A while ago I was traveling in the Glacier National Park - a truly majestic place, by the way - and stopped at one of the "rest areas" on the roadside to come out and get a better view. Tall dark mountains rose in front of me, visible above the treetops of the evergreen forest, and on that dark green background I saw a long silvery line that stood out like a strand of light. A waterfall.
There was a poster map nearby, and I approached it to find out what I was looking at. There were, in fact, several waterfalls, but the one I saw was the biggest of them all. It was several miles away. To get to it, one had to follow a very steep trail that crossed several streams and climbed up to the spot in question. I looked and I looked, and my stomach grumbled because it was dinner time, and the sun was already going down... But the waterfall was right there, and I had no idea when I would come back to that same spot again.
So I took the trail.
It was beautiful. It was fresh, and green, and lush. I met some young deer along the path, crossed a short bridge across a raging stream of unbearably cold water, and then the path narrowed and went up the mountain side along another stream that ran down the rocky slope.
I walked for a while, met some people who were walking down the mountain, passed some who were walking up... Then a couple passed me, going even faster toward the same spot I was looking for. They said they wanted to see the waterfall too, but it was almost twilight, and they didn't want the dark to catch them in the woods.
I must have walked for at least an hour, maybe more, and no more people were going the same way. As the twilight fell on the mountains, mosquitoes came out of their hiding places, and the walk started becoming somewhat unbearable. I thought of the way back - I would have to do it in darkness. I wondered how much longer the walk would last.
And then I saw the same couple that had passed me a bit earlier. They said they didn't reach the waterfall. They turned back because it was getting dark, and they wanted to find a place to eat that would still be open somewhere. Considering that we were in the mountains far away from nearby villages and small towns where everything closed early, that was unlikely anyway. "Too bad," they said, shrugging. "We really wanted to see it, but it's time to go."
Really, it's time to go, I thought and kept going up the path. I decided that if the waterfall wouldn't show up in 5 minutes, I would turn back as well. Five minutes passed, but then I decided to walk just a hundred more steps...
And finally, there it was. A huge, magnificent waterfall. I went so close to it that a cloud of cold mist surrounded me, cooling me down. It was the biggest waterfall I had ever seen in nature, and I stood there a while, enjoying its presence and the view of water raging down the steep mountain slope, feeding the river that I crossed miles away at the beginning of the trail.
What's the point of this story... You know, I learned something that day.
When we start walking on a path to something and we do it for a while, we often get tired. Sometimes it gets more and more difficult as we keep moving forward. It can get dark, we can get hungry or desperate... And, after walking for a while, we may feel the desire to stop or to turn back.
Sometimes it's exactly what one should do. Like Castaneda said - if your path doesn't have a heart, you can always change it. So it's OK to stop or take another path if we feel that the one we are on is ABSOLUTELY not right.
But in this situation I saw something else... Those two strangers - they turned back because it got dark and they were hungry. They walked several miles and turned back almost at the end. If they walked just 200-300 steps more, the path would turn and they would see the waterfall. They turned back when they were only 200 steps away! Of course, they didn't know it. It was a gamble. It was unknown. So the decision to keep walking or to turn back would be based on determination, desire, and/or faith, and NOT on knowing that the waterfall is actually ridiculously close...
So here comes the point... HOW DO WE KNOW when to keep walking and when to stop or turn back?
Is it Intent, Intuition, Determination, or something else? It is a matter of chance?
I don't know. That evening I was happy that I didn't turn back. But then again, every situation differs.
