| Finding God in High Places Article |
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| Page Type: Article Activities: Hiking, Mountaineering, Scrambling | Page By: shanrickv Created/Edited: Dec 15, 2007 / Dec 16, 2007 Object ID: 365497 Hits: 9450  Loading... Page Score: 91.4% - 70 Votes Loading... Vote: Log in to vote |
“I raise my eyes toward the mountains. Where does my help come from? My help comes from the Lord, the maker of heaven and earth.” Psalm 121: 1-2Though I may be accused of it by some, I am far from a “Holy Roller” or teetotaler. I love a good beer. In fact, I’m a beer snob, as I will only drink microbrews or Guinness, but try to do so in that infamous land of “moderation,” whatever that means. Unfortunately, when I let my weak mind govern me I can also swear with the best or worst of them, depending on how you view profanity. Still, my Christian faith is the most important thing in my life. Catholicism came alive for me in high school and it has remained the core of who I am as a 41 year-old husband and father of 4. Perhaps the deepest experience I have of my faith is in the quiet of receiving communion during one of the few weekday Masses that I am able to attend. The intimacy I feel with God at those times carries over into my time in the mountains. “Think about it, there must be higher love. Down in the heart or hidden in the stars above.”-Steve Winwood’s “Higher Love”I’m not sharing this with you to evangelize or hit anyone over the head with my Bible. I just simply feel compelled to do so. There is risk involved in sharing your faith. There is vulnerability there and yet, I feel compelled. Men need to live adventures and for me that is experienced in the mountains. It is simply part of the heart that God gives us. This is not a “How To” article on how to find God in the mountains. It is far from it. I hope that I would never be so presumptuous. It is simply my story about how I came into an awareness of the wild, dangerous and loving heart of God and how I feel he has drawn me to the hills. I may get hammered for this and, frankly, I don’t care. Hammer away. It is who I am and my experience of God drawing me to the wilderness. “Without it, life is wasted time. Look inside your heart, I’ll look inside mine.”
For me personally, I have found it impossible to escape the presence of God when I am in the hills, regardless of whether it is a local Colorado Springs foothill or the summit of Mt. Rainier. I find myself surrounded by the mercy and majesty of a creator who loves wildness. I can be deep into Cheyenne Canyon only 20 minutes from our house or alone in the Collegiate Peaks Wilderness of the Sawatch Range and I realize time and again that all of this glory was no accident. I have no problem reconciling the theory of evolution with my Christian faith. A day to God can be a thousand years to man and if he chose to bring about our beautiful Earth over millions of years as opposed to a literal seven days, so be it. Being Creator, I think he earned that right! Still, I believe it was planned always with humanity in mind. We are the crown of his creation and I can’t see the Earth as an accidental “big bang.”“Things look so bad everywhere. In this world what is fair? We walk blind and we try to see. Falling behind in what could be.”
I can’t look into the beautiful eyes of one of my children and believe that they simply came about because a fish decided to sprout legs and climb out of primordial ooze umpteen years ago. In the same way I can’t drive up Ute Pass each morning to work while gazing upon Pikes Peak and think that it resulted just because tectonic plates got into an argument. I believe that God in his whimsical joy caused the tectonic disagreement and he did it for our pleasure. Some would look upon that as an arrogant statement. God brought about Pikes Peak for my pleasure? He gave the Red Couloir on Crestone Peak for me to climb? He caused the lush green fields of the Burren Way in Ireland just for me to gaze on upon? Yes, I believe he did. Yet, as the Casting Crowns song goes, “Who am I? … a vapor in the wind, here today and gone tomorrow.” Still, I’m a “vapor” that is “fearfully and wonderfully made” (Psalm 139) … that God loves.
A note about women: they baffle me, but I mean that in a good way. The day I think I have them figured out is the day my heart grows cold. What I am writing about here predominantly deals with men and their need to be outdoors in one way or another. In no way, shape or form am I saying that women can’t experience the mountains in the same way. This is just coming from my perspective as a man. If humanity is the crown of creation, and I believe it is, women are the most beautiful jewel. I’m not talking about swimsuit models. I mean all women and their hearts of beauty that we are graced by. Though the mountains are beautiful beyond measure, they still cannot shine a light to the beauty of Eve.
“Worlds are turning and we’re just hanging on. Facing our fear and standing out there alone?”
In 2000 I started to get into mountain biking. I felt the need to get out into nature more. I realized that I was becoming an old “30 something” while succumbing to the rat race of suburban Maryland. I did a lot of biking on the C&O Canal and made plans to ride the entire 184 miles solo over 3 days. The thought of being out on my own in the deep reaches of the Potomac River in western Maryland intrigued me. However, when I did the ride I realized that I was far from alone. I felt that God was drawing me to the wilderness to be alone with him. There was a hunger in my heart to be in wild places, often with a little danger, that I could not articulate, but I knew that it was there. “A yearning and it’s real to me. There must be someone whose feeling for me.”
