The Longest Trail: Ocean to Ice Dispatch 21

There will always be questions. Always prayers. Always answers. Always.

One Last Adventure

By the time Ocean to Ice finally came to an end, just about everything was worn out.

Seven months of adventure had taken a toll.

My hiking shoes had disintegrated. What remained were two strange blobs of fabric, rubber, and mud. Smelling of mold. The shoelaces were the only thing still recognizable.

My backpack had a hole chewed through it by a hungry squirrel. One glove, along with several other items, had disappeared somewhere in the wilderness. My body felt about like my shoes looked, so several appointments with doctors had been scheduled. Even the Silver Sasquatch, my trusty adventure van, needed some serious attention.

But apparently, Ocean to Ice wasn’t quite finished yet.

The van needed warranty repairs at the Airstream factory in Jackson Center, Ohio. The plan was to leave it there for several months, rent a minivan, and drive home to Utah.

Simple enough.

Except Jackson Center is located in the middle of nowhere.

Population: 1,446. That seemed overstated.

Cornfields. Long, straight, narrow roads with a seemingly universal speed limit of 55 mph. More cornfields. A couple gas stations. No hotels. A Subway restaurant. Not much else.

There was one other thing.

No Uber.

How is that even possible?

I needed to drop off the van at the Airstream factory, affectionately known as the Mothership. Then I needed to get to the Enterprise rental car office in Sidney, about 20 miles away. I had an important meeting back at the factory at 9:30 a.m., so the schedule was tight.

Fortunately, I had a bicycle. And two legs that were still somewhat functioning appendages.

I figured I could leave around 7 a.m., ride the 20 miles to Enterprise, pick up the minivan, return to the factory, transfer my belongings, and make the meeting.

What could possibly go wrong?

Well, just about everything.

At 6:30 that morning, I realized the sun wouldn’t rise until almost 8. Jackson Center sits near the western edge of the Eastern Time Zone, so sunrise comes surprisingly late. The temperature was in the 30s. Heavy fog covered the countryside, and rain was in the forecast. My headlamp had staged a mutiny several weeks earlier and was now refusing to emit light.

And I needed to navigate 20 miles of unfamiliar, narrow country roads in the dark and fog, using Google Maps on my iPhone. Like flying a plane with instruments only.

Hmmm.

This seemed like an excellent time to pray.

Father in Heaven, I need a window without rain, sleet, or snow to make this ride. And Father, I would especially appreciate NOT DYING. Please.

Then I started pedaling.

It was dark. Really dark. The kind of creepy darkness normally reserved for Halloween movies involving cornfields and psychopaths.

Which, come to think of it, seemed appropriate.

The fog was so thick I could barely see anything. I had a tiny flashlight dangling from the handlebars, illuminating a small patch of pavement near my left pedal. Utterly useless. But one hand was needed to hold my phone for navigation, and the other was occupied with the relatively important task of steering the bicycle.

I quickly discovered something else.

Fog is wet.

Not exactly rain, but wet enough to saturate everything, including my brakes. So they barely worked. My hands were freezing because my thin gloves were soaked. As were my jeans. (Why did I wear jeans?) I was riding as fast as I could manage, and the wind chill wasn’t helping.

Every so often I’d hear a vehicle approaching. Since I couldn’t see it, I’d pull off the road and wait for it to pass.

I prayed.

And pedaled.

And blew warm air on my hands in desperation.

And prayed some more.

There wasn’t anything particularly miraculous happening. The fog didn’t part like the Red Sea. The temperature didn’t suddenly climb to 75 degrees. An angel didn’t appear with a heated bicycle helmet.

And in retrospect, the whole arrangement was not one of my more brilliant transportation decisions.

But something felt familiar.

I had prayed before leaving and felt a sense of peace. During the ride, despite the conditions, that feeling remained. I was cold, uncomfortable, and very much aware of the hazards around me. Yet somewhere underneath all that, I felt reassured. And something about the absurdity was entertaining.

Eventually, I shivered and rolled into Sidney.

Alive!

I collected the minivan, apologized to the Enterprise representative for the puddle of water my belongings had left on his counter, and drove back to the Mothership. I barely made the meeting.

Apparently, the story of my morning adventure had already circulated through the gossip channels and halls of the Mothership. People were discussing the crazy guy who had ridden his bicycle through the dark and fog.

At 9:30, I entered the meeting.

“Mike, seems like you had a bit of an adventure this morning.”

Laughter.

The conversation that followed was productive, and I had the impression that the morning’s escapade helped break the ice. It opened things up in a way I hadn’t expected.

And I thought, well, that seems like a fitting way to finish Ocean to Ice.

After everything that had happened during the expedition, one final unexpected adventure. One more prayer. One more opportunity to trust.

Only this time, instead of climbing a mountain pass in the Canadian Rockies, I was trying to avoid becoming roadkill in an Ohio cornfield.

The Living Laboratory

A few days later, after driving through St. Louis, Kansas City, across the expansive plains of Kansas, over the Colorado Rockies, and eventually through Moab, I returned to Southern Utah.

Where it all began.

Ocean to Ice was over.

What an adventure.

It began with a training period in the red rock country of Southern Utah, followed by months of backpacking through the Pacific Northwest and Canadian Rockies. There were rainforests and redwoods, glacial lakes, alpine passes, and some of the most extraordinary landscapes I’ve ever experienced. A detour to Costa Rica even added a tropical rainforest and a rather memorable encounter with an ocean current.

