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) 



          

Chapter 17- The Guests

From the journal of Sunday, June 8, 2008, while on the trail from D.C. to Pittsburgh while memorizing the gospel of John.

Early morning.  The proprietor has said that there is always a breeze up here in the campground, even in a hot spell.  He is right; the branches of the oaks are lightly rustling in the warm air.  We are camping just west of the Savage Mountain ridge in high country.  The Eastern Continental Divide wanders through here, maybe even under our picnic table.  The two ponds lying in the nearby fields are in ambiguous territory.  Does the ground beneath them drain into the Mississippi or the Atlantic?

The frogs that make their home in the ponds could care less.  They need to more concerned about their survival with the barred owl making forays out of the neighboring forest.   My bird book says barred owls don’t like to be seen by people, but she is less cautious and has been hovering around the mostly empty campground in the evening.  Perhaps the frogs rimming the ponds are too tempting since, we are told, there are owlets in a nest that need feeding.  Last evening we found her hunting perch by listening to the fierce squawking of robins sounding the alarm for all smaller birds to take cover.  The owl stoically ignored them while concentrating on watching for a meal.  But the crows refused to receive their guest into the campground.  When their protest annoyingly became too raucous, she moved to another perch twenty yards away.  By following the direction of the robins’ commotion from tree to tree, we took several pictures of the owl with our telephoto lens.  She has never allowed us to stand near her watch post long before she has lifted her solid body and slipped into the woods.  Sometimes we can hear a distant “Who cooks for you....who-o-o?” and know the owl is still in the area, but far enough away that the robin mob and the photographers have given up.

Another camp song is offered by the veery who gives a concert every dusk.  His melancholy, double-tone flute call circles and drops through the branches like drifting leaves.   But this Sunday morning,  I have decided that it is the wood pewee who has the most persistent and pestering call of all.  He visits the tree behind our camper.  Beginning before dawn today, he has started his “pee-a-wee,” repeating it over and over and over again.  Pee-a-wee...the thin whistle song slides up.  Pee-wee...it slides back down.  It is the first thing I hear as I cling to a sleepy dream on the edges of my mind.  Pee-wee.  I don’t want to get up yet and pull the covers over my head.  Pee-a-wee...peewee.  It reminds me of my children’s whining when they were little.  The inflection is the same: “Are we there yet?...I’m bored...Are we there yet?....”  With the wood pewee’s insistence, I finally climb out of bed and into reluctant wakefulness.


Sabbatical Sundays are so different from my “other” life.  I have been thinking how this time away has given me a chance to know who I am again.  I have time this morning, with the wood pewee's accompaniment,  to open the map on a sheer whim of curiosity.  I trace the Yukon River, whose headwaters we saw last month, and see how it wanders north through British Columbia and Alaska before emptying into the Bering Sea.  It feels like honoring God on this sabbath day simply to take time to know more about this wild river. I imagine going there someday.

Sabbatical Sundays are also different because I don’t have to use my public speaking voice to worship. When I visit a congregation, I can worship with my reclaimed, soft-volume voice (unlike the pewee).  A few weeks ago, with the sabbatical half over, we had a wonderful “midway-through” picnic at a park near the canal trail.  People from the congregation traveled in vans, laden with food.  It rained torrentially, and we felt like we were swimming when we ventured from under the picnic shelter, but it was so good to be with them.  I love them dearly.  And yet, I was uncomfortably aware of the public persona settling down on me, speaking loudly so everyone could hear, organizing conversation, doing the work of making connections that pastors automatically do instead of sitting down at a picnic table and observing.  Once a few years ago, a person accused me of being  insincere when I greeted people at the door at the end of worship.  The accusation has stung, puzzled and lingered.  Now I wonder: who is the real me?  Do all of us have a “public” side that we shed for a “down-time” side?    Is there an inevitable split between work and relaxation.  Is one side “fake” and the other “genuine”?  I am called as a pastor, and the  “public voice” is an inevitable part of the job description.   Would it be more healthy and genuine if this softer spoken pastor could be set free into the public workplace more frequently?   I do not have answers to those questions this morning.

Instead, I drive into town to find a worship service, glad to be a quiet participant and not a leader.  I find a Lutheran church and slip into the pew with a greeting or two, familiar hymns, good message.  But on the way back home, I decide that once again I am a sinner.  There is nothing surprising about that, of course, but I realize that when I met people in worship today, I was more interested in telling them about myself and what I was doing in town rather than finding out about them.  Wouldn’t it have been much more interesting to ask about their town?  Their congregation?  Why they like living here in the highlands?  What they like to do?  No, instead, I wait for them to ask the guest about herself so that I can tell them about walking the trail and memorizing John.  "Wow” should be their admiring, appropriate response.  What hubris on my part!

