About an hour in I reached the place I thought I was heading, only to find another peak just beyond...then another and another. I kept clawing my way up, sometimes crawling on all fours because of the steepness and loose ground cover. After two strenuous hours brought me as high as I could go, I sat for ten minutes admiring the absolute stunning beauty of God's creation.

I'd left myself just under two hours to get down before the panic deadline, so I thought I was in great shape. I even jogged a little when the footing was stable enough, thinking I might make it back in half the time...until I looked up and realized I'd jigged when I should have jagged and ended up in the wrong canyon. I'd been using the river and a huge rock as guides, trying to be real careful about my direction, but after about a half hour of power-descending I realized I'd picked the wrong rock and an abnormally curved point of the river.

I probably should have come up with a great spiritual application -- like how following your favorite spiritual leader instead of the true-north guide of Scripture could get you wandering off in the wrong direction...but the truth was I was so tired my brain wasn't working that way. :)

Thank heavens I didn't know then how truly far off-course I'd gotten or I might have just sat down and waited for rescue. The initial few-degrees-mistake I'd made at the top had compounded the further I descended, til I was almost 90 degrees off my original path. But I didn't know; assuming I was only one ridge over.

I veered right and began descending into the valley, then crawled up to the top of the ridge. Sadly, another ridge lay in front of me. I crawled down again, then climbed even slower to the top...to find yet another ridge. By, I think, the sixth up and down I'd given up all semblance of an ordered climb. I slid on my rear when I could, busting through underbrush, stomping through muddy rivulets of water in the valleys, scraping arms and legs as I slowly crept up and up, each time hoping it'd be the last hill.

At four I spotted the bridge across from our campsite; unfortunately it was still one ridge away and no way to contact my parents thanks to the previously mentioned dead-cell zone. An hour later I finally dragged my sorry self into camp, finding my father loaded with a tournequet and other safety supplies and just about ready to head out to look for me. They gave me water and fruit juice and I practiced a spirit of gratefulness as I laid flat while we drove home. :)

Today I'm no longer tired, only dreadfully sore and not that big a fan of the stairs! Maybe that's why I can focus on the spiritual metaphor. I'm thinking about how one seemingly small, wrong moral choice we make can send our lives in a completely different direction; one that is sometimes difficult to recover from, sometimes impossible.

When reading about the problems in the Middle East I'm often reminded of Abraham's decision to sleep with his wife's maid. I'm sure Abraham wasn't deliberately trying to defy God, he just thought he'd help God out a bit since the promised child wasn't coming quick enough to suit Abraham's wishes. One seemingly small, wrong moral choice, and all these generations later the bloodshed between the half-brothers' descendents continues.

Hopefully I'll remember those six or seven ridges the next time I'm faced by a seemingly small moral choice. Down life's trail, the difference of a few degrees can be monumental.