Chapter 20- Bear Trails

Continued from my journal of June 2008, walking from D.C. to Pittsburgh while learning the gospel of John by heart.

We get up at dawn and eat breakfast.  I  already packed the night before to save time, because today I want to gather all the daylight hours I can just for the walk.  At seventeen miles, it is the longest hike Chester and I have done. I stir through milk and raisin bran to ensure a raisin gets in each spoonful while I listen to the radio weather forecast: cool and partly cloudy.  Looks like great weather for a long hike in the summer.

We leave at 7:00 a.m. and  ten minutes later reach the Ohiopyle parking area where we leave my car.  Then we drive another thrity miles or so to Connellsville where Rick is dropping me off.  Logistically, by parking my car off at the nearer point and starting the trail at the farthest point, it will take less time this morning, and I can get on the trail sooner. Although it  means that  I will walk “backwards” today (away from Pittsburgh towards D.C.),  another advantage of this plan is that I will finish up in a tourist friendly town.  Ohiopyle caters to those braving the wilderness: kayakers, rafters, bikers, rock climbers, campers and, finally, hikers.  Best of all, in Ohiopyle  there is even an ice cream place right next to the trail, and I am already counting on rewarding myself with something deeply chocolate.  Once full of ice cream, which I will relish while sitting in the park by the river, I will only have a short drive back to camp after this very long day.

I have known this would be the hardest day ever since I began planning this walk a year ago, but the most difficult part is something I did not count on: Rick won’t be waiting for me at the end.  After he drops me off, he is driving to D.C. to pick up our daughter-in-law at a conference.  They won’t be arriving back at the campsite until midnight or later.  I am too stubborn (that trait keeps reappearing) to admit to him or anyone else what I am most nervous about today.  Who will know if I am late?  Who will come on the bike and encourage me for the last few miles?  To whom could I send a “help” message?  Intellectually I know I can do this; after all, I completed thirteen miles a few days ago.  I have prepared hard for this.  Except for the problem of  unreliable cell phone service, I have everything I need: extra  food, water, socks, rain gear (just in case), flashlight (in the wildest just in case), and now, with an early morning start, plenty of daylight.  So I’m off, and I wave a determined, cheerful good-bye while inside I feel about as tough as jello.

The truck drives away.  It is 8:00 a.m. and church bells are chiming nearby.  Chester and I walk along the backs of buildings and past parking lots, following the old rail trail out of town toward the state forest and into an isolated river gorge.  There will be no roads out until I reach my car seventeen miles upriver.   But the bells sounding at my back remind me of the blessings and prayers of all my friends and family who have been cheering me on the whole way.  A few are probably praying at this moment.  As I begin my walking prayer, I chide myself for momentarily forgetting that Christ is walking before, beside, above, beneath and behind me too. How does that hymn go?  And have I so easily forgotten, as the gospel of John puts it, that the shepherd calls us sheep out and leads us to good pasture?

The river rushes high, trying to swallow all the thunderstorm water that has collected during the night. We pass noisy stream after stream, tumbling cascades, and little waterfalls pouring off cliff faces.  Any possible water way that exists has sprung into action, gushing downhill into the Youghiogheny basin.   Although the waters crossing under (or over) our trail seem to be clear and fresh, the river below is brown.  I am reminded of walking beside the raging, muddy Potomac over a month ago.

About an hour into the walk, a man jogs past me with earphones and an antenna sticking up over his head.  I guess the technology is necessary to get any reception in this wilderness river gorge, but it looks strange and humorous.  Ten minutes later, however, he comes walking back.  With an anxious voice, he informs me and another biker, who is just passing by at the moment, that he spotted a bear around the bend.

