Who outside this house helped me keep walking this year?
Pilgrim, the made-up traveler from last week's Day 2, was back on the road, a few days after shutting the gate. The little apple trees along the ditch were far back now. The bag still held almost nothing, but it already felt heavier than it had at the gate, and the question came along with every step: What am I actually for?
The road ended at a great round room with a high ceiling and five doors. Four of them were impossible to miss. They were big, bright, beautiful and broad, and each had a name painted across the top in tall gold letters, with a promise underneath in smaller ones:
Power. The Power Path leads to the ecstasy of Control.
Pleasure. The Pleasure Path leads to the ecstasy of Comfort.
Plenty. The Plenty Path leads to the ecstasy of Capital.
Pride. The Pride Path leads to the ecstasy of Claps.
Pilgrim chose Pleasure first. The hallway behind it was warm and soft, and for one wonderful minute it was exactly what the sign promised. Then the floor started moving like a conveyor belt, faster and faster, until it carried Pilgrim through a door at the far end and dropped Pilgrim back in the round room, in the very same spot. Pilgrim tried it again, just to be sure. Then Power, then Plenty, then Pride. Each door gave its minute, and each belt brought Pilgrim back. After enough trips, Pilgrim sat down on the floor and said it out loud: "This is a waste."
That's when the wondering started. What is any of this for? Is there another way out? And wondering turned into wandering. Pilgrim stood, turned away from the four bright doors, and closed both eyes for a long while, until the glare faded. When Pilgrim opened them, the room looked dimmer, and in a corner Pilgrim had never once looked at, a small lamp sat on a stand. Its light was just enough to read the sign on the small, narrow door beside it.
Purpose. The Purpose Path leads to Peace.
The door was always there. The lamp was always burning. Pilgrim read the first word on the sign again, Purpose, and stood there a long time. Maybe this was where the question from home led.
Behind the door, the hallway was dark, tight and lonely. There was no moving floor, and the walls brushed Pilgrim's shoulders. A few steps in, Pilgrim's heart started to pound, and the bright doors back in the round room felt very close. But Pilgrim knew exactly where each of them led. To whom else shall I go?
The longer Pilgrim walked, the heavier the bag got, though nothing new had gone into it. All it carried was what Pilgrim was hoping for, and hopes get heavy when they're carried a long way. Then, far ahead, farther than seemed possible, there was a thin line of light along the floor.
We'll leave Pilgrim there for now. Pilgrim's story picks up again next week.
A want that walks always carries something. Hope believes the good is worth the risk: it's worth the wait, and it's worth the weight. And the longer the wait goes, the heavier the weight gets. Nothing new went into Pilgrim's bag, but it got heavier anyway, because what it carried was hope, and the light was still a long way off. Most long hopes feel like that: a recovery, a reconciliation, a dream that takes years.
That's why the four bright doors are so appealing when the wait gets heavy. Comfort, money, influence and a good name all have their place in a life, but as destinations they loop. Each one gives a real minute of what it promised and then carries you back to where you started. Motion with no progress is waste, which is why those doors never satisfy, no matter how many times you walk through them.
The ancient Israelite prophet Hosea spoke to a nation that had chased other gods and ended up in trouble. Along with his warnings, he passed on a promise from God about leading the people back through the wilderness, and in that wilderness, he said, God would "make the Valley of Achor a door of hope." Achor was the name of a valley, and the name meant trouble. In Hosea's picture, the hard place itself becomes the doorway.
Pilgrim found something like that in the corner of the round room: a hard, narrow door that actually led somewhere. On a long walk like that, most of us need someone who keeps us walking.
Who outside your house helped you keep walking when the wait got heavy?
Each person takes one red paper circle.
On the front, write the name of someone outside your house who helped you keep going this year when the wait got heavy: a friend, neighbor, teacher, coach, coworker, or grandparent.
On the back, write what they did. "Thank you for texting me every Friday while we waited to hear about Dad's scans."
Hang it on the green layer, writing toward the wall.
