Recently I had the experience of travelling on Swiss trains and then travelling back into the mountains where we live. I would like the journey of life to be like the former, but in reality, it is more like the later.
When you travel on Swiss trains, the track can be seen stretching out before you, a predetermined path, with every twist and turn known and every stop already planned. The stations are clearly marked with signposts and there is even an app that tells you exactly what train to take on what platform and when you will arrive. The trains come and depart exactly on time, with clocks around the station perfectly synchronised together by a central control. You can plan your trip with some certainty and even if you have not been the route before there are plenty of external prompters so you don’t get lost.
Travelling in the mountains there are no signposts or road markings, just a weaving of dirt tracks through sparsely populated plains and hills (with no cellphone coverage) whose occasional clusters of stone and mud buildings have no signage to indicate where you are. Some of the tracks may have been used for some time, some are new detours around a particularly treacherous stretch of road. But, as you come to a divergence of paths there is no indication whether this is just a detour, or a branch in the road that is heading off in a completely different direction. Further the terrain of the land, with its rivers, swamps, rolling hills and dramatic stony outcroppings prevent setting a particular compas course and just heading in that direction. You need the guidance of those who have travelled it before, or else you will get lost.
But, even travelling with those who know the way, no one knows how long it will take you or when you will arrive. Maybe the roads will be in good condition, that despite its strange rattles and patchwork repairs the car will actually hold together and there will be no hassles at the multiple checkpoints and you will make it in 6 hours. Or not. Most likely not. It could take a day or two (or if particularly unlucky even three).
Swiss are known for their precision and the quality of their work. Even when travelling up steep inclines or with adjacent drop-offs, even if you may not be a fan of heights, you trust their engineering and that things will be safe and will work. You don’t feel the need to pray every time the train slows down.
You pray when the car slows down. Sitting in the back you often can’t see the path ahead well. But the driver could be slowing down because ahead is a flooded river or puddle that he doesn’t know how deep it is or he is trying to evaluate which path across the churned up ground ahead is least likely to get you stuck or something in the car isn’t working right. So, you pray when the car slows down and then pray as it accelerates and you hopefully reach the other side. Of that stretch.
In wet season, you expect you will get stuck, the unknown factors are how often, how badly and how long will it take to dig you out. You travel with a shovel (to rearrange the road), an axe (to cut branches to put under the wheels), a rope (if you are lucky and a tractor comes along to pull you out) and a mosquito net (in case you do have to end up spending a night on the road). There are some particularly bad patches of road, where the soil is thick and soft and churned up by all the other vehicles that have passed, and got stuck, ahead of you. Often though, you are most likely to get stuck when you are trying to go around and avoid what looks like a particularly bad stretch of road or deep puddle. Most of the puddles do have hard bottoms, you just have to trust that you will get to the other side.
On Swiss trains you sit on a comfortable and clean seat in a temperature-controlled environment and can rest or do work in peace on your way to your destination. Personal space is respected, and apart from maybe an inquiry as to whether the adjacent seat is taken, you have no interaction with those outside your travelling party.
Personal space and comfort, while never particularly strong cultural ideals here, do not exist in the mountain travelling car. You usually are jammed up next to whoever else happened to be lucky enough to be chosen from the dozens begging a ride. Even if it is a rare occasion where there is a little pocket of space around you, in one of the times when you are sent airborne by a rut in the road it is fairly guaranteed that you will end up falling on top of the person next to you. Or you spend the trip trying to stop the boxes and odds and ends that are stacked up 5 high from all ending up in your lap. In dry season the dust coats you. In wet season the car drips rain on you and water from the flooded puddles you drive through seeps up through the base board. Even if you were strangers at the beginning, the shared bumps and bruises and concern for the poor lady vomiting out the window and the kid trying to sleep sprawled over multiple laps and the need to pee behind a tree, makes it difficult to ignore the sweaty stinky people around you.
If you get stuck, you are often dependent on the kindness of strangers to help get you out (or host you for the night if you have done a particularly good job of getting stuck). And they do stop and help, even if helping you out covers them in mud and might delay their own travel plans for an hour or two or three.
So yes, I prefer Swiss train journeys. I like control and order and safety and predictability and not having to ask for help or be dependent on others.
But that is not life in this broken world. Indeed, we often just drive the brokenness deeper into ourselves when we try and maintain control and independence.
Instead, the master engineer has decided that the uncertainty, the getting stuck, the needing people around us, the trust required is actually what we need for the journey. For his greatest accomplishment is not going to be making an easy and smooth road but transforming us into the beautiful refractors of divinity he designed us to be.
And there will be some epic travel stories.
Life Down the Rutted Red Road 