Big and Little

My apologies for the lapse yesterday. It was a long and tiring day and, quite frankly, I didn't feel like writing anything. Get over it.

Anyway, the sun found me wide awake when it finally decided to get out of bed. In fact, I had already been up for about an hour and had started on my hike. I scolded the sun for being so lazy, and it grumbled and scolded me for not making it any coffee, then later it took revenge by ruining a bunch of my pictures. I'm not quite sure of my next plan of attack, but I guarantee it will be swift and merciless. But that's besides the point. The point here is hiking. If you look to your right just a tad, I've started a log of all the hikes that I've completed. Three so far, but more will follow. Actually, just today I joined the 100 Mile club, and I vow to reach that goal by the end of the summer...

Well whoop de do.

Yellowstone encompasses 2.2 million acres. Which is more than 3,400 square miles. Which is roughly the size of Rhode Island and Delaware combined. You could run three consecutive marathons in a straight line without leaving the park. To put it in Ohio perspective, if my house in Troy and my school in Cincinnati were picked up and directly translated on top of Yellowstone, I wouldn't have to worry about paying for two entry fees, because the schoolbus would never leave the park. Within this nation-sized park are more than 1,100 miles of trail. This equates to 42 marathons. Enough road to allow me to walk two-thirds of the way back home to Troy.

This rather depresses me. My 100-mile promise seems like, well, 1/11th as awesome as it did before. In order to really get a feel for Yellowstone over the next 9 weeks, I'll have to hike roughly 126 miles per week, which simply isn't doable without some better socks... Okay fine, I could maybe do it...

But honestly, this place is enormous. Yellowstone evokes a profound feeling of smallness, which is accentuated especially on the lonely trails that weave through the sequestered backcountry, apparently directionless. A Yellowstone hiker is nothing if not humbled, and lying if not terrified. It is on these paths - paths that are perhaps used more frequently by nature's hikers than human hikers - that one is faced with his own frailty. No longer is he able to pretend mastery of "his" domain, but instead is at the mercy of He that governs all domains...

When I reached the turning point of my hike, Mallard Lake, I found a comfortable rock and sat down for a while, trying - and failing - to take it all in. The sun had just barely come up, and the water seemed to be nothing more than a reflection of the land and sky.

I opened my Bible and randomly turned to Psalm 104, which miraculously fit the morning perfectly: "O Lord, how manifold are Your works! In wisdom You have made them all. The earth is full of Your possessions" (Psalm 104:24 NKJV). It was evidence to my ever-creeping suspicion that I wasn't as alone in the wilderness as I thought I was. It hit me that the whole time I had been walking in God's back yard, and I pictured myself stumbling through some bushes to find Him sitting stretched out in a lawn chair, wearing dirty jeans and enjoying His handiwork.

It's impossible to not feel this way in places like this. There is no church or sanctuary on this earth that even comes close to rivaling the holiness of nature itself. But this holiness isn't the same starchy holiness that we typically associate with places of worship. Creation emanates a sense of casual majesty - which does not impose or request that you please keep down the racket, but instead invites you to pull up another lawn chair and have a chat with the Creator.

It seems to me that these instances don't just happen as a result of any kind of goal-setting on our part. If we go out in search of spiritual renewal/discovery/disruption/etc., we might find it, but probably not. How much more aware are we of the things that take us by surprise? I think we're setting ourselves up for failure when we start designating tangible goals for spiritual matters. I think God is more interested in the questions we ask than the questions we answer...

Being several hours ahead of schedule, I took my merry time on the way back from the lake, and ended up taking more pictures than apparently this internet connection can handle uploading (3 hours and counting). I'm in the process of putting together a real-time visual account of the summer thus far, and will be posting the link as soon as (more like if) the pictures make their way into cyberspace. Until then, it looks like I'll be stuck surfing around in an internet that oftentimes seems bigger and more untamed than any wilderness that I'd be willing to hike.