“The mind of man plans his way, but the Lord directs his steps (Prov 16:9).”

My original desire and goal for the PCT was to hike the entire trail in one season. I knew that it might not be possible so my plan was to go as far as Lake Tahoe in Northern California and then evaluate our progress and decide whether or not to continue. In this decision I gave me wife veto power. I wanted her to be comfortable with the decision and if she wasn’t, I would not proceed. I also wanted the agreement of the Elders of our church.

As it turned out, we never made it to Tahoe. We learned about a month into our hike that almost all the hikers were planning to skip the Sierra Nevada Mountains because of record snow fall. We decided to do likewise. So we went up to Ashland Oregon and started to hike there, thinking that conditions would be better. They weren’t. After a week of plowing through deep snow, postholing constantly and losing the trail often, we knew that it was unsafe and unwise for us to continue. More importantly, we new God had blocked our progress. Though dissapointed, we returned to Arizona.

I resigned myself to the fact that our hike was over. It was hard for me to understand why a door that God had clearly opened for us had closed prematurely, it seemed.

A couple weeks after our return, Jerry called and said that God had put it in his heart that we should start again in mid July at the Washington/Oregon border and hike the rest of the way to Canada. To make a long story short, that is what we did.

Now that it is over we can see the Lord’s hand at work in all of this. Several significant things happened during our six week hiatus in Arizona that wouldn’t have happened if we had not been here. God’s plan was clearly a better plan.

So many times in life we make plans that don’t turn out the way we had hoped. I had a plan in my mind of how my pastoral ministry would unfold when I started 40 years ago. It has turned out to be almost nothing like I expected. But it has turned out the way God has directed. I am at peace knowing my life’s dream of hiking all 2650 miles of the PCT ended up being only about 1100 miles. How many people can say they hiked over 1100 miles in a summer?

I am at peace knowing that as I approach retirement down the road, I have fulfilled God’s plan and not my own. May we all learn to let God direct our steps, even when they don’t seem to follow our preconceived ideas.

Ogress