Wilderness Wisdom
“I grew up in these Rocky Mountains with their invitation to participate in Nature; fishing, hiking, skiing, cycling, and camping were part of my normal activities. Somewhere in the course of marriage, ministry, and the raising of children, I think I lost contact with that part of me. My personality includes a ruggedness and an adventurous side that I had allowed to become domesticated.”
Those were the words that originated in my blog the night after I conquered Trail Ridge Road, the highest paved highway in the world at 12,173 feet, on a bicycle loaded with fifty pounds of gear. I had ridden that same route twice when I was thirty years younger and absent the gear. That day, at age 51, I was testing myself to see if I could recover some of the grittiness and wildness of my character that I had lost while building a career and nurturing a family.
Trail Ridge Road, 2011
I share this because this experience seems rooted in a deeper call that much of our society, I believe, is crying out for. I don’t completely have my finger on it, but something tells me that we have created a society with so much structure, so many rules, and too many conventional expectations that we have drowned out the wildness of our souls. We have, in other words, built our own prisons and have become so used to it that is feels normal.
I don’t think it is any accident that Jesus, in the Christian tradition, at the most critical moments of his life went to the wilderness to be tested and to the mountain to pray. What does that say about how we humans are wired? If you want to get in touch with your truest and deepest self, it’s back to nature that you must go. At least that is one way of looking at it.
My spot in the wilderness of Death Valley, 2022
Over the past year, I could feel some things shifting with my work as a church executive. I knew that the presbytery needed a different kind of leadership, whether through a shift in me or a shift to someone else. I signed up for a 9-day Wilderness Quest in Death Valley. I could have headed to some organization that specialized in professional assessments. I could have paid a life coach lumps of cash to work with me. All of those would have been helpful, I am sure. But my soul actually craved the solitude of the desert. I didn’t need someone else’s advice. I needed to hear my own deepest voice.
For 84 hours I fasted, I wrote, I prayed, I sang and I danced with only the sun, moon, stars, cacti and few grasshoppers as my witnesses. The wilderness gave me a laser-focused clarity. The sheer vast emptiness of the desert cut through the clutter of my monkey mind. The thing about the desert is that it steals every distraction until all that is left is your naked self and wisdom of the Universe.
The road as teacher, 2011
As I write this, I am now completing my service as the presbytery executive and shifting to work focused on pilgrimages, wilderness, “a spirituality of the road,” and the hunch that all of this is somehow rooted in the return of ancient religious mysticism.
I have no doubt that the wilderness gave me this gift.
Twelve years ago, I cranked my way up Trail Ridge Road in the Colorado Rockies as I searched for a wildness that had become tamed by the expectations and conventions of modern life.