Chapter 6: A Single Step

A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. Here's mine.

Melanie and the children accompany me for the first few hours of the pilgrimage. I joke that they remind me of the little harbor boats that buzz around the big ships as they head out to sea. The children are eager to continue further, but when we arrive at a county road, I insist to Melanie that it isn’t safe to have them walking on the narrow verge.

None of them has ever hiked out this far with me, and I’ve pointed out small personal landmarks the entire way, the place where I stopped for lunch and kicked over my water bottle, the place where I sat on my pack during the faintest of snow flurries, the place where I saw a wild boar and wondered if it would attack me. Walnut-sized lumps tighten in my throat during the breeziest of these observations.

I have always assumed my journey of a thousand miles would begin with the single step over the doorway of our home, and that’s where we record a picture of it, but in truth, it starts when we say good-bye on that deserted county road. Maybe a…