• AT HAND: Deuce Lee, The Big Dipper, Gravy
• LOCATION: Sawtooth Wilderness, ID
• DATES: July 16 – 20, 2025
• STATS: 5 days/4 nights, 44 miles – 8,093 feet EG

Predestination is the explosive diarrhea of theological doctrines, a potential get-out-of-jail-free card that takes a watery skitter on personal responsibility. If the course of a person’s life is predetermined, then choice is an illusion, morality becomes superfluous, and blame and punishment are unjustifiable. Devoted Calvinists might argue that God’s sovereignty is a mysterious truth compatible with free will, but it sounds to me like they’re having their pottage and eating it, too. If the fear of an unknowable hereafter begets the justification of a total eschewing of accountability and the invention of a complex pantheon that requires the devoted veneration of proselytes, perhaps we’ve been mindlessly licking the ketchup popsicle for too long and it’s time to start a load of whites. Besides, chance and choice, the respective randomness and inevitable opportunity inherent in life, offer some of the greatest payoffs. The paths that you elect to walk, the people you choose to associate with, the way you decide to treat yourself and others, all have consequence and meaning that deserves to be owned. Instead of abandoning personal responsibility and trusting in God for the outcomes you desire, you have to embrace the beautiful enfranchisement that results when the need for control is relinquished and life unrolls like the poorly wrapped Qdoba queso birria burrito that it is. Adding a generous dollop of queso diablo and grabbing a fork and a few extra napkins is the solution to pretty much any existential problem.

Of consequence: Pitching tents in the dark; crisp air horn mornings; lakes like endless strings of rosary beads waiting to be counted; finally understanding why it’s called fishing, not catching; waterfall white noise and riverfront property; watching a dog slip slide off a snowy cliff; the regenesis of important relationships spawned by bureaucratic laziness and the alphabetization of surnames; smoooke.