I love spring runs, and today was no exception. The morning air was crisp, a faint frost coating aspen catkins, mist enshrouding the reservoir, no sound aside from my footfalls and the cheery hoots of a Northern Saw-whet Owl.

Up ahead the trail split, a fork I’ve arrived at many times before. The choices were simple: Downhill, dry and easy, smooth sailing, the short route back to the car. Uphill, longer, harder, covered in spring snowpack, firm-yet-punchy with unpredictable postholes guaranteed. My legs and lungs, weary from the five miles I’d already covered, begged me to head left, while my gut - always eager for a challenge, never wanting the easy way out, and knowing I’m trying to prep for a big project late-summer - urged me right.

Which way are you going?

The question had been bouncing in my head for days, not in anticipation of this small decision, but in the grander context of our current situation. It was in there, gnawing my brain, for days, a metaphorical inquisition, a deep pondering not only of me - fresh from a day of 50501 protests at the Colorado capital which both inspired and challenged me (more on that in another post) - but also of my country, my neighbors and friends, my fellow citizens. It was amorphous at first, a lightly congealed slurry of queries, thoughts, feelings, needs, wants. Then the song popped up in a playlist.

I was born three months after his death in 1973, after the vagaries of fate took him too soon from our world. Nonetheless, I was raised on a healthy diet of Jim Croce’s music, his velvety baritone pocked by crackly vinyl a staple in our home. But, it’s not his well-known melodies clawing at my brain these days, not Time in a Bottle or I Got a Name, but instead an obscure one, written in 1971, not released until 1975, his only known protest song, a short, philosophical ballad bursting with questions, emotion, heartache.

Which way are you going? That’s what Jim asked himself, me, you, all of us, back in 1971, and was asking me - asking you, asking all of us - again yesterday, today, tomorrow. Which side will you be on?

This is painfully obvious, but I can’t not say it: We Americans are at a crossroads, a critical fork in the 250-year trail we’ve been running. We as a people have a decision to make, a path to choose. And it’s not a trivial one, for the path chosen, the path dictated by our choice (or our existential, Sartrean non-choice), will dictate the future certainly for all of us Americans, and likely much of the rest of the world, too.

I understand that many of us - myself included - often feel controlless these days, unmoored, adrift in a sea of chaos, ineffectual blips in a system doing things we disdain, abhor. There is, it seems, nothing we can do.

But, that’s untrue. There is a fork in the path, a choice to be made, one that is always there: left or right, up or down, easy or hard. We can choose the path of least resistance, smooth, dry, coasting back to comfort, even if we know it’s not the good one, not the one keeping us moving toward our goals, dreams, ethics, values. Or, we can take the other path, the harder one, the scarier one, full of hills and snow, burning lungs and fatigued legs, each step moving us toward a distant, cherished goal.

The choice is ours, and ours alone, to make, and the outcome, as always, uncertain. (But, of course, certain things are rarely worthwhile.) But we still have a choice: to speak our values, to live and breathe our ethics, to articulate our vision of America to those officials - elected and appointed, lofty and lowly - who can amplify our voices in the halls of power, knowing full well their survival depends on it.

We can choose to speak, to write, to protest (with our legs and lungs and wallets), letting it be known that, regardless of party, this is not the America we know, not the America we want, not the America we will accept, and certainly not the America which has, until now, imperfectly-but-stubbornly pointed itself toward greatness.

We can choose (in no particular order):

• To demand due process for all on American soil.
• To side with democracies, not dictators.
• To believe in science.
• To value our earth and understand its frailty.
• To support free thought and free speech.
• To value education, research, critical thought and academia.
• To cherish our veterans and honor their sacrifices.
• To welcome all as a nation founded and built by immigrants.
• To embrace the economic and employment possibilities of a green economy.
• To demand official accountability for mistakes, regardless of sex, party, or allegiance.
• To lead with ideals over political expedience.
• To demand democracy over oligarchy.
• To demand humanity, honesty, probity, and civility in our highest office.
• To keep adding to this list…

There’s a fork in the trail. Which way are you going?

It'll be hard, it'll be scary, it'll be uncertain, but I'm going uphill.