The biker goes on ahead; if faced with a bear, he has the bike’s speed on his side.  But what will I do?  There is nothing and no one back in Connellsville for me to go back to.  My only means out of the wild today lies in the same direction as the bear.  So I fish my whistle out of a pocket in the pack.  (Rick teases that I pack for every kind of circumstance.)   Then I try to remember any guidelines for hikers meeting a bear.  Don’t turn and run.  Talk, shout, make noise, and, if necessary, walk away backwards.  I figure that Chester will make a barking fuss which the bear would want to get away from. In that case, my hardest challenge could be for the leash to hold back Chester’s sixty charging pounds.

A few minutes have passed and the biker has not returned.  I suspect that the bear has long gone, wanting to avoid humans as much as I want to get around him.  When I reach the spot where I can see around the bend, there is no sign of anyone, least of all a bear.  I watch Chester for signs that his part-hound instinct is kicking in, but he seems to be smelling nothing.  Feeling rather alone in the largeness of the woods, I start singing for my benefit as much as to scare away big, hidden creatures.  I bind unto myself today....My eyes keep searching the bushes....by power of faith, Christ’s incarnation....It sure would be kind of nice if Jesus would suddenly appear, wouldn’t it?  I look up the hillside into the rhododendron....his bursting from the spiced tomb....Chester’s hunting nose still seems oblivious to any bear....the virtues of the starlit heaven....

And now I hear a loud snapping branch up the hill....the flashing of the lightning free....Soon Chester’s ears perk up and he intently sniffs the air.  I keep singing....the whirling wind’s tempestuous shocks....We round another bend, and I see something dark in the distance on the edge of the path.  I think I see it move, and it is shaped like the rump of a bear sticking out of tall grass....the stable earth, the deep salt sea....I walk tentatively forward, keeping an eye on Chester to see if his scenting radar picks up anything....around the old eternal rocks....As we get closer, it turns out to be only a black boulder!  I laugh. I remember the time the disciples were afraid.

When evening came, his disciples went down to the sea, got into a boat, and started across the sea to Capernaum.  It was now dark, and Jesus had not yet come.  The sea became rough because a strong wind was blowing.  When they had gone three or four miles, they saw Jesus walking on the sea and coming near the boat, and they were terrified.  But he said to them, “It is I; do not be afraid.”  Then they wanted to take him into the boat, and immediately the boat reached the land toward which they were going.  (John 6.16-21)

At a bench beyond the boulder, we sit and pull out carrots to munch.  Yes, Chester likes carrots too.  I remember the native American wisdom of Chief Dan George:

If you talk to animals they will talk with you and you will know each other.
If you do not talk to them you will not know them.
And what you do not know, you will fear.
What one fears one destroys.

(The Best of Chief Dan George, p.32.)


I look down the trail both ways, and since no one is coming to think me strange, I call out to the bear and give him our greetings, like Chief Dan George taught us, and like Jesus did with the disciples in the boat.  I tell the bear that Chester and I are just passing through and don’t want to disturb him.  We hope he has a peaceful and safe life and finds lots of good berries to eat.  I thank him for letting us walk in his territory and tell him that we are on our way upriver and won’t be back.  That done, good to our word, we pack up our snack and leave any listening bear behind.

Fourteen miles left to go with the goal of learning John 15 by heart today.  But first I dig deep in my pack for the words to  my bear-scaring hymn (yes, I do bring everything), words attributed to St. Patrick:

I bind unto myself today the strong name of the Trinity
by invocation of the same, the Three in One and One in Three.

I bind this day to me forever, by power of faith, Christ’s incarnation,
his baptism in the Jordan River, his cross of death for my salvation,
his bursting from the spiced tomb, his riding up the heavenly way, 
his coming at the day of doom, I bind unto myself today.

I bind unto myself today the virtues of the starlit heaven,
the glorious sun’s life-giving ray, the whiteness of the moon at even, 
the flashing of the lightening free, the whirling wind’s tempestuous shocks, 
the stable earth, the deep salt sea around the old eternal rocks.