But I also have discovered throughout the sabbatical while visiting churches, that people, including pastors, aren’t too interested in those visitors who are only passing through.  These guests won’t be joining the church or putting significant money in the plate.  They are not useful in that they are here now and gone in the next hour.   I can tell this by the way questions fizzle out and eyes drift away from me when they realize there is no chance I will return.  Granted, this is a tourist town, and maybe there is weariness with the numbers passing through.  But I don’t think of myself as a tourist; I am a pilgrim on a journey;  I am a sister needing prayer on the way.  Instead I am learning how a pilgrim is made anonymous by the drifting gaze of others.  The worst part is realizing that I, too, have been guilty, when I knew the guests would never be back, of not pursuing conversations, of quickly going on to the next person. What opportunities I have missed!   What hubris again!

Back at camp the wood pewee is still singing.  He is the only bird in the vicinity, in fact, making noise at this noon hour, although he does sound slightly less energetic in the heat of the day.  I wonder if he ever stops to catch a fly, which I have read is the ultimate pewee fast food.  But it is the Spirit's persistent nudging that is also waking me up---belatedly.  Perhaps being a walking pilgrim is changing me for the better if I am learning to value someone, even though they are a temporary guest and passing only briefly through my sphere of responsibility.  If I become more alert to this, I may become a more genuine person in a truly Christ-like sense.

Jesus said:  "Whoever receives one whom I send receives me; and whoever receives me, receives the one who sent me."  John 13: 20

The grace of small favors

From the 2008  journal while walking from D.C to Pittsburgh, while learning the gospel of John.


Poison ivy everywhere.  If I manage to avoid it, Chester can’t, and his fur shares it with me.  But today, even I can’t keep prevent stepping into it.  In a five-mile stretch of the canal towpath, nothing has been mowed all season.  Usually the path is well tended, but in this section not even the campground has been mowed.  The grass is two and a half feet high, hiding the picnic bench, hiding the sinister ivy leaves ready to blister my skin.

I grow ornery when a park ranger truck rolls down the trail.  There is absolutely nowhere for me to move out of the way except off to the side in yet another stand of poison ivy.  Grrrrr.  With the windows rolled up in his air-conditioned truck, the driver does not even wave his thanks.   Here I am, sweating it out in the high 80's with 90% humidity.  I can imagine with dread my entire body itching tomorrow.  While he motors out of sight, I wish that I had stood my ground in the middle of the trail, forced him to stop, voiced my complaint to the park service, lamented what severe reactions to poison ivy are like for those who choose to walk instead of ride.  But all I have done is to move out of the truck’s way and then call Rick to gripe for awhile. What a wimp I am!


Step after step, vexation melts into more sweat until, finally, somewhere near Cumberland, gratitude happens.  Of all places, a water treatment plant bordering the towpath offers freshly mown grass and a shade tree.  This is all it takes for sheer joy to take over.  We veer off to the side, stretch ourselves out on the clean lawn, cool ourselves with drinks of water, bless the summer, close our eyes and forget that such a thing as poison ivy ever existed anywhere on this good earth.

Chapter 16: Tunnel Vision

This is from my journal dated May 30, 2008, as I was walking from D.C. to Pittsburgh while memorizing the gospel of John.  My friend Diane has joined me for this day of walking.

Here, camping among the forest dwellers in this wilderness section of the trail, I have made friends with the night.  If there were no darkness, I would not be able to see the white crescent that rises just beyond the reach of branches and casts moon shadows across my path on the night walk to the restroom.  Darkness gives quiet space for conversation around the campfire.    Darkness is a gifted time of rest from sore feet and tired muscles.  Darkness settles the daily nesting frenzy of the bird kingdom.  Shortly after dusk many creatures bed down and observe the great silence shared by monasteries.  There are a few exceptions: the call of the hunting owl,  the  rustle of a foraging mouse, the ambles of a skunk. In my life as a town dweller, darkness hardly prevents my activities since I can artificially light my indoor and outdoor space.  But here in the woods, I cannot hike in the night.  The onset of darkness puts boundaries on routine and enforces slowing down.  I have come to cherish this darkness.

The author of John’s gospel does not use darkness in this renewing way.  In his gospel, light is connected to God, life, and belief; darkness is light’s sinister opposite.  We hear in the opening poem: the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.  Darkness represents the powers that oppose God’s presence, the blindness of the human situation without a relationship with God, and ultimately death.  Darkness used in this manner reminds me of the Paw Paw Tunnel.

The darkness of this tunnel is not the welcoming kind that provides a background for stars.  Instead, it is a creepy, damp, suffocating kind of darkness; I have not made peace with it.  The first time I walked it with my husband Rick, over a year ago now, I  chose not to retrace my steps through the tunnel, but returned to the parking lot by climbing a strenuous trail over the mountain in order to stay in the open air.  One time through the Paw Paw was enough tunnel vision for one day.

Today is the second time I have hiked through the tunnel, and I am walking with my companion Diane, relieved not to be doing this alone.  The tunnel is a half mile long.  It was built where the Potomac River makes a wide loop and the construction of a tunnel across the neck of that loop through the mountain would save several miles and precious time of canal travel.   Inside the narrow tunnel the towpath shares space with the canal.  A railing separates the two and keeps pedestrians from stepping off the dirt ledge and falling into the standing water.  Since this railing is a new addition,  I wonder if any mules slipped off the edge years ago.  I heard a story at the local diner of a guy who leaned against a previous metal railing in the tunnel;  it collapsed with him into the canal.  Fortunately, the water was rather shallow, and he was rescued with only a broken bone.

