The wilderness takes its toll as a man finds a woman.
I had gotten a phone call soon after returning from my camping trip. It was a friend from college, the young woman whom I had no business loving. She had seen my self-aggrandizing posts on social media, had been present at the post-graduation camping trip, and wanted to see more of the wilderness. Sure, why not? None of my other friends showed much interest in exploration beyond the property’s opening field, it would be nice to share my adventures with someone else.
My personal feelings? Surely, I told myself, I could set them aside.
There was nothing even slightly romantic about the trip. We walked around the property, ran out of water (I hadn’t learned my lesson, you see), built a fire, and spent the night on opposite ends of a forest clearing.
The next morning I woke to discover that she had built a fire by herself while I slept, and it wasn’t half-bad either.
I was impressed that she was showing a genuine interest in what little I knew about the woods. She wanted to learn, and I found myself in the strange position of becoming a guide.
We wandered the property for a few hours that morning, then went our separate ways, sure that we would return at some point in the future.
Despite my addiction to the forest, I was unable to return the following weekend. Not in a state of wakefulness, at least, instead I began to dream dreams:
Cast against a dusky sky painted long with maroon and purple–
I ran with the wind above the dark green mountains of Appalachia.
My flight halted above a pristine mountain,
Sporting the clear-cut bald characteristic of the region.
I was shown the four sides of the mountain,
The secret springs which feed its populace,
And saw the land divided by an ethereal line.
Deep within a voice declared,
In the inaudible yet distinct assurance like the voice of God Himself:
“This land was cleared for war.”
How many times that summer had I soared through those dusky skies–
each time awakening to the Sehnsucht, the longing, the compulsion to return to the wild?
This land was cleared for war.
War for what?
Not the bloody grappling of ideologues and violent men—but active conquest.
Pursuit of a higher goal.
My war of peace. Adventure.
It was the sight of a grander horizon. It is the conviction that hope must not be abandoned.
It was the course and struggle the Lord unfurled for me to endure for His kingdom.
It was His plan for my life.
War against hate, against violence, against injustice and oppression, against evil.
It was the war He has raised me to lead through.
And I had not yet risen myself to engage.
The apathy of the world, the complacency and vice that I surrendered to—the indifference. All of it, by my own fallen choice, stood in my way.
I reasoned that I must not continue down to the valley of my dreams, but instead engage and become the man I was meant to be. Fit in mind, body, and spirit.
After waking, I reflected on my trip with my friend, I remembered the moment I met her and was moved by God that we were to become and, by chance, actually became friends over the years.
Indeed, I viewed myself a teacher on that outing. In some ways, I was, but more than that I was a fellow student, and a friend, and learned to allow myself to be vulnerable again in the presence of another person.
I knew not how this friendship would grow, but I knew she to be a kindred spirit in a manner of speaking, and prayed safe travels and blessings upon her.
The days passed. And the dreams changed.
The first time I dreamed had been a month ago, before starting the journal and venturing into the woods.
In that first dream, and it’s amazing that I never properly recorded it, I was steadily climbing a stormy pass despite the insistence of others that I ought to turn back. In my heart I knew them to be misguided fools bent only on achieving comfort.
I pressed on until before me hung a shroud, blocking a cut through the rocky pass.
Beyond the shroud:
Sehnsucht.
That feeling.
I saw forms beyond it moving in collaboration.
I needed to be there with them. It was home.
Upon waking I resolved myself to begin these wilderness trips.
The dream then abated—but soon returned in the form of the “this land was cut for war” dream I detailed earlier.
Yet again, the dream changed.
I lighted from the wind, into the forest beyond the bald
and found, at a high, rocky point, though not the apex:
A structure, and outpost.
Its leader was a wild and wise man,
Caring- cautious- knowledgeable.
Yet willing to fight to protect.
I saw all from out his own eyes hence:
He showed me his people-
Peaceful.
All working for a common good.