Christ be with me, Christ within me, Christ behind me, Christ before me,
Christ beside me, Christ to win me, Christ to comfort and restore me.
Christ beneath me, Christ above me, Christ in quiet, Christ in danger, 
Christ in hearts of all who love me, Christ in mouth of friend and stranger. 

                                                                               (Evangelical Lutheran Worship #450)

Chapter 19- Passionate Storm

From the  journal of June 10, 2008, on the walk from D.C. to Pittsburgh while memorizing the gospel of John.

The storm has been building for several days.  The sultry heat keeps me longing for rain and looking for frequent shady places to sit for a minute and drink water.  By noon we reach Meyersdale.  In front of the town’s old railroad station, I park myself on a bench and tie Chester’s leash through its back slats.  The station has been restored and is run by the local chamber of commerce, but is closed today.  Benches, however, don’t have visiting hours, and one that is protected from the sun invites. Chester flops down on some cool bricks underneath it.  The saving grace throughout this hot day has been a breeze which  stays with us while we eat our lunch in the shade.  Then I journal while Chester naps; we both are dawdling until the sun passes its zenith.

A police officer rolls by, his elbow resting out the patrol car window, apparently checking activity along the rail trail.  He calls a greeting and we talk for a few minutes.  He wants to know if I am enjoying the trail and  tells me of plans to make it more traveler friendly.  He  hopes to have more patrols along it in this county and speaks with pride about the benches.  I resist complaining about the horrible condition of the portable toilet in the parking lot.  Instead, I listen while he tells about viaduct (bridge) we  crossed  a couple of miles back.  It spans a road, an active railroad and the growing mountain creek we have been following ever since the eastern continental divide.  Apparently, the viaduct had been an old unused railroad bridge that a rail trail enthusiast spotted and made a project.  Money was raised and it was hauled in for restoration and use on this trail.  The officer gives a wave and drives away.  We pack up and head out into the sun just as the truck comes to clean the portable toilet.  If only I had waited!

The sky is hazy with no thunderclouds yet, but I feel something coming.  In a mile we pass a farm with a series of dusty cattle paths leading to a watering hole under some trees.  One cow headed for water is followed by her calf that is limping badly.  Looking closer, I see the calf’s leg bending at the wrong angle and know it must be broken.  A woman is outside the farmhouse watering her garden.  I wave and yell about the hurt calf.  She calls back a thank you and bellows for her husband.  As Chester and I walk on, wilting in the heat and wishing I had asked her to spray us with the hose, I start worrying about the calf.  Will the calf be put down?  The young thing hardly got a chance at life.

We come to a second viaduct that is particularly impressive.  This railroad trestle bridge is the longest viaduct on the trail.  Exactly how long is it?  Well, reaching from one bluff to another, it is long enough to stretch across several farm fields, an active railroad, a wide divided highway, the Casselman River, a county road and yet another dirt road.  How high is it?  High enough to make my stomach sink as I look down, and, best of all, high enough that the breeze has become a clipping wind.  All sweat has dried by the time we are half-way across.  Standing out here, suspended above everything, I trace a line of wind turbines along the  distant ridge.

When Rick picks us up a couple of hours later, I hear about some of his adventures.  He has been exploring the wind turbine fields, finding the out-of-the-way roads that lead up this ridge and that, taking photos of these immense white cylinders with their three curved blades at the top.  Meanwhile, the clouds are piling up high as we try to find a more direct (not faster) way to the campground across another ridge with wind turbines.  The gravel road we explore climbs, turns and twists through a forest. At the top of the mountain, the trees have been cleared off, and the glistening monsters stand tall, catching the wind that is beginning to pick up.  Finally the darker thunder clouds I have watched for all day have clearly formed in the west.

But by now, a storm has already broken in the truck.  The heat, the weariness, something said the wrong way, and some frustration building too long has done its work.  I think he is being unfair.  He thinks I am being unreasonable. Chester refuses to take sides. We are party to nothing new under the sun, and we enter a stormy silence.   While he goes to grab more photos of these towering wind catchers against the powerful sky, and while I sulk in the truck, the sun disappears behind a huge thunder head and the grass bends low under strong gusts.  He returns to the truck and we bump down the mountain with flickers of lightning at our backs, leaves flying through the air, and still unresolved rumbling within.

