I was feeling a bit of the cabin fever yesterday, so I headed out on another bike ride. I decided to hit some roads I hadn’t been on before, since there are many right around my area. What I hadn’t counted on was meeting Luis.

With digital camera ready, Camelbak full and bike prepped, I headed out to see new places, ride new roads and scout new fishing holes.  I rode past Champoeg State Park and an Organic Valley Farm (yeah!) along the Willamette River and ended up at an old boat ramp and private farm ferry.

I was wandering the shoreline, taking pictures, when I met a couple from Beaverton who showed up with fishing gear in hand.  We introduced ourselves and he kindly offered up a pomegranate.  With a little prompting, Luis told of his early years growing up in Los Angeles.

As he spun yarns of gangland horrors and friends lost to violence, I was reminded of the struggles we face and the potential dangers inherent to this mortal coil.  When Luis became a father, he knew he wanted his children to be able to walk to and from school without the concerns of being caught in the crossfire of a territorial war.

He visited Oregon and fell in love all over again, so he packed up his family and set out for points north and his new home, leaving the chaos behind.  Luis found work in construction and has taken and left second and third jobs to bring food to his family’s table.

Luis’s story goes on, as does ours, but I was compelled to share his story because of the relevance to each and every one of us in our progression through the trials of life.  We know what we want, even when we cannot see it, and we make choices that bring us closer to our dreams.  Sometimes we stumble and fall, but we get up, dust off our backsides and press on toward the goal.

Jack Canfield, author of the Chicken Soup for the Soul series, puts it like this:

“If you’re driving at night, your headlights only shine a hundred, two hundred feet. . . . you can make from LA all the way to New York only seeing that two hundred feet at a time.”

While he didn’t say so, I got the feeling that when Luis made the decision to move his family to Oregon, he didn’t know exactly how it was going to happen.  But he set the intention and took one step at a time, always focusing on the goal, knowing he would get there.  Two hundred feet at a time, he made it.

Welcome to Oregon, Luis and family!  We’re grateful you’re here.

Peace.