For Wilshire Baptist Church
Coming down off a hike at Maroon Bells in Colorado, we came to an amphitheater where some sort of guide was talking to members of a naturalist organization. We sat down quietly on the end of a bench to catch our breath and listen for a moment.
I say “some sort of guide” because the man was telling how the human species had been at one with nature for 10,000 years until the agricultural revolution had us taming the land and the industrial revolution found us abusing it. He said there now was a movement toward trying to reconnect with nature in a spiritual way, and in fact Jesus, Moses, Muhammad and Buddha had sought solitude in the wilderness. He suggested we need to do the same to reclaim our connection to nature.
As the man spoke, I looked around at the listeners and noted they were clean, fresh and dry, having just arrived. By comparison, LeAnn and I were muddy from the knees down and damp from sweat and rain. Our hike had taken us along a rushing creek, across a rocky avalanche debris field and then up through the pines and the aspens to an altitude of 9,800 feet. We had sunshine that lit up the wildflowers and mountain tops and rain that had us slogging through mud and over slippery rocks.
The hike was one of several over five days in different locations on all types of trails: paved and natural, wilderness and urban, level and climbing, peopled and isolated. The common element was each hike connected us to something bigger than us. Sometimes it was the breathless beauty and vastness of the scenery, other times it was the delicate intricacy of the smallest wildflower. The unimaginable forces that carved the mountains and valleys, or the ingenuity of humans to make accessible the wilderness parks and preserves. The darting elusiveness of ground squirrels on the rocks, or the kindness and courtesy of strangers on the trail.
We quietly left the talk at the amphitheater before the guide finished, so I don’t know if he got around to the ultimate point: Our need to connect with nature is actually a need to connect with God, the creator of it all.