Last night, I enjoyed the Arena Stage production of Rogers and Hammerstein’s Carousel, you know the one that ends with that big song about faith and hope, You Never Walk Alone.  And before that, I spent most of the day in the recording studio editing the final cut of my version of Walk with Me, an arrangement of the two traditional songs, I Want Jesus to Walk With Me and We Must Walk This Lonesome Valley.  Methinks that I am thinking a lot about the road ahead, the path I walk, the path I am called to walk?

A couple of weeks ago, I was in the red rocks of Sedona, Arizona, hiking.  That is not an exceptional claim for many of you, but for me it is.  In my early life, before I lived on the East Coast, the word “hiking” was not even in my vocabulary.  Even now (well, until this last trip), “hiking” meant driving across the 14th St. Bridge and walking the loop around Roosevelt Island with my dog.

That is, except for the rare vacation trip to some spectacular natural destination, like Lake Tahoe.  Having whet my appetite for wilderness last June, I wanted more.  So, we set out for a truly hiking-oriented destination.  We had done that before, with little success — like the time we tried to hike in the Swiss Alps around Zermatt. A round of fondue consoled us there after our failure. That, however, is the past. In Sedona, we discovered the wonderful people at the Hike House.  The staff approached us like a dentist would approach someone who was afraid of the drill — they gently showed us how to read the hiking guide, helped us pick out walking sticks, and suggested hikes they felt we could, well, succeed at. And, they firmly encouraged us, building our confidence just enough so that we would try again.

You see, by the time we went to the Hike House, we had already tried our feet (and our courage) on the West Fork Trail in Oak Creek Canyon.  The reason I came to Sedona was to see Oak Creek Canyon.  It is a legendary destination, particularly in the fall season when the leaves on the oaks that line the creek turn a just perfect shade of yellow.  But it was not enough to do the scenic drive;  I was determined to hike there.  That first day, we made it about half-way on the trail — the first moderate trail I had ever tried.  I had my hiking boots, but we had no walking sticks and by the time we faced crossing the third running stream (okay, more like a babbling brook on the day we were there), well, we felt like we were way beyond our skill level and turned back.

As I said, we had not yet been to the Hike House.  And therefore we did not know the most important secret of hiking in that region.  You see, an arroyo is never the trail.

What is an arroyo and why do I keep talking about it?   Let’s start with a definition and the rest will become clear.  An arroyo is technically a steep-sided gully cut by running water in an arid or semiarid region.  You might also call it a dry creek bed, although it apparently doesn’t take much rain to change that.   You see many arroyos (the dry kind) while hiking around Sedona and they often form the most treacherous part of any trail, at least the moderate and moderate-to-difficult trails that I tried.  Even when there is no water, you must carefully choose which rocks to stand upon as you move up and down what can be a very steep incline.  I confess — climbing in and out of those arroyo beds used muscles in my body that I did not know that I had.

But, as I said, an arroyo is never the trail.  An arroyo, my friends, is something that you move into and out of, like the difficult times in our lives.  Or, like a time of difficult decision and choice.  Or, a time of healing.  Or, like the season of Advent.

For me, this has been in some ways the most difficult Advent season I have yet known.  And in other ways, it may be the most true Advent season of my life.  You see, I climbed down those rocks in the fall, I climbed down those rocks into the bed of my own personal arroyo.  And, mistakenly, I thought that was the path ahead — rocky, rough, painful, uncertain. What I learned in the desert is, that if you follow the arroyo, you will drown.  That is why the arroyo is never the path.  And, just in time, Advent has come to show me how to use my walking sticks (much like my friends at the Hike House).  Advent has shown me the path through the rocks and back to the hiking trail that calls me.

So all this talk of trails and paths and walking with, that is what Advent has been for me this year.  And just like my time walking among the red rocks, my time in Advent has not always shown me a clear road.  I’ve had to guess, I’ve had to test a few boulders, and I’ve definitely had to pause and get my balance more than once.  But just ahead, I see the road takes a turn upwards, and I can’t wait to see what is just over that pile of rocks in front of me.  Because now I know, the arroyo is never the trail.