Last weekend my son and I went backpacking for a weekend on the Appalachian Trail. The AT will always hold a unique place in my personal salvation history; seventeen, alone and homesick in a forlorn shelter on a two week section hike across Pennsylvania, I encountered the living Word while reading the Psalms for the first time. When I would set off each day for yet another 18-20 mile day, I would leave my right hand free at my side, and the Lord would take it in His own. And not realizing at the time, the scripture was fulfilled in doing so, "Yet I still belong to you; you hold my right hand. You guide me with your counsel, leading me to a glorious destiny" (Ps 73:23).
So, I keep going back, now taking my son, hoping to make some memories, just as I still remember the first backpacking trip to Mt. Minsi that I took with my dad. The funny thing is, as much hiking and camping I have done, I don't actually enjoy it all that much. It's not novel; and I find walking/hiking actually quite boring. The older I get, the less I enjoy sleeping on the ground.
When my son and I set off, parking our car in a little trail lot off in the rusty town of Marysville, near Duncannon, I didn't expect the section we had chosen to be as rough as it was; it had been over twenty five years since I had been on that part of the trail. It was hot, and the air was thick with humidity. We crossed through some open pasture, giant swiss-rolls of hay squatting standoffish throughout the fields. When we entered the woods, it was rocks, rocks everywhere (the PA section of the Trail is where thru-hikers famously state, "boots go to die."). We gained a surprising amount of elevation, but without the views--just trees, rocks, and my chaffing pack straps.
I hadn't brought a map with me, as it was only a few miles to the shelter and spring where we had planned to spend the night. When you're tired, hungry and cranky, the mind seems to play curious psychological tricks on you with regards to the concept of time' when you think your destination is just around the bend...it's not. You start to second guess yourself and your bearings.
We eventually hit a yellow-blazed spur trail, and weren't sure if that was the path to the shelter since there were no signs. We hiked down a ways, then back up when no shelter seemed to be in sight. My son was starting to fade a little, and I could feel a blister starting to develop on my big toe. We prayed the Sorrowful Mysteries together, hoping that we weren't wasting our energy and asking for the hand of God who led me when I was lost in the wilderness as a teenager to once again lead us on the right path.
Finally, after winding up a few modest switchbacks, we heard some voices at the crest--the first humans we had seen all day--and a blue-blaze. My son was relieved, and I was too. A few hundred yards later, we had dropped our packs on the mossy picnic table outside the three-sided Adirondack shelter, relished in the accomplishment, and got to cooking dinner and settling in.
Many of the early conservationists in our country felt that time in nature was an indispensable part of the human experience. I would agree, both for transcendental reasons, but also because it is a lesson in contrasts: The natural world is vast, and you are small. Nature is unforgiving, unbending, governed by unchanging laws; we are weak, fickle, in need of mercy. Nature speaks in silence; silence is foreign to us. Nature cares nothing for comfort, and we are addicted to it.
After our one-pot meal of box mac n cheese (sans milk and butter) cooked over a small alcohol stove, we cleaned up and then were utterly...bored. We still had a couple hours of daylight, and set up the tent in a small clearing. When we settled in, it was around 6:30 pm and we dozed off to sleep. We both would subsequently wake up every few hours in the middle of the pitch-black night, waiting for sunrise so we could make our way back down and back to civilization. When we finally did the next day, we felt good, proud, elated, accomplished. We had only hiked around six miles total with less than a thousand feet elevation gain, but in coming back to the land of the living, everything had a sheen, a sweet glaze. We hopped in the car and set up for an Amish smorgasbord in Lancaster an hour away.
My wife thinks I'm crazy for rarely using the central A/C in summer and setting the thermostat at 85, and for taking cold showers year round, even when it's fifty-five degrees in the house in winter. It sucks hard, but strangely it also makes me feel...alive. In my post, Do the Hard Thing, I quote Wim Hof, aka "The Iceman" who found healing from the searing emotional pain of losing his wife in the numbing physical discomfort of outdoor plunges in freezing temperatures. His point is true,
"As humanity has evolved and developed ways to make our lives more and more comfortable, we have lost our ability not only to survive but to thrive in extreme environments," the Iceman notes. "The things we have built to make our lives easier have actually made us weaker."
Even Jordan Peterson, who has made a living telling young men to "make their damn bed," gets it: periodic deprivation keeps us from getting too soft and going insane. I quote him in my post, We're Not Adapted for Security and Utopia, who for his part simply quotes Dostoevsky, that astute observer of human nature,
"Dostoevsky said that in Notes from the Underground...and I love this..he was an early critic of the notion of a political utopia. He said, if you gave people everything they wanted..they had nothing to eat but cake, and nothing to do but sit in warm pools and busy themselves with the continuation of the species...the first thing they would do after a week or so would go half insane and smash everything up just so that something they didn't expect would happen so they would have something interesting to do. We're not adapted for security and utopia!"
The fathers in the faith knew the power of fasting, the power of mortification, the power of The Discipline, because it puts us face to face with our need--our mal-adapted need for food, comfort and security, but also (and even greater), our need for God and His grace. Because we are prone to forget, and because sin is wily, we start to edge dangerously close to following in the footsteps of King David, who lapsed into adultery with Bathsheba as he lounged in the robe of comfort and idleness when he should have been at war and sleeping on the ground with his men.
We are a climate-controlled society. We take solace in our portfolios rather than relying on Providence for our daily bread. We rely on artificial contraception rather than periodic abstinence because we falsely believe man cannot live in the bosom of continence. We kill babies rather than welcome them when it threatens to derail our carefully curated plans. The thought of skipping a meal comes as a monumental penance, and we have a 60% obesity rate to show for it.
There's a reason the Lord warns against riches--not because wealth is evil in and of itself, but because it gives us everything we may want. And the Divine Physician knows that material tumor has the potential to metastasize if we're not mindful. The pre-req for the course on freedom that our Lord schools is Renunciation, and those unwilling to turn their back on their homeland are unworthy to have a seat in its lecture hall. You cannot find your life until you are willing to lose it.
I'll probably periodically keep going back to the Trail, both alone and with my son from time to time--not because I love spending time this way, but because I don't. It has a way of making me appreciate my family, my kitchen sink and table, my pantry more when I return, something I grow forgetful of when I'm too attached to it. For hunger, indeed, is the sweetest sauce.
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