The Path

Last year at this time, spring was in the air. Even high up in the mountains, the days were starting to get warm, the forest floor was carpeted with flowers, and I woke up everyday and followed white blazes until I got too tired to move any more. Then I stopped, ate a ridiculous amount of food and went to bed. Sometimes I wrote in my journal, or knit a few rows on a pair of socks I was working on. But often, I just stared out into the woods, until it was too dark to see anything.

It was the opposite of multi-tasking, and it was very, very good.

On Monday, I found out that the state department of education has a problem with my certification application. After a dizzying number of phone calls and emails, it seems that there are some ways to work around this - transfer my credits to a new university, appeal to the state board, do another round of student teaching. But it will all take six months or more, and a good deal of money, and I think pursuing it would be a little bit like walking off the trail and bushwacking through dense, Appalachian vegetation, instead of just staying on the obvious, well-maintained, clearly-blazed footpath that leads directly to one of the most stunning mountains in the world.

If an obvious path presents itself to you, I think you should probably just get on it. Now the Appalachian Trail, while clearly marked, does not provide the most direct, nor the easiest route, from Georgia to Maine. To drive it would only be about 1,400 miles. Walking the path is nearly 2,200. So, I think I'll be taking advantage of the opportunities that have presented themselves to me, instead of fighting this bureaucracy.