Tami had to work on her yearbook deadline, Keagan said he was too small for a long rugged hike, Tyler wasn’t feeling well, Brandon called to cancel after hurting his back Friday, Riley and Noel were out of town, and Ashley was out camping. I have gone hiking alone many times before but it is definately more safe to hike with someone. I finally got my sister Lindsey recruited but did not get her message that she left me at 2am until I was sitting at her apartment complex at 5:30am. Well that was a waste of gas.
I think one major reason I have had many adventures and never seem to run out of stories to tell my Sunday School class is best put by Henry David Thoreau:
--"The man who goes out alone can start today; but he who travels with another must wait ’til that other is ready."--
So like many times before I thought, "Well, I could go back home, sleep in, hang around the house, and try again next week; or I can go by myself this morning and next week I can venture on an entirely new path." When I read Thoreau’s Walden several years ago, I decided by adopting his mentality, I would accomplish twice as much in my life as if I choose to wait for others.
It brings to mind the words of Robert Herrick in his poem immortalized by The Dead Poet Society when he advises the youngsters to make the most of their time and youth.
"Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,
Old time is still a-flying:
And this same flower that smiles today
Tomorrow will be dying."
I am dying.
This should not come as a shock to anyone, because so are you. Each breath taken and every beat of our heart brings us one step closer to its last beat. I have been sobered by this fact enough to be very aware of the slightest gestures of friends, the most subtle of colors in nature, the smallest of details around me. And even though I have come to peace with knowing that death is not to be feared, but a new horizon to explore, I still wander about certain things.
In the next life, will I still like the way that sunlight feels on my skin? Will I be allowed to keep my scars...some of my life’s hardest lessons have been engraven upon my body through scrapes and stabs. Will I know everything, or can I still wonder--an imagination might be seen as a habit of the lazy in a place of omnipotence and all-knowing. Will I still be amazed by sunrises more than sunsets? Will there be sunrises and sunsets?
Greater light and truth of eternal things...these are the things I thought of for 4 hours as I spent time with the best traveling companion I have ever known--Solitude.
At the end of my hike, I came down a few steep switch-backs along beside Miner’s Needle. The whole hillside was bathed in the colors of desert blossoms. Whites, blues, purples and pinks--but most noticable was the yellowing of the slope by the California poppies that seemed to pervade the landscape in their motionless march up the hill. A very bright and palpable yellow.
When I thought of the color yellow, C.S. Lewis came to me in a whispering. I remember reading him remarking how our finite and limited minds tend to ask questions about infinite and eternal concepts. Our understanding is so limited, and we get frustrated when we receive no answers to our questions. Yet, too often, the very questions that we pose to God are flawed and unanswerable...like asking if the color yellow is square or is it round.
He wrote in "A Grief Observed" the following:
"Can a mortal ask questions which God finds unanswerable? Quite easily, I should think. All nonsense questions are unanswerable. How many hours are in a mile? Is yellow square or round? Probably half the questions we ask -- half the great theological and metaphysical problems -- are like that."
Combine this with Emerson's thoughts on the greatest minds in poetry, philosophy, science, and politics.
"But the highest minds of the world have never ceased to explore... For we are not pans and barrows, nor even porters of the fire and torch-bearers, but children of the fire, made of it..."
I thought on this as I walked through the desert blooms and I came to two conclusions: First, "Here I am questioning how to carry greater light and truth in regards to the eternities. But in the life to come, if I have any hope of eternal reward, I will need to be made of truth and light--not merely carry it. I should be asking how to become part of that greater light and truth rather than merely a vessel for it.
My second conclusion, I think I know why everyone else bailed on me last minute. What kind of a psycho hikes with a bearclaw and snake vertibrae necklace, a machete strapped to his hip (very manly), and takes pictures of flowers while pondering his mortality (very girlie). Everyone must think I'm schizophrenic...
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