When I got into high school I started doing more on my own, I continued to go on long bike rides (laying out paper maps, drawing pencil line routes in, and sometimes taking off and not knowing where I was going at all) and hikes. A lot of this took place apart from big groups and sometimes it was just me and a friend. The most memorable experiences though, the ones I remember being the most profound, were the times I was alone in the natural world (and by that term I mean mountains, forests, streams, what we think of when we use the term 'nature' or 'the great outdoors').
Nature is an awesome and humbling thing. For Thoreau, Emerson, and other American Transcendentalists, nature played an integral part of their search for connection with the divine. Thoreau recalled as a young boy one of his most impressionable memories laying awake at night and, "looking through the starts to see if I could see God behind them."
God's handiwork in creation holds such a guarded and important place in my heart because I encountered him there before I even knew his name. It was 1996, and I was backpacking by myself for three days in one of those giants splotches of green (state forest) on a map of PA. This was before cell phones (not that it would have worked in the sticks of Pike and Potter counties anyway) and before I could drive. My dad drove me three hours north to a remote trailhead on the Pinchot Trail on a Friday and we agreed on a spot on a map to meet on a Sunday afternoon. It must have taken a lot of trust and faith for my parents, because there was literally no way to know if anything would have happened to me over the course of those three days, and minimal ways to get in touch.
Over the course of the weekend, it became apparent that my planning was in short supply. I had a fleece blanket to sleep in, but the summer nights were not as warm as I expected, and I shivered my way through the night, unable to sleep. My hammock also did not afford a good night sleep even if I had a warmer blanket, and so the whole night I spent on edge with the sounds of unknown creatures in the dark coming from every direction after my fire went out for the night. I didn't pack enough food and underestimated how many calories I was burning walking 20 miles a day, and burned through the Dinty Moore stew that I had rationed for two days in the first night. I didn't see any other people while I was out there in the forest, so the solitude was thick and unnerving and palpable; nor would I see another person for the duration of the three days.
The most humbling and fateful moment, though, was when I realized on Day 2 that I had lost my map. It must have fallen out of my pocket as I was hiking, and I didn't know at which point I had lost it. Keep in mind the only way I knew where I was going, not to mention where my dad was to pick me up the next day, was that glossy 11x14" piece of paper anchoring me to my tracked existence. I was instantaneously filled with dread. There was no backup, and I hadn't passed another hiker in two days. I did the only thing I could think of, which was to retrace my steps.
I also began to plead to the air. I was not a Christian, knew nothing of the LORD back then--who he was, his name. I just had a vague sense of 'maybe Someone is out there," in the way the Israelites "groaned and cried out because of their slavery...as their cry for release went up to God he heard their groaning. (Ex 2:23-24). This was before the Israelites knew the LORD or the name of YAHWEH. Really, my back was against the wall, I literally had no recourse, no one to help me.
And so I kept saying, "Please, please, help me find my map. Help me find it." And I remember very distinctly a feeling of a giant hand cupping over me--I can't describe it to this day. But in the midst of this pleading, at one point after a half mile or so of walking, and quite randomly, I looked down and saw my map in the brush to the side of the trail. In that instant, I regained my life. To this day, the words of the Psalmist are my go-to prayer: "O God, come to my assistance. O LORD, make haste to help me!" (Ps 69:2)
Nature reminds me of the awesomeness of God and the smallness of man. The serene beauty holds a deadly force of power than can snuff us out quicker than we can blink without even a thought. And yet it is on the precipice of danger that we recognize that we are, ultimately, not really in control of things. That something outside of us holds us tight.
It also affords us the chance to experience solitude, of which the Lenten season is a prime incubator for and of which we as a society can so desperately benefit from when we allow it into our lives. When we have the chance to stand naked before God for a few hours or a few days, with no one to affirm us or comfort or distract us, we see who we really are and what we are really made of. In my case, a 16 year old suburban boy testing his might against himself and against the elements, I came up woefully short. But it was in that recognition of humble inadequacy that God was able to work--the teacher in his classroom--to remind me in that moment of an existential and total loss of control, that he is, in fact, the one steering the ship. His awesomeness is made manifest in Nature, and we may in fact not be as ultimately self-sufficient as we would like to think we are.
"The heavens declare the glory of God; the sky proclaims its builder's craft."
(Ps 19:1)
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