And he took up his bow and arrows and lead me down the trails nearby:
Some trails were good, leading to water and food-
Others were bad, leading to briers and thorns and grotesque depictions of sin-
There were bloated harlots lying in wait with manticore-like features-
Deformed beasts that I knew as addicts, murderers, rapists, doers of evil of every stripe.
When one of his people would venture down trails such as these,
He would correct them and show them another way-
But not without allowing them to stumble.
I was allowed to venture towards these bad trails,
But reacted with such revulsion that
I found myself waking, kicking and scratching at thorns and stinging nettles
Until I fell back to sleep and continued my journey.
The wise leader knew all of these trails,
and where they lead,
And he showed me the flood plains of a river
where a second leader was building an outpost in
the mud and marsh.
The second leader seemed content in his labor, but I knew it was folly.
Then, at last, the wise Leader returned to his own outpost and took up watch for travelers and raiders,
Chasing off those who meant harm and helping those that needed it.
I kept watch with him for the remainder of the night until I awoke.
I’ll be frank: this dream disturbed me, and so I prayed.
I reasoned that I was to be like the wise Leader, who was a reflection of God, but not God Himself, just as a man may be a part of the body of Christ, but not Christ Himself.
I had and have stumbled much in life, enough to know where the paths to evil lie—not to such an extent as I saw in my dream, but more than I ought as a man following the straight and narrow path.
I knew and recognized the second leader, a strong builder, but misguided, evidenced by the building in the floodplain. He was the fool that I once was, and still strive to avoid becoming. I was to point out the trail to higher ground.
I was to look after that which the Lord has given me charge, guiding those who need it, helping those who need it, and finally taking up a watch to protect it.
This is what I discerned, in prayer, from my dreams. I had never had dreams like them before, nor have had dreams like them since.
I set out to better myself to become that leader, to emulate Christ in all that I did, and above all, I prayed for the Lord to help me.
I went back into the woods and the dreams subsided.
Day hikes: one backpacking 3 miles along the East Palisade trail in Buckhead, reveling in the variety of natural landscapes and features, and one hike up Little Kennesaw Mountain.
The latter was the more enlightening of the two.
With only a day pack, and not the full weight of my camp pack, I hiked in, at first trudging uphill, desperate to keep step with my comrades, but finding myself too taken with the environment to merely press on with a singular goal of reaching the top.
I found that there is no joy in the arrival if the journey is not either arduous or reveled in—and often both.
I separated, putting a half mile between my friends and myself, veritably stranding myself in an oasis that still bore the marks of Confederate battlements and the bloody skirmishes that unfolded nearby so many years before.
As I clambered over rock and hill, I listened for wild things; catching a brief glimpse of a nearby fawn, and thoroughly loving the intense serenity—and nature’s uncanny way of adapting, but not changing.
Around me were rocky crags and holes that surely were the homes of creatures unknown once the park closed for the night.
I did not hike, but stalked up the trail, consuming the sights around me and, in part, wishing that there was another on the trail doing the same.
Near the top, I watched a lightning storm gradually fill the sunset-painted western sky.
The sound of music broke the solemn observation of order and chaos.
Three teenagers ambled up the trail, blasting popular music from their phones. I was, I admit, vexed by the intrusion of the modern into this natural sanctuary.
The teens did not appear ready for their trek: one sporting flip flops, and none of them carrying water.
I waited for them to pass, but they stopped about fifteen feet up the trail from me.
The sound of retching met my ears.
They were certainly unprepared for a strenuous hike on a hot summer’s day, and my annoyance faded.
I walked to them and offered the ailing teen some electrolyte tablets from my first-aid kit to help his heat exhaustion. He took them gratefully, but refused water to wash them down.
The group thanked me and I passed on, happy to help newcomers who had never hiked during the heat of the day without enough water to spare. My lesson, hard-learned, applied to help another.
Perhaps, someday, one of the group will pay it forward, recalling that day stranded, sick on a mountainside, and the gesture that helped alleviate the illness.
Honestly, I thought myself superior, the better man, ready to help, until I saw the group again an hour later—they had stopped at that site and made their way down to a cliff-face, under shade, to watch the sunset. They remained there longer than I was willing to wait, and no more music played.
