I’ve never been much of a hiker, not in the traditional sense. Growing up, my access to nature was the overgrown urban wilds of the American South, where backyards are mini-forests and neighborhoods have many creeks but few sidewalks. Intertwined with all this growth was of course the infrastructure of a city, and I suppose the Mississippi River itself personifies the union. Barge traffic and spanning bridges share that flow with water and river life, and live as one in my mind.
I am sure that was in part this ‘city as playground’ experience that made me comfortable doing most of my adult hiking on concrete trails, up and down steel mountains, in and out of glass ravines. I might not use the term ‘hiker’ to describe myself, but I have always done a good deal of wandering, and have walked thousands of miles in cities around the world.
Now I live in Colorado, and while I haven’t fallen in love with mountain hiking, its language and lessons are deep in this place, in its culture. There really are many parallels between hiking outside the city and hiking inside, because at the base of it all, it’s the journey that matters. The journeys and the clearings.
I’m in a bit of a clearing place right now, which comes as a surprise as I was pretty sure I was all ready for the next leg of my journey. Looking for these clearings, and celebrating them, is a new discipline for me. What I now call clearings, I used to consider to be time I couldn’t get it together, times I wasn’t motivated, times I was too scared. But lo, behold! This is absolutely false! These were in fact my fecund times, the moments of breath and stretching, moments in my life when I discovered something crucial or met an unexpected teacher.
In the past, I have been self-aware enough to take retreats and small sabbaticals when I needed them. But I generally delayed these things to the point of necessity, and that’s not sustainable. I stopped working for other people two years ago, and started working with people and for my own vision. This has made my time much more flexible, and I have been experimenting with everyday time off, and what kinds of things work best for me, and for those with whom I work. I’ve found that I look forward to the clearings now, and have built them into my life regularly. The spaces and times when I can sit, think, plan, gather necessary resources and simply be are as important as any action I take.
On my urban treks, the clearings I find are small parks, a tucked away library, an alley cafe. The treks travel over space and time as the history of a place is revealed. I am sure it is similar for those who can read the story of the forest, and for whom those mountain hikes feed the soul. In my own life, my clearings have become times of making art, baking -bagels, muffins, breads, cakes- and of simple rest.
Journeys and clearings.
I do not promote clearings as a way to make your journey more efficient or effective. In fact, put aside all of that. One of the pitfalls of the entire self-help movement is that it orients you around achievement, even if what one intends to gain be contentment or peace.
Many years ago, our church youth group took a spiritual pilgrimage to Ireland. We rented a small bus and hired the driver as a guide, and did some wandering. We had set places to sleep that had been chosen with their proximity to sites in mind, although that did sometimes change on the fly, but otherwise we were free to explore and move as the Spirit led us.
We spent a day at the Pilgrimage sites of Lough Derg, a place sacred to the followers of St. Patrick. We climbed the ‘mountain’ on which he supposedly fasted and prayed throughout Lent of 444 CE. Regardless of historical facts, this path has been walked by Christian pilgrims since the 5th Century. The physical length of the journey is only 4-7 miles, depending on the route taken, but more devout pilgrims take 3 days to complete the circuit.
One of our number, a young high school athlete, sprinted up and up to reach the peak ahead of everyone else.
And waited.
And waited.
And waited until the rest of us straggled up, full of stories about what we’d seen on the way.
We swapped memories of prayer stations followed, fellow pilgrims met, views taken in. The athlete remained quiet and then adopted a much slower pace on the way down. Because of that choice, we were all able to share that leg of the journey together, and had some extraordinary experiences.
It wasn’t until the debrief that evening that we really unpacked the day, and I’m sure that we all took different lessons away from the trek. But it was the athlete’s quiet comment, that “maybe the point wasn’t to get there first”, that framed the rest of the Irish Pilgrimage for the whole group. We slowed down, took some off-beat paths, and met God, as one does on a pilgrimage.
Journeys and clearings.
We are all on a journey in a broad sense. There is great truth to the saying that we are spiritual beings having a human experience. And yet of course there is more to it. We are deeply embodied, and live and move and breathe in the real, physical world. We are entwined with the natural world around us, and we are all part of many ecosystems.
None of us is truly separate from others. We are connected, and need community to thrive. And yet, and yet. Our journeys are our own. No one has our precise point of view nor will pick up the same things from virtually identical happenings. No one else carries our exact memories or perceptions. No, the journey is impossible to take completely alone and yet it is wholly our own. We will have companions on the way, we will share clearings and resting places, we will learn from and teach each other.
And sometimes we will journey in solitude.
What is important here is that we stop striving for thresholds and finish lines. There is no magic door through which you pass and all things are made well. There is no reward or prize around a hidden corner. The gifts and lessons and miracles are found on the path, in the journey itself.
Last week I wrote about Bread Crumbs and Lanterns [Here], those guides and maps we find along the way in life. Next week, I will turn towards some of the practices I use, some of the attitudes I’ve adopted, that support my journey, provide the clearings, and serve as bread crumbs and lanterns.