Red ornaments stay on the tree. Nobody takes them down on December 11.
Kids' story: read "The Littlest Trail" from The Overflow Adventure in Wanderful Woods together.
Time: 15 to 20 minutes. The Heart takes about three minutes to read aloud.
With kids: ask, "Which door would you have picked first? Why did Pilgrim keep ending up back in the same room?" A child can draw the person who helped them keep going, or tell you what to write.
Pilgrim's eyes: Pilgrim saw the small door only after looking away from the bright ones. Back in the Impairment days, the beam in your own eye showed how one thing up close can block the view of everything else. If someone at the table spots the echo, enjoy it, and leave it at that.
Pilgrim's story: it continues on December 16, Peace week's Day 2.
Hello, my wonderful story friends! Last time, Mr. Moose wished he could fly up to the top of Everest’s cliff, and then he decided to start walking instead, up and down the little hill behind his house with Daddy Moose beside him. Today the friends go looking for the trail that leads up to the cliff.
Have you ever had to choose between an easy way and a hard way? Let’s go see which way the friends choose.
The morning was cold and bright, and the snow at the bottom of Lookout Ledge was so sparkly that Mr. Monkey had to squint. Little puffs of cloud came out of everybody’s noses. Way, way up above them, past the rocks and the snowy trees, stood the top of Everest’s cliff.
“There has to be a trail,” said Mr. Moose. “A way up.”
There wasn’t just one trail. There were four.
They started right at the bottom of Lookout Ledge, side by side, big and wide and easy to see. One was smooth, shiny ice. One went through bushes full of frozen red berries. One was soft, fluffy snow in the sunshine. And one was wide and flat and covered in everybody’s footprints, as if the whole woods had walked it.
“Which one goes to the top?” asked Ricky.
“Let’s find out!” said Hazel, and she galloped onto the ice trail before anybody could stop her. Bruno went right after her.
The ice trail went up. And up. And then it curved. And then it tipped. And then it wasn’t a trail at all. It was a slide.
“WHEEEEEEEEEE!” went Hazel, sliding all the way around the hill.
“HAAAAAAW!” went Bruno, right behind her.
They came shooting out at the bottom, right where they started, and landed in a big soft drift, FOOMF, FOOMF.
Hazel popped up with snow on her nose. “Hee hee hee… SNORT! That was the best trail ever!”
“Haw haw haw!” went Bruno. “Again!” And he ran back up the ice trail and slid down it two more times, just to make sure.
“It doesn’t go to the top,” said Mr. Moose. “It goes back to the bottom.”
So they tried the berry trail. It wound around the side of the hill through bush after bush of frozen berries, and Bruno ate every berry he passed. It went around, and around, and around, and then it came out at the bottom of Lookout Ledge, right where they started. Bruno’s whole face was purple.
“Was that the top?” asked Bruno, licking his nose.
“No,” said Mr. Moose. “That was the bottom again.”
They tried the wide, flat trail with all the footprints. “Everybody, follow the trail!” said Mr. Moose.
Dottie’s ears shot up. “Follow the TAIL?”
She looked around. The nearest tail was Hazel’s. So Dottie followed it. Hazel turned around to see what Dottie was doing, and Dottie turned around too, to keep following her tail, and Hazel turned again, and Dottie turned again, and pretty soon they were both running around and around in a circle in the snow.
“I’m following the tail!” barked Dottie happily. “Ha! Ha! It keeps going!”
“Hee hee hee!” went Mr. Monkey. “Dottie, you’re following it in a circle!”
Hazel stopped, dizzy. Dottie bumped gently into her. And the wide, flat trail, when they finally walked it, went around one big rock and right back to the bottom too.
Everybody sat down in the snow. The four trails had been so much fun. The ice was fun. The berries were fun. Following the tail was fun. And every single one of them had brought them right back to the same place.
Mr. Monkey looked up at the cliff. It was just as far away as it was this morning. “We went on four trails,” he said, “and we didn’t go anywhere.”