I spent more and more time on Sugarloaf Mountain, a relatively small hill on the outskirts of Montgomery County. I frequently found myself gazing towards the mountain when it would come into view from I-270, one of the countless freeways that make up the concrete jungle of Washington, DC. Sugarloaf became a place of solitude for me and my dog, Grace, yet I never felt alone; there again was God with his ever present peace refreshing me in this small mountain oasis. I wish I could find the words that did his presence justice, yet all I can say is that I felt him there in my heart drawing me back to Sugarloaf. It was just a small taste of what he had in store for me.
I started hiking and climbing seriously in the summer of 2002. My wife and I were still living in Maryland at the time, but frequently came back to Colorado to visit her family. I had gazed upon Longs Peak countless times, but never thought about climbing it. I didn’t think I had what it took to climb such a prominent peak. The previous Thanksgiving we were in Estes Park and I caught the climbing bug of all places in front of a urinal. That’s right, I was taking a leak and looking at a map of Longs Peak hanging on the wall of a restaurant bathroom. I saw that there was a route to the top that did not require any serious mountaineering skills, just a lot of endurance. One thing led to another and, before I knew it, I was attempting Longs that summer with two relatives. We failed miserably. The plan was to camp in the boulder field and go for the summit the next day. We were caught in a hail storm with high winds and lightening while going over Granite Pass. I spent one of the most physically miserable nights of my life huddled in my tent in the boulder field below the summit. I was dehydrated and hypothermic and never felt more alive. I shivered in my tent in a boulder field above 12,000 feet for much of the night and God was there. I was physically spent, but the undeniable presence of this creator that I was coming to know personally in wild and dangerous places filled my REI Half Dome tent. “Bring me a higher love. Where’s that higher love I keep thinking of?”
I limped my way down the mountain and 3 days later attempted it again with a Coloradoan named Alan Arnette. I had discovered his mountaineering website that spring and he graciously allowed me to pick his brain about Longs Peak. I spoke to him after my failed attempt and he could sense my disappointment over the phone. Three days later he took a day off work and guided my low-lander butt to the top of Longs, the monarch of Colorado’s Front Range. I will never forget the glory I felt at the top of the Keyhole when I gazed upon the most dramatic scenery I had ever encountered. Alan told me to enjoy the views, but reminded me it was no place to screw up. We made our way up the Ledges, the Trough, the Narrows and finally the Homestretch that led to the summit. I surprised myself when I became choked up after reaching the top. I always thought that reaching the summit of Longs Peak would be like scoring a game winning touchdown, but it was the farthest thing from what I experienced. I was there with Alan and about 10 other people, but more than anyone else, God was there. It was not a feeling of conquering a peak, but a realization that God had given me the grace to endure the climb of my life, up to that point, and that I was never apart from him while I did it. It was the first time that I experienced that overwhelming post-summit satisfaction of peace and I knew that it reached into my heart and far beyond just a physical accomplishment.
You could say that it was at the top of Longs that I actually caught the climbing bug and not the urinal in Estes Park. Yet, I knew that it was something so much more than just a hobby. Still, I could not put words to what was going on inside of me. I had this growing desire to be in the outdoors, but far from sitting at the community pool across the street. I wanted to be in the wilderness. I joked that it was my way of staving off a mid-life crisis, when it was God who was actually drawing me there.
The following spring I went to Ireland with two college friends. We spent an incredible week backpacking over the Burren Way, a 50 mile trail and road that wound its way through some of the most beautiful land in Ireland and the world for that matter. We ended our first full day of hiking when we crested a ridge of hills overlooking the small Atlantic coast town of Fanore. The ocean opened up before us with the Aran Islands to the south. A storm started to brew with high winds and rain around the ridge we were descending. It was then that we came upon what I later found out was a wild goat. It was huge and actually looked like a cross between a horse and a llama with large horns. Before I could snap a digital it stomped its hooves at me and let out this hideous snort of steam and mist just before it ran off and disappeared into the rain. There I was in the middle of a forming storm high on a ridge with the Atlantic Ocean in full view and wild animals snorting at me … and God was there. That Higher Love was there.
A few weeks later I found myself back in Colorado hiking with Alan, who was starting to become one of those people you come across that is a true friend for life. He had just returned from his second attempt of Everest and seemed quiet. We climbed Grays and Torreys Peaks after a light June snowfall. After summiting Torreys we started to make our way down and he opened up to me about his frustrations on Everest and the disappointment he felt. Here I was a novice low-lander from Maryland climbing in the snow in June on a Colorado 14er and an Everest mountaineer was confiding in me about his struggles to reach the top of the world. I found myself asking God what I ever did to be so blessed to be there in that place. Then Alan really caught me by surprise. He said we should try to climb Mt. Rainer.