Newcomers or not, that magnificent sight that had compelled me to stop, and our paths to meet, the dueling forces of sunset and thunderhead, a visual expression of the infinite crescendo of God’s glory juxtaposed by an expression of His awesome power, had captivated their hearts as well, just as anything truly beautiful captivates the souls of all of God’s children.
I will never know if I made any difference to them, and that needn’t be.
I was able to help another person, and partake in the admiration of a truly breathtaking sight with three total strangers.
The hoped that the experience and what it inspired was enough.
The wide-eyed wonder and deliberation of wilderness life shifted as I continued my regular adventures. Mainly, I no longer felt as an interloper in the woods, but completely in tune with it. My mentality while out in the wild was one of collaboration and conservation, as I became more aware of the intricacies of nature around me.
My body became fitter and my thoughts more deliberate. I could hike farther and longer with more weight than I could a month before when I began this writing.
Of course, this shift opened a darker reality: if I were to see all that there was to see on my family’s land, would my deep longing, the Sehnsucht, return? I knew it is essential to my health to go into the wild regularly, but was routine a risk to my fulfillment, as it was in each other aspects of life?
Perhaps the struggle would then become one of further discovery—to know all about the creatures in the wild, the plants, and deepen my role as caretaker?
I began to have more guests join me in my outings, and I began to confront an issue of the heart:
I was and still am un-apologetically a Christian, yet many of my guests were not. I had a responsibility to be an ambassador for Christ in my day to day life, and surely the wilderness seemed to me to be a church in a sense—a physical space where I connected with the Lord. How was I to share this properly with my visitors? How was I to convey the meaning I found out there to them without falling into a trap of preaching and debate?
I had recently begun to move away from debate and out and out proselytizing because I believed it to be ineffective. What good are words if they are not backed by action, and could I judge my own without condemning myself?
Instead, I had been making a conscious effort to embody Christ in my actions and interactions with others, and I would like to believe that I had seen some cracks appear in the defensive walls of those I interacted with—people softening their hearts to goodness once more.
I would like to believe that, but I am a fallen man. My perception may have been accurate in some respects, but in others I found myself to be misguided.
Time will tell. Many of these friends have grown so much in the time since my initial writing. Others have vanished from my story entirely. I know not what paths they have taken, nor the impact I may have had in our brief interludes…
And then came the night. That fateful night beneath the stars in the old, familiar meadow.
I brought She that I Ought Not Love to the woods again, and made a choice:
Despite my best judgment, I could not change my heart. I loved her. But my time in the woods had taught me much, and I reasoned that no matter what sort of home I might build with her, it would be built on compromise—a home in which I could not freely discuss the truth of God.
And so I built a pyre of oak and pine tall in offering.
I made a decision to lay down a part of myself that night. I made a judgment call, and the Lord responded. I sacrificed a piece of my heart and a piece of my dreams for the future for the sake of the Kingdom of God and the work He would have me do. I tore down an idol in my heart. By my own words I built a barrier between her and I, one that I reasoned would not be crossed. If ever there were any romantic feelings, they were doused and trod upon, never to be rekindled.
Later that night, I wandered out into the field to meet the Lord, He did not call me to walk terribly far before re-directing my gaze to the majesty of the stars above.
A tearful reunion between Father and Son, and I remembered the moment, but 60 days prior, that set me on that course to begin with.
Be Still.
Indeed.
I expressed to the Lord my sacrifice, offering up my love that could never be, and He responded:
Two shooting stars for my eyes alone: six or seven in total before I laid my to head to rest that night.
Then, a fox from the mountaintop woods cried out into the night. It was answered by another, crying more desperately, down in the valley.
I returned to the fire and listened as coyotes joined in the nocturnal chorus, their cries seeming to carry on all of the winds.
I responded with a nod as I added a birch branch to the fire.
“I am here, I am one with you all, a part and apart.”
My call was one of solitude.
And silence.
The Lord gives more than we ever could —and that night I had given all I had to give.
Or so I thought.