We reach the campground with just enough time to secure our outdoor gear under the lowered awning.  The wind whips everything, making our mutual task more difficult than it already is when two people are having a hard time communicating.  We step inside the camper and shut the door just as heavy raindrops start pounding the metal roof.   I take off my dusty shoes, sit on the bed and wince at each crash of thunder that beats the air around us.  We are camping up high on the eastern divide, and, instead of lifting over us,  the storm charges directly at the mountain barrier we are huddled on. It seems determined to take us with it.  We are lost in the thunder cloud's center; lightning strikes all around with no pause before booms shake our little trailer.  Gale winds furiously tackle the trees; there is danger every second that a limb will fall on us.  The earth under the trailer is alive with running water.  Ten long and fearsome minutes of this; then suddenly the storm pushes over the summit and spills on the valleys in the east. In its wake rivulets run through the gravel, the air is crisp, and every exposed surface is cleansed of dust and sparkles in the sun.

I am reminded of another storm in the second chapter of John:

In the temple, he saw people selling cattle, sheep and doves, and moneychangers seated at their tables.  Making a whip of cords, he drove all of them out of the temple, both sheep and cattle.  He also poured out the coins of the moneychangers and overturned their tables.  He told those that were selling the doves, “Take those things out of here.  Stop making my father’s house a marketplace.”  His disciples remembered that it was written, “Zeal for your house will consume me.”  (John 2.14-17)

Jesus came to the temple and saw all that was going on: the ordinary buying and selling of animals for temple sacrifices, the necessary exchange of money with the emperor’s image on it for temple currency more religiously acceptable.  There is no indication in the text that cheating was the problem.  What seemed to be troubling Jesus was something about  mixed up priorities, something about people being more interested in making sure the trading of animals went well than being passionate about God, something about their preconceived ideas not making room for the messiah.  Jesus stormed in and cleaned house.

Lots of storms today as I once again step outside.  What if Jesus wants to come in and clean house where my priorities are mixed up, where the daily trade of my activities consumes me, where my rigid way of doing things does not allow room for the Holy Spirit (or anyone else) to bring renewal?  What if Jesus wants to sweep out of my life those things that don’t belong there?

If so, could react in one of two ways.  I could run and grab onto my arguments and agendas, my ways of doing things and the ways I think I am right, hold on tight so that they don’t blow away with the storm of Christ’s cleansing.  Or I could be relieved as Christ cleans out the clutter that doesn’t belong in the temple of my life anymore, while he sweeps out the junk that stands in the way of good relationships, pours torrents of baptismal grace.  Zeal for the houses of our hearts did indeed consume Jesus and drove him to the cross for us.  Walking in his way, then, means watching him make an entrance into my small temple, sometimes with an entrance that has the strength and boldness of a passionate storm.

John Donne (1572-1631) wrote:
Batter my heart, three-person’d God; for, you
As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seeke to mend;
That I may rise, and stand , o’erthrow mee,’and bend
Your force, to breake, blowe, burn and make me new....
(from "Holy Sonnets," no.10)

Chapter 18: Sooty Snout

A continuation of my 2008 journal of the walk from D.C. to Pittsburgh while memorizing the gospel of John.

 
It is now Sunday afternoon.  I decide on a short walk of five miles.  My thinking goes this way: an extra five miles today gives more flexibility in the schedule ahead.  Besides, the late afternoon might be a bit cooler to walk in, and the lengthening shadows across the mountains will make more interesting photos.

