The Most Important Question ...

I remember once letting my friend Jason talk me into going on an early morning run when our sons were at a scout camp together.

This is a very Jason thing to propose.

Up early.

Going above and beyond the assignment.

Before agreeing I asked him how far he was thinking and how fast he intended us to get there.

For context, I'd previously let him talk me into running a couple 5 and 10ks with him. Generally speaking, my experience consisted of watching the back of Jason’s jersey getting smaller and smaller in the distance, while I focused on maintaining control of the majority of my bodily fluids.

At camp we agreed to terms and got up at the appointed ungodly hour.

He’d scoped out a mostly flat trail for us.

Jason’s not only an outdoors person, he’s also a botanist.

I am neither.

Where I see woods to my left and right, Jason see worlds.

Waiting to be discovered.

The whole time we’re on the trail, he’s botanizing.

I remember him pausing to point out a tree.

I was grateful that he did.

For, you know, the pausing part.

The tree had thorns that were more like long, thin spikes … a Hawthorn, I believe. I’m sure he gave the genus, too.

He said there’s a particular bird that will impale its prey on the spikes of the Hawthorn. Large insects. Even small mammals.

I’m like, are you kidding me?

That’s badass.

“They call it the butcher bird,” he said.

Dude … that’s even badass-ier.

"Also known as a logger shrike,” he added, which, I guess is how the bird introduces itself at formal parties.

We get back to our run.

I get back to watching the distance on my phone so we can turnaround and double back to camp.

It’s (always) further than I think.

Mercifully, we get to our halfway point just as we come upon a big sweeping bend in the trail.

Jason suggests we keep going.

“These were not the terms we agreed upon,” I replied.

Actually, that’s the expletives deleted version of what I really said.

“Ahhhh, come on,” he cajoled … and just kept right on going.

As I took in the familiar site of watching the back of Jason’s jersey getting smaller in the distance, he turned over his shoulder.

Said something I’ll never forget.

“I wonder where this road goes?”

Then two seconds later, he said aloud — not for me, but for himself …

“I mean, isn’t that the most important question?”

In the moment -- even as I was renegotiating the terms with the majority of my bodily fluids --- I knew he wasn't talking about the trail anymore.

I took a deep breath, and followed in his footsteps.

__

I think of Jason often.

Especially when I sit down to write.

How, in his botanizing, he was essentially giving me his goggles.

To appreciate a bigger world than the one I inhabited.

Illuminating worlds where I would only otherwise see woods.

Hawthorn trees and butcher birds.

All of it just waiting to be noticed.

Though it’s been a few years since our sons were in scouts together, I think of myself still following in Jason's footsteps.

Botanizing the everyday, if you will.

Finding worlds in the tiniest of moments.

Meaning and magic in the otherwise mundane.

Giving others the goggles to appreciate a world bigger than the one they inhabit.

And on my better days … unafraid of the most important question for any storyteller: I wonder where this road goes?

And on my even better days … someone who encourages themselves and others around them to go a little farther than they think they’re capable of.