“People need wild places. Whether or not we think we do, we do. We need to be able to taste grace and know once again that we desire it. We need to experience a landscape that is timeless, whose agenda moves at the pace of speciation and glaciers. To be surrounded by a singing, mating, howling commotion of other species, all of which love their lives as much as we do, and none of which could possibly care less about our economic status or our running daily calendar. Wilderness puts us in our place. It reminds us that our plans are small and somewhat absurd. It reminds us why, in those cases in which our plans might influence future generations we ought to choose carefully. Looking out on a clean plank of planet earth, we can get shaken right down to the bone by the bronze-eyed possibility of lives that are not our own.”
(Barbara Kingsolver, cited in Brady and Neuzil, A Spiritual Field Guide: Meditations for the Outdoors, 143.)
“We need to be able to taste grace and know once again that we desire it.”
Tasting Grace…
• My daughter so excited about our RV trip that she made me sleep out in the RV with her, the night before we left home.
• Seeing my children with their grandmother and great-grandmother all together. Four generations all in one place telling stories together.
• Get up early with Charlie to do another half-ironman even though we haven’t trained nearly enough this past year.
• Riding my bike through 50 miles of vineyards lined with coastal redwoods.
• Running 13 miles with a new friend who is my age and doing a half-Ironman to celebrate surviving a heart attack.
• Sipping cocktails in front of our RV with friends both old and new while the kids play track ball on a meadow.
• Driving up Highway 1 with my family, listening to hymns with tears in my eyes as I take in the beauty of the landscape.
• Searching for sea glass and old shells on a windswept beach.
• Looking for geocaches with my kids, a GPS scavenger that led us to see sea lions, unworn trails and silly treasure that was more fun than gold.
• Seeing deer in the morning, huge Roosevelt Elk on the side of the road.
• Swimming in three different rivers.
• Finding wild blackberries and making a huge dutch-oven cobbler.
• Finding two huge jump rocks (20-30 feet?) and watching the kids leap off the top scared, thrilled and proud as the splashed into the gin-clear water.
• Walking through a grove of old-growth redwoods that made a soaring cathedral all around us and a soft path under our feet.
• Driving beautiful roads and exploring, brand new territory in my home state.
• Exploring the Oregon Caves, 250 feet under ground.
• Camping in beautiful places, eating good, hearty meals cooked over an open fire and playing games, singing songs, telling stories and looking at stars until late in the night with our best friends.
• Dutch-oven cinnamon rolls.
• Campfire lattes made in the early morning over a campfire.
• Fishing with Brooks on Manzanita Lake as the sun goes down.
• Exploring Sequoia Trees and looking for bears with Beth and Ali.
• Not one email in almost two weeks…
“We need to be able to taste grace and know once again that we desire it.”
