This is Daily Dadspeak—daily reflections on becoming a dad, while still growing up myself. You can find the full mini-pod audio list here.
Today we drove from Yosemite National Park to Lake Tahoe. After a lovely drive down winding roads, we took a left.
Soon after, we started heading up a mountain. All of a sudden, we were surrounded by gigantic snowflakes, and giant pine trees dusted in white. It was beautiful. But things were about change.
We were soon in a full-on snowstorm. Visibility was near zero, hiding just how steep the drop was off the side of the mountain (probably for better). The new snow was quickly erasing the faint tire tracks left by whatever vehicle had come before.
We dropped our speed to a nervous 20 mph. At one point, I tested the antilock brakes. It took nearly 10 seconds to go from 20 mph to zero. There was about 4 inches of snow on the road. An elevation sign said we were over 8,000 feet.
For over an hour, my clenched knuckles around the steering wheel were as white as the snowstorm we were in. We saw not one car going in our direction, though a few cars occasionally passed going the opposite way. Four of them had slid off the road.
We had no mobile phone service. No Google maps. No idea how far we still had to go, or if we could even get through.
But eventually we got through, by focusing on one meter at a time.
Lacking visibility about where we were heading, or even where we were, we focused on the moment we were in. One curve, one slip, one ascent at a time.
Much of life is like this. We may have a goal up ahead, but the path to get there isn’t clear. We lack visibility on our journey, or even certainty about what’s right in front of us. So what do we do? We keep going, doing the best we can, one step at a time.
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