By autumn, I was crossing the continent, eventually arriving in New England for the spectacular fall colors, General Conference, and time in the Sacred Grove. It was a fitting spiritual retreat as the expedition wound down.

But the scenery wasn’t the primary purpose of Ocean to Ice.

It was the laboratory.

One of the central objectives was this experiment in prayer.

I’ve spent much of my life studying prayer. I already knew that prayer works.

But the world has changed. My life has changed. And I wanted to find out what would happen if I took my practice of prayer to another level.

Could I receive answers more consistently? More deliberately? More clearly? Could I involve God more fully in my daily decisions, recognize His guidance in real time, and act on it?

For seven months, I followed a deliberate protocol. Every morning I prayed, recorded what I was grateful for, identified specific questions and requests, listened for impressions, and tried to act on them. I watched for answers, recorded what happened, and shared what I was learning in these dispatches.

It was an experiment, but not one conducted in a laboratory with white lab coats and clipboards.

Mine involved a backpack, a white rain coat, a camera, a tent, an unreasonable number of Little Debbie brownies, and occasional encounters with animals that could eat me.

So, how did it go?

I’ve spent the last couple of weeks reviewing my prayer journal and looking back through the dispatches. There were hundreds of prayers, countless experiences, and some remarkable discoveries.

Twenty dispatches. Twenty lessons about prayer.

Next week, I’ll bring those lessons together in one place, with photographs and stories from across the expedition. Seeing how the lessons developed in chronological order reveals some interesting things about the experiment.

But for now, with Ocean to Ice officially over, there’s a more immediate question.

Was it worth it?

The Longest Trail

As I write this, I’m back in Southern Utah. The Silver Sasquatch is in Ohio, getting repaired. My battered camping gear has been unloaded. The backpacks are resting. Some of them are resting in the trash.

The great mountain passes are behind me, at least for this season.

And the experiment is officially over.

So, did it work?

Yes.

Not always in the ways I expected. And certainly not because every prayer was answered exactly as I wanted. Some were. Others weren’t. Some questions remain unanswered, at least for now. Some of the challenges I was facing in April are still with me today.

But I wasn’t trying to create a life without problems. I was trying to take my practice of prayer to a higher level.

And I believe I did.

That’s what strikes me most as I look back through the journal. I didn’t simply pray for seven months. I’d already been praying for decades. I deliberately invested more effort in the process. I asked more specific questions. I spent more time listening. I tried to act on impressions more consistently. I watched for answers, recorded what happened, and learned from the results.

And the effort made a difference.

I learned things about prayer that I hadn’t understood before. Some discoveries were surprising. Others were principles I’d known for years but came to understand more deeply through experience. And a few were so practical and immediate that they changed how I approached an ordinary day.

But there’s something more important than the individual lessons.

The experiment was about developing a closer relationship with Heavenly Father. About learning to communicate with Him more effectively, recognize His influence, and involve Him more completely in my life.

And that relationship grew.

Not perfectly. There were plenty of distractions, frustrations, and days when I didn’t do particularly well. I still have a lot to learn. But the deliberate effort to strengthen that relationship produced something meaningful.

I think that matters to God.

I believe He cares that we make the effort. That we want to know Him better. That we’re willing to spend time with Him, listen, and try to follow His direction. Not because He needs us to demonstrate some extraordinary technique or accomplish a certain number of prayers, but because He wants a relationship with us.

And it mattered to me, too.

Those hundreds of entries in my prayer journal represent hundreds of conversations with Heavenly Father. Some were joyful. Some were difficult. Some were filled with gratitude. Others were little more than desperate requests for help.

But together, they represent something I deliberately worked to develop. And after seven months, I can see and feel the difference.

That’s what makes the experiment worth it.

And perhaps my most important conclusion is that I don’t want the experiment to end simply because the expedition has.

The wilderness made a wonderful laboratory. The mountains, waterfalls, forests, and glaciers provided unforgettable experiences. I’ll be sorting through the photographs and memories for a very long time.

But I don’t need to be standing on a mountain pass to continue what I started.

I can pray in a parking lot. In the van. At home. In the middle of a difficult conversation. While making a decision. Or pedaling a bicycle through a foggy Ohio cornfield, wondering whether I’m about to meet my maker considerably sooner than anticipated.

The location isn’t particularly important.

The conversation is.

And I want to keep getting better at it.

That brings me back to the title of this final dispatch.

The Longest Trail.

Ocean to Ice covered an extraordinary amount of country. But the longest trail isn’t one I walked this summer.

It’s the one I’ve been traveling with God for most of my life.

It began long before Ocean to Ice, and it will continue long after the mountains and glaciers of this expedition have become memories.

There will be new adventures, new challenges, and plenty of circumstances that don’t unfold according to my carefully constructed plans. There will be questions I don’t know how to answer, and days when I’m not even sure what to ask.

But after seven months of deliberately working to take my prayers to another level, I know the effort was worth it.

And I intend to keep going.

Keep praying. Keep listening. Keep learning. Keep acting on what I learn.

Because the expedition may be over.

But the longest trail continues.

There will always be questions.

Always prayers.

Always answers.

Always.

Meridian Magazine

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