Walking the Trail of Discernment

A few weeks ago, we got a pretty good amount of snow, so navigating the back trail was a bit tricky. But within a few days, we were back up in the 60s, and the snow melted off quickly. I was back out on the trail when I noticed a few unusual impressions in the sand. They were just smaller than the size of my palm and didn’t quite resolve into anything familiar. They also had a weird spiral in them.

Well, there is never a dull moment on that back trail, so I accepted the challenge of solving the case of strange patterns in the sand. At first, my mind spiraled, trying to make sense of what I was seeing.

It wasn’t until about ten minutes later that the pattern finally revealed itself. What I had been seeing were fragments of my own boot prints. When the snow came in earlier that week, I had worn different boots with my Yaktrax on them. I almost never need them, so the prints were completely unfamiliar to me.

At first, I had only been catching pieces of the boot heels where I had hit the sand while walking in the snow. The rest of the prints had melted away. The weird spirals? If you know Yaktrax, they have steel coils to keep you from slipping on snow and ice. Out of context, they looked like something else entirely.

It’s been a few weeks since that happened, and it has stayed with me.

The world is unsettled right now, and it seems as though we’re all being asked to navigate fragments of information, of truth, of other people’s stories. We encounter pieces without context, claims without grounding, reactions without pause. Some of what we see is incomplete, distorted, or intentionally designed to provoke. And some is technically accurate while still telling only part of the story.

It’s natural to want resolution. Our nervous systems are wired to seek safety, and our minds quickly step in to fill the gaps, restoring a sense of coherence as fast as possible. It's a simple, protective impulse. But it often activates before we have enough information to see the full picture.

Discernment matters here, not as an abstract idea, but as a lived skill, perhaps one we’re being asked to relearn. The speed and volume of information today reward reaction more than reflection. In that environment, staying with uncertainty, even briefly, can feel countercultural. Yet without that pause, it becomes harder to tell the difference between truth and noise.

Just like those spirals in the sand, the impressions we encounter in life often lack context until we pause long enough to recognize our own footprints in them. Maybe life is less about being right and more about staying curious in the face of ambiguity. It asks us to consider: What part of this pattern is mine? What part is noise? And what part is a signal I’ve been waiting to see?

In a world full of half-truths and fragmented narratives, the real challenge may not be solving the mystery at all, but continuing to walk the trail with care and discernment, even when the path feels unfamiliar.

If this reflection feels relevant to your work or leadership, you can learn more about how I explore discernment and decision-making in my work at DisruptingGracefully.com