What a shock when a familiar path is obliterated; when you arrive at a well known trailhead and someone has covered the tracks – intentionally.  Covered the tracks so well with brush strewn here, rocks stacked there, water thrown like rain on loose soil, that you do not recognize the landmarks for the hike you took less than a week ago.

Consider that this is a well trod route, the walk you have taken at least once a week for several months.  Further, it is the most direct walking route to something you prize.  It is the cutoff to where your family lives.  In a pinch, you could walk the way in the moonlight, so well do you know it.

Now, everything has changed. It’s not that you didn’t know change was coming. Your curiosity and adventurous spirit led you to explore bits and pieces of the new trail as you saw the preliminary flags.  You walked the line, never sure you were really entitled to be there, always looking over your shoulder for some angry landowner that had staked claim. But those first indicators were months ago.  The flags went away. Besides, you were never able to see the way clear to where the new trail and the old were to intersect; how to get from here to there.

Not so today.  Today you were jolted from reverie by the realization that you were walking on newly blazed trail. So mind jarring was the realization as you plodded in the freshly disturbed soil, you retraced your steps just to see where you left the old familiar path.  It was hard to find.  That was when you accepted that you were meant to walk the new path.  The old way had been intentionally covered over; covered over by someone in charge.  You were not to go the old way any longer.

It’s time now, to take a little different path to your family, perhaps even to your destiny.