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| Up the Gabrielino Trail from Gould Mesa... |
Whatever our journey; a Walk with God, our
life, or a simple hike in the woods we come to points of choice – go over the
bridge or not, go around the next bend or not.
This
is the unknown. We can plan to the nth degree and still we do not absolutely
know what we will find on the other side of the bridge or around the bend, or
even on the bridge. We make our choice to move on or not and then go with a mix
of faith and trepidation. On a hike we may have walked dozens of times and
there we give little thought to the unknown beyond the possibility to meeting someone else on the trail or maybe a view of wildlife. With life, walking with God or not, there may be
degrees of knowing the outcome of our choice but always laced with the
possibility of surprise.
Crossing
bridges is an adventure, rounding curves exploration. As the Station Fire raged
on in the back country of the Angeles National Forest late in 2009 I was
AT&T’s Radio Planner and Coordinator for California and Nevada (I had no
counterparts in other regions). I was tasked with inspecting our microwave
stations back in the forest. Okay, I was feeling particularly invulnerable
after having been allowed back to our home to find it standing after I was
certain to find a pile of burnt rubble and smoldering debris and I volunteered
to go up into the mountains to find out how our sites fared. Actually, I didn’t
volunteer, I just did it.
I
rounded many bends that day and most of the bridges I crossed had been deemed
safe by structural engineers. Most but not all. I was able to visit all our sites with the
exception of Camp 16 whose access road was still closed due to ongoing
investigations into the loss of two firefighters, our team visit to that site
is story all to itself, and a sobering one at that.
During
my expedition, if a long one-day trek can be called an expedition, I found surprises
around several bends; three or four bears scrounging around an abandoned fire
base station for food, the Sherriff’s helicopter and its crew at Mt. Disappointment,
and then Camp Colby across a bridge that hadn’t yet been inspected.
Camp
Colby, now known as Colby Ranch, is a location equipped with a meeting/mess
hall, residential and visitor cabins, and other out buildings that all provide
the infrastructure for organizations to come for educational, religious, and
business retreats. The camp is connected to the communications network via one
of the microwave radios I had responsibility for. I expected the camp to have
been burnt to the ground, what I found was a miracle brought to us by the Grace
of God and fire fighters determination beyond reason to save the camp.
I
found people here, stranded and isolated. Their one vehicle was out doing
errands and hadn’t been allowed back in. When I showed up it seemed I was some sort
of conquering hero. This camp is nestled in the crook of three hillsides and is
a wooded vale with one access road o’er a bridge to the Angeles Forest Highway.
The folks there told me of the flurry of firefighting activity that had saved
their little vale and this is where the heroics took place.
They
had plenty of food but no communications and their loved ones had no way of
knowing their condition. The radio site here was in perfect condition lacking
only the power to operate it. The feed stations along the backbone of the system
were in similar condition, some with singed antennas and buildings but all
operational. I was able to radio out to our operations people and by the end of
the day they had generators in place and the Camp Colby telephones on line.
I
was informed later that the bridge I had so blithely crossed had supporting members
seared and still smoldering. Our operations trucks arrived with an inspector to
allow access after I had left to complete my inspections. I had unconsciously made a choice to the cross the bridge – what if I hadn’t? How long before the
camp attendants’ loved ones knew they were safe? Fool that I was, I was
operating under some sort of faith and shield.
It
seems to me to be the ‘or not’ part of our decisions is where the risk really
is. We risk not seeing the miracle, meeting the person that needs us to alter
their path of destruction – we risk not seeing the waterfall round the bend or
the great vista through the notch in the mountains only accessed by going over
bridges, crossing streams, rounding bends, and scrambling over rocks. When I
risk the ‘not’, it tends to leave an emptiness where the adventure not taken
would have filled a gap.
Then
there is the option of turning around and going back. The thing about this
option is that we still need to cross the bridge and go back around the bends
that got us there in the first place. Who knows what happened to the bridge in
the meantime, or what creatures have come along behind us round the bend?
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| ...and back down the trail. |
Life is an
adventure, walk its path with a greater degree of faith with open eyes for the
surprise, the opportunity to achieve something great or to simply gaze over the
vista, a vista otherwise known as the rest of our lives.
Always remain in
His grip.
jerry