 This is the last five miles of  sharing the trail with the steam locomotive train that brings tourists from Cumberland to Frostburg.  On Friday, Chester and I left the Potomac River and the canal towpath at  the Cumberland station where the rail trail to Pittsburgh begins.  For the next ten miles we ascended into the mountains while high temperatures and high humidity sucked our energy and left only dogged determination.  In order to accommodate enough room for a train, the rail trail is wider, cleared more carefully, and therefore more exposed to the sun. Any patch of shade that extended across the trail in yesterday’s heat was a brief gift.  Around lunch time we heard the echo of the train whistle somewhere in the valley below.  In a little while a trailing black cloud rose above the trees, and some twenty minutes later it overtook us just before we entered a tunnel.  The sign outside the tunnel cautioned bikers and walkers not to be inside when the train goes through.  The tunnel fills with thick, rolling black smoke, and one would breathe in choking soot and cinders until the breeze could clear it out again. 

When my dog Chester and I return to the trail today, I smell the lingering coal smoke and guess that the train passed by recently on its afternoon run back down to Cumberland.  We turn and walk uphill and west.  I forgot that the lower sun would be directly in my eyes.  Heat waves shimmer off the rails.  So much for it being cooler.  I frequently pour water on my scarf and tie it around my head.  The heat is hard on Chester, and we stop often when his panting becomes like a fast motor.  It looks like it would have been better to have waited another hour before starting.

At the sound of running water, Chester’s ears perk up and words of John are interrupted.  Across the tracks a steep bank of earth and rock glistens with sliding water.  The fresh stream collects in a narrow ditch at the base of the slope, then runs downhill along the tracks. We cross over the rails to inspect it.  The water is clear, and last year’s brown oak leaves line the bottom, a great place for Chester to cool his belly.  He begs, and I let him jump in.  Tail wagging he splashes, gulping water with open jaws, digging and crouching his body to immerse as much of it as possible in the cold wetness.

Very soon I realize that this has been a huge mistake.  With horror I watch an inky blackness swirl in the water, painting his legs, his flanks, his snout.  Years of coal soot has sunk to the bottom of the ditch, and now, stirred by the paws of a white dog, the black gunk clings to its new target.  I yell for Chester to come and we hurry back over the tracks, but the damage is done.  His brown eyes peer out from a black face.  A dripping charcoal tail swings gray droplets into the air.  He stands and energetically shakes and shivers the water over me, but that doesn’t help his appearance (or mine either). I am looking at the most unkempt, ugly colored, mongrel-like canine you can imagine, and I feel like the most neglectful of dog owners.  My small square of a bandanna cannot even attempt to clean this creature up.


When we arrive at the Frostburg station an hour later, some of the soot has dried and slid off his fur, but not enough.  The sight of Chester evokes chuckles of amusement from bikers and groans from Rick who is there to pick us up.  We grab paper towels from the truck, wet them with left-over drinking water, and set to work rubbing him down until he is decent enough to jump onto the blanket-covered back seat.

What a sabbatical Sunday!  Chester has a soot-covered snout,  the sky has been is sullied with train smoke and, in an attempt at worship this morning, I have become more aware of how I’ve sunk into selfish hubris (see previous post).  A bath will clean the dog, a good rain will clear the air, but me?  From what I have learned from the beloved disciple’s words so far, his solution to my condition would seem to be a good dose of light---and he doesn’t mean the afternoon’s sun.  Maybe that is what today has been all about: I am letting in the light that the beloved disciple talks about as I've been walking and these words of scripture have been shining mile after mile on those shadowy parts of me.  The shadow that hides the more genuine pastor behind a public face.  The shadow that keeps me self-preoccupied.  The shadow that takes less interest in those around me.  The shadow that overlooks the passing guest in favor of the more “useful.”  The shadow that forgets to join the wood-pewee’s delight in dawn.  Get out into the light, Elaine!

 The beloved disciple tells us:  And this is the judgement, that light has come into the world and people loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil.  For all who  do evil hate the light, and do not come to the light in order that their deeds may not be exposed.  But those who do what is true come to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that their deeds are done in God. (John 3.19-21)