Tracking a Path Through Darkness
“Look at how a single candle can both defy and define the darkness.” — Anne Frank
Along the path of life we pass through dark times and our path becomes obscured. During these times, even small glimpses of light can begin to rekindle hope and invite more and more light and understanding to prevail. As we reach out to one another, the flame of hope is refined and our souls are freed.
On a Friday night we took a group of scouts to Point Reyes National Seashore in Northern California. We were delayed on our way to the trailhead and darkness became our great challenge. Our campsite was less than two miles away, but the path would not be easy because darkness intensified under a thick canopy of a forest. There were about twelve or fourteen of us, so there were a dozen or so stories of why each of us had forgotten his flashlight. Mobile phones had yet to exist. The only source of light that we came up with was a box of matches.
We lined up in tight formation and slowly eased along the trail. With our feet we could feel the trail by sensing where the surface was clear of vegetation and harder and firmer than surrounding soil. At points where the trail became blurred, we stopped to estimate where we were, review our progress and decide where to go next; we counseled together.
Since we couldn’t burn matches continually and we couldn’t change our environment, we adapted. We organized ourselves into Group A and Group B. At each of these assessment stops, one person was assigned to light a match. Since the light would shine for only a moment we devised a way to gather as much information as we could. Group A was assigned to look to the left and Group B to the right and to memorize what they saw during that brief moment of light. We shared what each of us had seen and discussed it all to determine which way to go. This was a tedious process (it became a very long trail), but we kept progressing and got better and better and navigating in the dark and working as a team. We trusted each other and knew each others’ voice. We each knew the mind of each individual, of our fears, needs, and our skills and strengths. Together as a group, or rather a clump of people, we moved forward toward our goal.
As we drew closer to the campsite we crossed an expansive open meadow. The darkness eased a bit. We could see vague mysterious forms or shapes of large objects. At first we had to touch the forms or shapes to distinguish what they were, boulders, bushes, trees, etc. As we adapted to the environment our skills in identifying objects continued to improve. We were soon able to navigate without the use of matches.
Then we saw one object that was different, too symmetrical to be a natural object. As we touched the cold object we identified it as a metal pole. We saw several other poles and realized that we had reached the campsite.
But we still had more to learn about our environment. We had never seen poles scattered about in that fashion. Had we lit a match and looked up we would have realized that each pole had several hooks on top. In the morning when one backpack turned up missing, we could see the marks in the soil where the backpack had been drug along the ground to deep underbrush. Racoon tracks identified the type of culprit. At that point we realized that the poles were designed to keep food out of reach of the racoons. We never found the backpack. With small glimpses of light, we did successfully make our way through the obstacles of darkness and reached our goal.
