The adventure begins in a prenuptial reflection on times long past.
To God my Father, who leads me beside still waters,
To Jesus Christ my Savior and Lord who walks beside me,
To the Holy Ghost who stirs my heart and dwells within me,
To Rebekah, my unexpected blessing who brings me great joy,
And to all weary travelers upon the trail, may the Lord find you, bless you, and keep you.
Amen.
—-
Every year since I began this project, I reflect on the words to use to frame this story. I have attempted to abrogate my own musings and blunt the more damning passages, but ultimately I must set this collection loose at some point.
This truth was hammered into my quite clearly this holiday season, as, for better or worse, it was the final holiday season of my “childhood”. Make no mistake, I’m nearly 30 years old, I have lived on my own, I have held down career-oriented job positions. I’ve managed my own business, down my tax returns, claimed itemized deductions, diversified my retirement portfolio. I’ve loved and lost, I’ve lead scores of people in the production of commercial and private films, I’ve shouldered legitimate responsibility, I’ve been “adulting” since I decided to never work for anyone else again in high school and set out to carve my own path in the world. I am a man… but am I?
I have never lead, truly lead, a household of my own. I have lived in an apartment by myself and accumulated the take-out containers and general disarray of the “bachelor’s life”, but I have never taken on the task of establishing and caring for a family. And, as the Bible describes the leaving of home into marriage as the definitive step from childhood to adulthood, I realize that I have, until this writing, neglected the enormity of that next step. For in a month’s time, I will be married, and I will be truly and irrevocably leaving from home to set out on that journey with my bride. People keep asking me if it feels “real” yet. I keep saying, “oh yeah, for sure,” but I realize the actual gravity of the situation had never fully dawned on me.
It wasn’t been lost on those around me, however. I noticed last night, well into January, that my parents still have not taken down their Christmas decorations, nor their children’s stocking from the fireplace, a mainstay for all of my years on this Earth.
As I looked upon the Christmas tree and the decorations surrounding it, I reflected at how much history hung upon its drying boughs. Now decades of homemade decorations, fading photographs of my siblings taken and developed in an age before the ubiquity of smart phones and social media. I saw decorations hung in 1996, the year I got my Nintendo 64. I saw decorations commemorating my sister’s first Christmas in 1998, the year, 21 years past, that I discovered that I wanted to be a filmmaker. And I saw the decorations that I remember from my very earliest years, holdovers from my parent’s lives before they set out together in marriage. The paint fading and chipping away, but the precious memories remain.
And I realize that next year, my Christmas will be very different. My wife and I will have a tree of our own, hang our stockings above our own mantle, and we’ll begin an ornament collection for ourselves. Our own family’s stories memorialized in iridescent vinyl and ceramic.
I realize that leading up to Christmas my parents were more deliberate in spending time with me. I realize that there was an estrangement that had set in when I was teenager. I realize that my older relatives have spoken more openly about seeing the family more. I realize that our family has grown smaller through death, and larger through birth. I realize that my “family,” the people I spend Christmas with each year, is markedly different now than when I became self aware many years ago. Ultimately, I realize that an era is about to end, and I have absolutely no idea where the time went.
I realize now what this book has represented, because it begins and ends the same way, with the trail, love, and the Lord. I am about to become a married man, and it’s only fitting to commemorate this season of change with the story of how this all came about.
—
2017:
I went out walking tonight. No music, no audiobooks, no podcasts, no companions, no phone calls- just me, the night, the trail, and the Lord.
The New Year has arrived, and unlike the years before, an abiding peace has come with it. For the first time, January is well under way and my heart wants for nothing. That’s incorrect. My heart wants for nothing tangible, but deep within my soul cries out for something I have no words for.
And so, deep in longing, I traversed the paved trails of the Appalachian foothills abiding in God and listening for His still voice among the night’s music. By my journey’s end I had heard nothing, but felt His hand guide my heart. How different things are now.
There was a time when I would gladly boast of hearing His voice and revel in the spiritual highs accompanying worship- when I was righteous in myself in every way and did not hesitate to let anyone know. That was the time of infancy, before this book was written. Throughout its composition, and even in the time it has remained in the trunk- a year now, how can that be? – my path has crested many mountains and traversed many valleys, and a great deal of baggage has been left by the trail side for the best. I still draw breath, however, and so I cannot lie to myself or to you, dear Reader, and claim that this book will adequately summarize my travels. My travels will continue until my eyes close in death, and I am certain that just as I look upon this book with wiser, alien, eyes a year after its first draft completion, that wisdom will only grow by the grace of God so that the man who walks among these pages will seem a complete stranger to me when again I take it off the shelf.