Mt. Rainier is an active volcano that is the longest endurance climb in the lower 48. Once again, I doubted that I had what it took to get to the top. Still, I was drawn to it. I wanted to know if I had it in me. Before I knew it Alan had arranged a group of nine men from the U.S and Canada to do the climb through RMI. That was when my life was turned upside down. “Bring me a higher love. Bring me a higher love.”
Shannon and I had always toyed with the idea of moving back to her native Colorado, but never seriously thought about it until the fall of 2003. Our local county government was fighting me tooth and nail to allow me to do a 3000 sq. ft. expansion of my veterinary clinic. I hate to lose, but realized that I was crashing and burning big time in this endeavor. Shannon and I prayed together and felt God was leading us to sell the clinic and move our family of 3 kids to either Colorado or my home state of Ohio. We thought the process would take 1- 2 years. A day later we found a buyer for my clinic! A couple months after that I found an animal hospital in Woodland Park to purchase. Soon after we put our house on the market and it sold within 3 days for significantly more than our asking price. I’m not so naïve as to think that God makes things easy for us, far from it, but this time he did. I thought it would be 2 years before I would be back in the mountains of Colorado. Instead, I found myself summiting Pikes Peak by the Crags route just a few short months later while I trained for Rainer.
Alan and I met up with the remainder of our group that we coined “The Rainier 9” in Washington in July, 2004. We did our one day climbing school with RMI then started for the summit the following day. After a restless night of sleep in the Camp Muir hut I found myself out on the Ingraham Glacier under a star-filled sky at 1 a.m. roped to three other men and surrounded by the other members of the “9”. Why was I there? I had a wife, 3 children and a new business to care for. What was I thinking?!? Still, I felt drawn to continue climbing Rainier. I started to struggle with doubts as I looked up at the head lamps of other climbers far above us on the Disappointment Cleaver, the crux of the climb. I thought back to the countless hours training on the stair master and elliptical and how constantly I repeated one of my favorite scriptures, Phillipians 4:13, “In him who is the source of my strength I have strength for all things.” Each time I struggled with doubts about my ability to summit I would repeat the verse. As I neared the top of the Cleaver I started to feel stronger and far from tired. At the top of the DC our group of nine sat down in the snow and took in the sunrise. I was in the midst of this cold and hostile glacier environment when the sunrise started to warm my face … and I felt the hand of God. A few thousand feet below I struggled with terrible doubts about whether I had what it took to even get this far. Now I could taste the summit. As our three rope lines pushed higher I kept repeating Phillipians 4:13 and before long I was standing on top of the snow-covered crater of a volcano at 6:30 in the morning. I had dreamt of this moment from the time Alan put the thought in my mind a year before on Grays and Torreys back in what was now my new home of Colorado. Two years before I was huddled in my tent, hypothermic and dehydrated, in the boulder field of Longs Peak. Now I had summited what many refer to as America’s “mini-Everest.” I knew that the grace and strength that God gave me to summit the longest endurance climb in the lower 48 would stay with me in a transcendent way. It was not an experience that was over and done with in three short days, but an adventure that lives with me to this day and beyond. “Bring me a higher love. I could rise above on a higher love.”
I went home to Colorado and started to think, what’s next? What was going on inside of me that was drawing me to mountains with such force. That summer I climbed 5 new 14ers, then took up snowboarding with my son when winter set in. It wasn’t that I was looking for the next adrenaline rush. I just desired to be outside and keep growing in this experience of whatever was going on inside of me.“I will wait for it. I’m not too late for it. Until then, I’ll sing my song to cheer the night along.”
My parents had visited that fall and my mom chased me around a bookstore with a copy of John Eldredge’s Wild at Heart, telling me that I needed to read it. To appease her I bought the book and let it sit on the shelf for a number of months. I picked it up that December and did not put it down. Finally, all that I started to desire years before while biking on the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal started to make sense. Why was I so drawn to the wild? Why did I enjoy shivering in a tent pitched on a 12,000 foot high boulder field? Why did I love climbing a treacherous ridge called Disappointment Cleaver roped to three other men? Why?
