Recognizing light through the gloom

It was a grey day here, maybe around the world, but then the clouds parted

When I was a little kid, maybe 10 or 12, I was returning to camp with my dad when our outboard clunked out. We were at Middle Narrows, exactly half way between the town of Red Lake and Bow Narrows Camp. It was 10 miles in either direction.
Today you could just flag down the first passing boat and ask for assistance or even pull out your cell phone and call for help. But this was the early 1960s and not only were there no cell phones then, there weren't other boats on the lake either. You could go for days without seeing anyone.
So what to do?
Dad tipped the motor up, and took off the cowling. I don't know what he checked but a quick examination told him this wasn't going to be a quick fix.
"How do you feel about paddling?" he asked me.
I grabbed one of the two paddles and moved to the stern. There were two seats there, one on either side. I sat on one and started paddling with the J-stroke which allows you to paddle in a straight line.
Dad sat on the other. He brought out his mechanics tool box. It was about the size of a lunch kit and held every mechanics tool he owned. He ever-so-carefully started taking things apart on the 35 h.p. Evinrude. This was a delicate operation because there was an excellent chance that any dropped part would end up in the lake. It was made all the riskier by my dad's fingers which were the size of bratwursts.
Our boat was an 18-foot cedar strip Nipissing skiff. It was loaded to the gills with gasoline barrels, propane tanks and lumber. We were heavy and while that made paddling the craft more difficult it did have the advantage of keeping us low in the water and out of the slight headwind we faced. I stroked along.
We were too far from shore to gauge any progress I might be making but by watching bits of algae in the water I could see that the boat was actually moving forward, just very slowly.
Every half hour or so Dad would put everything back together and I would climb over the stuff in the boat to the bow to allow him to pull-start the engine. Dad was a powerfully built man, a former heavyweight boxer, and still, it was difficult for him to pull out the recoil rope. He would give it a dozen tries then chuckle.
"Well, now we know one more thing that wasn't the problem!"
Then he would point a finger toward the sky.
"Trial and error!"
I would move back to the stern and resume paddling and dad would go back to work on the engine.
We did this off and on for hours.
Eventually I paddled all the way to Wolf Narrows which was half the distance back to camp. It might have taken three or four hours to get there. Dad grabbed the other paddle and said, "Well, with two of us paddling we will fly home."
Then something occurred to him and he went back to work on the motor. Again, he pulled the rope.
Putt!
"Hey!" I exclaimed. "Did you hear that?" It had been just one putt, just a tiny change in the sound of the cylinders being rotated by the starting rope.
He looked at me sharply. He had not heard it but he knew that my young ears were far more sensitive than his. He stared at me for a couple of seconds, then back to the engine he went.
This time, the engine sputtered, almost caught and died.
"Well, well, well!" he smiled.
Back to the engine.
Now it sputtered and caught and gasped and shuddered and died.
"I think we're going to be back in the boat business," he said.
Back to the engine.
This time it started and ran terribly but kept going. Dad fiddled with something and the engine picked up rpms.
He put it in gear and we moved ahead but at perhaps one-quarter of our normal speed.
"It's running on one," he yelled, meaning only one of the cylinders was firing.
Thirty minutes later we were home. Mom met us at the dock, wondering what had happened.
"Ahh, we had a bit of motor trouble, but we eventually figured it out," Dad said.

My point here is we need to always be alert for signs of light in the days of darkness ahead. They are there. They are always there, and in them we will find the way forward.