I did not choose to write this book. I came to love it as a child and source of pride, and to hate it as a damnable idol and written record of all that has transpired within the darkness of my fallen heart. If it were my choice, this book would remain a handwritten manuscript gathering dust on an upper-shelf.
But it is not my choice.
This volume comprises a more honest accounting of my own sin and struggle in faith than I had contemplated when it first began- though it is not in perfection that we find God.
No, while God is perfect, it is through our imperfections- our brokenness that He is most readily revealed, because in those moments that we desperately seek to be fixed, He alone can and will mend us- if only we seek Him out.
For the Lord sought me while a stranger, and I am still prone to wander- but the Lord became flesh to redeem sinners though He owed us nothing- and of all sinners, I am the greatest of all.
Just as this book was started, so it will be published. I owe this book to God, and can only pray that what lies within might help someone on their own trail. If the Holy Spirit has inspired but a single sentence within these pages, if but one reader might come to know Christ, then this traveled trail will be worth while.
As it is, the time is now, and my heart has been moved in the stillness of the night to revisit those forgotten days many miles ago.
PART ONE: Be Still
I had made the trek nearly every weekend for the last four years, but that final drive home from college was perhaps the strangest I had ever taken. I-16 West was gridlocked at Dublin, so I left the highway to travel county roads. I’m not sure what towns I passed through along the way, only that what should have been a four hour drive became an all-day affair, and that my hangover was the least of my concerns.
The night prior, in drunken revel alongside my fellow graduates, I had confessed my years-long affection to a woman that I had no business loving. She was polite about it, but quite plain that it would never work. My cousin drove me home and I passed out only to wake to the horror at what I had done. As far as drunken faux pas, it was mild, but I laid out my self-judgment all the same- “what a schmuck.”
The embarrassment of that moment haunted my odyssey through the country that surely inspired Flannery O’Connor’s finest works, but even the shame of my lost composure could not hold a candle to the emotion that was beginning to form in the pit of my stomach.
It was something I couldn’t quite describe, but that I will now and forever associate with the highways in hiding, the Talmadge Bridge over the Savannah River, Spanish Moss in the trees, and the sound of Audrey Hepburn singing “Moon River.” It was a desire for something- everything- to be set to right. It was a desire for the entire life preceding this moment to be set on-kilter and for the rough patches to be smoothed over. It was something that I had never experienced before, and I found myself desperately- yet in vain- trying to dispel it. If only I could give it a name, then it would lose its sway over my heart. But the road was long and there was no one to inquire of to set my mind at ease.
I found I-75 in McDonough and continued onward to Atlanta. It had been a long day, and by the time I arrived at home the feeling had given way to the bustle of getting my life settled in.
I forgot it, for a time.
Considering that my final graduation date coincided with my birthday, and considering that the majority of my friends from college were moving to Atlanta following graduation, and considering that the last month of college had negated any possible opportunities for me to go camping or even enjoy my own company, I invited everyone on my short-list to a weekend of camping and fun that I dubbed a “Graduation Birthday Bash” just a week after we had all said farewell to the coast.
Everyone made it, and for the first and last time, that group was all in one place, gathered on a mountaintop in Appalachia enjoying one last rager before the great inevitability of life set in.
It was a typical college party. There was alcohol, a lot of ultimately empty talk, and good-natured beratement.
As the night wore on I became acutely aware of my role as an outsider in the group. I could drink with the best of them, but I went camping to be outside- to engage in nature. There came a moment during that night where I was walking, off-trail, through the woods and caught myself plotting my advance through the brush based off of pre-blazed animal trails that were barely perceptible to the naked eye.
I suppose I had always subconsciously done this when hiking off-trail, but it was the first time that I ever caught myself doing it. I was intrigued by the fact that I was perceiving paths laid by animals that knew the lay of the land better than I ever could, and following them wherever they may lead, despite having a distinct bearing on my destination.
Later in the night I found myself choosing green branches to use to roast hotdogs and marshmallows based off of whether or not they were bearing leaves- I found that spider webs encompassing these branches indicated that they were “dead” or “dying”, and that these branches snapped off with ease without damaging the tree- while still retaining some green in them that would prevent them from burning.
There was something in this innocent discovery that triggered a sense of awe and wonder at the human condition- that we were created to tend the Earth in Eden, and that we had foregone that responsibility and experience along with every other one of God’s blessings.
