mountains, hills, and panoramic views abound. My “playground” is the Laguna Wilderness area. It surrounds the town of Laguna Beach with some 77 miles of hiking trails. Now, Laguna Beach is an artist colony and a beautiful little town. It runs along the coast climbing from the Pacific Ocean to the top of the steep hills that border it and is a destination not only for tourists but locales as well. Now, there are only three ways into Laguna, either by Pacific Coast Highway from the north and south or Laguna Canyon Road from the east.
One of the starting points for my hikes is Coastal Peak Park. The road that leads to it parallels a toll road that intersects Laguna Canyon Road. Now, the road that leads to this park is wide and well maintained, but dead ends at the park, was never connected to Laguna, and is clearly marked as having no outlet. Yet invariably about every five minutes or so a vehicle will come zooming down this road, the driver thinking they have found a “secret” back door into Laguna avoiding the inevitable traffic and/or tolls. They arrive at the turnaround, pause for a moment and then speed back the way they came. Maps clearly show this road ends, has no outlet, yet this continues unabated, something I have observed for years.
We have all done it at times in our lives. We saw the signs that we were headed in the wrong direction, but we sold ourselves on the idea that it would be OK, or worse, we really weren’t seeing what we were seeing, a form of willful blindness. Now, a driving mistake is one thing, the price a little extra burned fuel, some lost time. But what of the signs ignored in the areas of relationships, our children, careers and the like? We must learn to pay attention to the signs, and if heading in the wrong direction or toward a dead end, stop and alter course, to trust our intuition, the voice that speaks the truth, even when we don’t want to hear it. And if we are unsure of what direction to follow, we seek guidance, perhaps secular, perhaps spiritual, hopefully both. Oh, and even if on the wrong road, there is always something to learn and see, the road to Coastal Peak Park provides some wonderful views, both ways.
© Vincent Lee Jones Living In Spirit All Rights Reserved
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