Mr. Moose was quiet. He thought about it. The four big trails were so bright and so easy that they were all anybody could see. Every time he looked around, his eyes went right to them. Maybe that was the trouble.
So he did something strange. He turned his back on all four trails. He closed his eyes for a long time, until the sparkle went away. And then he opened them again and looked, slowly, at the corner where nobody had looked at all, behind a big gray rock at the very edge of the snow.
And there, beside the rock, was a light.
It was a little snow lantern, a cup of packed snow with a candle glowing inside it. And next to it, so small and so rocky that you would walk right past it if you didn’t stop, was a trail. A skinny one. Steep. Twisty. Hardly wider than Benji.
It went up.
“Mr. Monkey,” whispered Mr. Moose. “Look.”
Mr. Monkey looked. Then he looked at the snow lantern again, and he gasped. “That’s ours! That’s one of the snow lanterns we left on the night of the doors! At the hedgehogs’!”
All around the little light in the snow were tiny footprints. Hedgehog footprints.
They looked over at the big old oak at the foot of the ledge, where the tiny round door was. The door opened, just a crack. Mama Hedgehog’s nose peeked out. She looked at them. She looked at the little light by the trail. Then she smiled a very small smile and closed the door again, without a word.
Mr. Monkey felt it go all the way through him, warm, like cocoa. They had given Mama Hedgehog that light in secret. And she had carried it over here, in the snow, and set it at the bottom of the one trail that really went up, so anybody who came looking could find it. And she didn’t say so.
“She kept it lit,” he whispered. “For us.”
“Then we go up,” said Mr. Moose.
The littlest trail was hard. The rocks were bumpy. The snow was deep. The walls of rock came so close on both sides that they brushed Mr. Moose’s antlers. Bruno had to squeeze through sideways.
“I’m a bear sandwich,” said Bruno, squished flat between two rocks.
“Haw haw haw,” he added, from inside the sandwich.
Mr. Monkey had packed his pack too full: pinecones, a snack, a blanket, and three snowballs just in case. Halfway up a steep part, it tipped him over backward, and he lay there on his back in the snow with his arms and legs waving in the air, like a beetle.
“Mr. Moose,” he called. “I’m stuck on my pack.”
“Ha-ha-ha!” laughed Mr. Moose, and he gently tipped Mr. Monkey right side up with his nose.
They kept going. Their packs got heavier. Their legs got tired. Down below, they could still see the four big, bright trails, shining in the sun.
“We could go back,” said Hazel. “The ice slide was really fun.”
Mr. Moose looked down at the ice slide. He knew exactly where it went. All the way around. Back to the bottom.
“We know where the slide goes,” he said.
And they kept going.
They climbed higher than any of them had ever climbed before. Higher than the trees. And then they came out onto a flat rock, and they stopped and turned around.
The whole woods was below them. And above them, far away, the top of Everest’s cliff was catching the last of the sun. A thin, bright line of light ran along its very top edge, like the light under a door.
“It’s still really far,” said Mr. Monkey.
“It is,” said Mr. Moose. He was puffing. His pack was heavy. His legs ached. “It’s heavy. But it’s worth it.”
The sun was going down, so they started home. But now they knew the way.
That night, by the little green pine, they painted red circles. Mr. Monkey painted Mama Hedgehog on the front, with her tiny nose. On the back, he painted a big gray rock, a skinny little trail going up, and one small snow lantern glowing at the bottom.
“What a day!” said Mr. Monkey. “Hazel and Bruno slid all the way around the ice trail. Bruno ate every berry and his face turned purple. Dottie followed Hazel’s tail in a circle.
Then Mr. Moose closed his eyes, and we found the littlest trail, with Mama Hedgehog’s light at the bottom. Bruno was a bear sandwich, and I got stuck on my back like a beetle. And we climbed higher than ever.”
Mr. Monkey whistled, and Mr. Moose hummed, and together they sang:
We are better together,
Moose and Monkey forever.
And at the bottom of Lookout Ledge, beside a big gray rock, one small snow lantern kept on glowing, all night long, at the start of the littlest trail.