Once everyone had retired for the night, I made my way out into the meadow beyond our campsite and sat overlooking the mountains to the West. A thick blanket of cloud had covered the entire sky the entire night until this moment when, as if by an unseen hand, the clouds parted to reveal the majesty of the Milky Way, the light pollution from the distant cities partially abated by the thick clouds that still covered the stratosphere.
I sat in awe of the majesty of it all, and in that moment I understood the meaning of Psalm 46:10: “Be still and know that I am God.”
And still I was.
I was so still that I fell asleep beneath that incredible sky.
When I awoke before sunrise something inside of me had changed.
And so it began.
I went back to the woods a few times in the month that followed- once to play a survivalist version of paintball that utilized slingshots instead of guns. We would set out, alone, to different points on the property and set camp before commencing to hunt each other down like animals.
Unfortunately, it began to rain late in the day, and the game was called off.
Another time, for my friend’s birthday, I found myself separating from the car-camping group to explore the wilderness alone, discovering some old Cherokee rock formations and other such nuggets of wilderness “gold” in the process. I found it unbelievably hard to convey my sense of wonder and awe at what I had experienced, and once again, despite being amongst friends, I found myself an outsider.
Then again: a solo camping trip which lead into an exploration of the cliffs and caves on the Northern end of the property. I had forgotten all about the shame of that long drive home, instead my heart was pounding with the rising tide of that foreign emotion that I could not name.
I was addicted.
In the last days of June, I found myself
feverishly dreaming of the forest. I could not escape the desire and
need to return to nature, and believed, very deeply, that to do so was
not only essential to my psychological health, but also to my spiritual
growth.
That feeling of intense longing that I had first experienced on my
ride back from college resurfaced, and I found my daylight hours haunted
by its shadow, and my nighttime hours lost in dusky dreams of mountain
twilight, that desire for renewal and wholeness saturating the starry
skies and everything around me. I had to discover its name, surely then I
could master it.
I’m not sure how I stumbled across its proper name. Looking back,
it’s remarkable that out of everything that struck me about that season
in my life, the definitive naming of this newfound emotion barely
registers. I remember where I was when I found it, the back corner
office at my day job “suite-4” was the official moniker, the music that I
discovered in the process, Fleet Foxes and Iron and Wine seemed to
embody it the most, and the ensuing obsessive research over it that lead
me into the more philosophical works of C.S. Lewis and the venerable
Henry David Thoreau… but I have no recollection of how I found the
name of the emotion itself. No matter, the name, it turned out, was
Sehnsucht.
Sehnsucht is a German word that translates to “longing,” but the
consensus is that this particular emotion is far deeper than a mere
desire. It is a longing for something beyond this mortal world, an
appetite and thirst for an experience that truly transcends. C.S. Lewis
contended that this desire, absent finite means of satisfaction, was
evidence of the existence of the infinite—the Divine.
It is the something that arrives with the first cool winds of
autumn, shaking the leaves from skeletal trees. It is something vast,
serene, and mysterious—as if one were standing on the veiled threshold
of something beyond oneself as one’s truest family marched onward
through the haze. The feeling of anticipation, peace with a purpose—the
feeling that the veil will fall to reveal perhaps one’s true home,
perhaps a life separate from the status-quo, so completely obvious, but
as of yet enshrouded and unrealized.
It is a peaceful feeling, but one of calling and yearning- not of
want, nor deficit, but of Communion with the Divine. I am convinced that
this feeling is the latent genetic memory that every single human being
has: that ineffable knowledge that something in this world is
inextricably broken—that something is missing.
My life had always been a veritable utopia: I had no want, no worry.
I had a steady job working in my field, and had a regular income
because of it. By all accounts, I was successful. But I could not shake
that intense longing for something deeper, something more. I felt like
an exile, discontent with urban settings and our work-a-day world. I
began to hunger for genuine communion with God apart from civilization.
Civilization, I reasoned, feared no God. The post-modernists, after all,
had killed Him.
In a moment of clarity I made my decision. I would disconnect and
make good on a goal that had haunted me for years. I would enter the
woods and survive as primal man to experience the source of mankind’s
wonderings: Eden.
Fellowship between God, man, and Creation.
This is what I longed for, and it called me back to the woods, to
the mountains, back to a place where time stands still and a man can
truly “Be Still” and know that God is God.
And so, on July 1, 2015, I finished my work early and went on vacation.
Off to Eden.