Once Diane and I enter the tunnel, our flashlights barely illuminate the darkness that wraps around us.  Our lights only reveal  small, dim spots on the ground directly in front of us.  We have to pay attention to where we step. The path under our feet is uneven dirt, and puddles  have collected here and there from the dripping rock, caused by spring rain seeping through the mountain above us.  We can, however, see the half-circle of light, almost a glare, at the far end.  

When I came here before, we  heard noises coming toward us but could see nothing until people were suddenly walking three feet before us,  staring us in the face.   On this day we pass no one and only hear the drip of water and scrape of feet.  Diane walks in front of me, but since she stays close to the tunnel wall, she is completely absorbed by its blackness and I cannot see her silhouette against the distant light.  It is strange how I  feel alone in this bleak space, even though she is so close and Chester is at my side.  Sometimes vague florescent green eyes glint  under the surface of the black water below on our left.  Our flashlights do no good in helping us discover what creature, what kind of metallic rock, or what trash is resting there.  From the time we first entered,  we have watched the opening at the other end;  yet, after ages of walking, the light does not seem to grow significantly larger.  The  tunnel walk lasts about twelve minutes, maybe fifteen, but tunnel time for me is interminable.

The gospel of John makes it sound like a person is either walking in the dark (metaphorically speaking) or walking in the light, but I think the reality of discipleship is not so simple.  Because I am a sinner living in a broken, sometimes chaotic and cruel world, there are dark tunnels I must walk through.  Some tunnels are longer than others.  Some curve so that it takes a long time before I may even see the half circle of light at the other end.  The walk in the midst of these damp walls of the Paw Paw  is a picture of times I have felt overwhelmed by the darkness of grief and loss, or by discouragement and failure, or by anger and unforgiveness, or by my own critical cynicism.  Some darkness I bring on myself, although I may deny it at the time.  Other dark tunnels just happen.

As Diane and I near the end of the Paw Paw, I stop and get out my camera, wanting to capture the significance and relief of stepping into the light.  I fuss because there is a  construction sign  posted at the exit, “messing up” the picture.  When later I look at the photograph more carefully, I  notice that there is a cross made by the wooden frame holding the sign.  Looking from the darkness of  the tunnel, the light is just beyond this wooden cross.  How appropriate to tunnel vision!  If there is anything that the beloved disciple has been teaching me in John, it is that I can only see  the true light toward which I am walking through the cross of Jesus Christ.   My darkness, whether it consists of  unbelief, distrust, denial or grief, can never seal me out of  the light of God’s presence for this reason: Christ in love gives his life for the world, including me.  I walk past that very cross of Christ whenever I step into the light of my relationship to God.


The beloved disciple tells us that Jesus said:  "I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness but will have the light of life." (John 8.12)


I am still friends with the evening of the forest dwellers, but it is good to know that no darkness, tunnel or otherwise, can thwart God’s loving grip that keeps drawing me out into the life-giving light of God’s self.

A grace between chapters

This is from my journal of the spring of 2008, while walking on a trail from D.C. to Pittsburgh, learning the gospel of John by heart. 

Something just landed in the algae-covered canal with a peal of alarm.  I think it is a female wood duck who is now swimming toward six downy babies.  (No, I didn't get a picture.) She skims to the other side of the canal and slaps her wings on the water, whether to distract me from her babies or to get their attention to follow, I don’t know.  But follow her they do, while she makes an unusual, clear call.  I continue to walk in the direction they are swimming when suddenly the mother bursts ahead, skittering and slapping on the green muck.  The little ones can’t keep up, and they quickly lose her. Then they start peeping frantically, looking for her.  I am beside them now.  Fearing the stranger, one of them turns around and heads back in the opposite direction, moving far away from me.  Since mom is not around, the others chase after their sibling leader.

Meanwhile the female duck, farther ahead of me, is swimming in circles.  Her little ones, now a distance away, are still calling for her, but she holds back.  Finally, having waited until my walking brings me closer to her, she lifts herself out of the canal, glides over the towpath to the river, and furtively circles back behind trees in the direction of her babies. The peeping stops, a good sign, except for one lone peep sounding nearby.  A duckling, slightly bigger than the others, calls from the spot where the mother duck took to the air.  Does this one belong to her or is it an orphan?  Will it find its siblings?  Or will it, out on its own in the algae jungle, become turtle or hawk food?  I do not know the ways of ducks, but I do know the vast vulnerability that can come from loneliness and separation.  It is echoing now across the water.  Yes, I have known in many ways, in myself and in others, that pitiful search for a safe haven, a soft wing.

"They will not follow the voice of a stranger, but they will run from him, because they do not know the voice of strangers."  John 10:5

Jesus said that.  He did not consider himself a stranger. Once he thought of himself as the wing of a mother hen.  Food for thought.