Through the pages of Wild at Heart I started to discover why. Eldredge so eloquently writes that God did not create us to be just good men who go to church each Sunday and attend picnics after the service, only to restart the daily grind the following Monday. That kind of life is why Thoreau wrote that so many men lead “quiet lives of desperation” or as Eldredge writes, “resignation.” He writes that God created our hearts to live lives of freedom and love and to experience all that he created for us here on the Earth. He writes that our hearts are created good, first and foremost, contrary to what many Christians believe and wrongly teach that our hearts are “desperately wicked.”“I could light the night up with my soul on fire. I could make the sun shine from pure desire.”
What about the heart of a man? What is it that we desire? Eldredge writes that at the core of our hearts we desire a battle to fight, an adventure to live and a beauty to fight for. I started to ask what that meant for me?
The battle I fight is in so many different parts of my life. As for the mountains, I battle myself more than I fight a hill. I have grown away from thinking that I can conquer a mountain. Rather, the more mountains I summit the more they humble me. They are there and have stood the test of time and are far from influenced by my ability to reach their summits. They are there as mighty bastions of God’s creation and they humble me as nature should. Can I change the weather on any given day that I climb? Can I make their summits any lower? No, they humble me. I do not battle against a mountain, but myself. I overcome my weakness and gain a sense of determination and accomplishment from the grace God gives me to keep climbing higher. This carries over so deeply and far into the spiritual realms of my life. The grace that I gain on a mountain allows me to battle the sin of my life, great that it is, and overcome it more and more. It makes me a better man, a better husband and a better father.
What is the adventure that we desire to live as men? Does God call us to go from one adrenaline rush to another to satisfy some longing in our hearts? Certainly not, but many men do. It is easy for us to hop from one high to the next and try to find fulfillment in it, only to leave our hearts empty. Still, we crave adventure. Deep in our hearts we desire to be in wild places. For me that is in the mountains. I love to be on an exposed snow covered ridge that falls to each side and be hit with a blast of wind. It simply stirs my soul. I stop and recall how the Psalmist wrote, “God makes the clouds His chariot and he walks on the wings of the wind.” (Psalm 104:3) We need to be in nature as men. I believe that ultimately, that is where we find God. St. Augustine wrote that, “Our hearts are restless until they rest in God.” For me that “rest” comes in the adventure of the mountains. They make me come alive and it carries into my life as a husband, father and friend. I desire to bring my family and friends into that adventure. Yes, I want to share the mountains with them and have us draw together in the hills. More so, I want that to carry over into our daily lives; to live a life of freedom and adventure where we are living for each other and not ourselves.
What is the beauty that I find myself fighting for in the mountains … and in my life? Yes, protecting the environment is worth fighting for. God gave it to us to preserve and cherish. It is in nature perhaps where we experience the presence of God the most. However, I find myself fighting for a beauty that reaches so far beyond just a Greenpeace cause. I recently climbed the Colorado 14ers Mt. Harvard and Mt. Columbia with Alan and our close friend, Robert. We did a grueling traverse between the two peaks. As I approached the summit of Harvard I felt less than whole. I simply was not 100%. I thought about not doing the traverse and calling it a day after Harvard. Then what I call the “sigh of the mountains” came over me. I reclined against a smooth rock on the summit of Harvard basking in the early morning sunlight and looked back over Horn Fork Basin that we had climbed through. Its beauty struck me to the core of my heart. The sun had risen over the ridge between the two peaks and was bathing the basin in its light. The deep green came out of the morning shadows and reminded me of the many Colorado basins and gulches and meadows that I have been so blessed to climb and hike through. It called my thoughts back to the green of the Burren Way in Ireland. I looked back over the basin and I simply sighed. I struggle to put into words how that “sigh of the mountains” reaches down into my heart, but I know that it is the heart of God touching me. I come just a few steps closer, as a pilot once wrote, to “slipping the surely bonds of Earth and touching the face of God” and I sigh deeply. It is the sigh that you want to let out when reading Shakespeare or hearing a concerto by Haydn. It is the sigh you let out when listening to Van Morrisons “Moondance” at your favorite Irish pub while sipping a Black and Tan and watching the Guinness stay above the ale. It is the sigh you let out when you experience the beauty that God has given us to cherish out of his whimsical joy, whether just for a moment or for a moment that stretches into eternity. This is the beauty that a man wants to fight for. For me I see it not just in the mountains, but in the eyes of my wife, my children, my closest friends and my parents as they age and move closer to the other side of eternity. The beauty is never just in the mountains, but the mountains bring me closer to the beauty of the people I love the most.
So this is my story of how I have found God in the mountains and have drawn closer to him. As I stated earlier it is not a “How To” article. It is simply my story. While writing it I have realized all the more that it is not me who pursues God in the hills, but God who pursues me. Though the mountains I climb are massive, they are just one small part of his creation that he so deeply desires to share with me and it is only the beginning of my walk with him in life.
I want to climb higher and higher. Perhaps someday I will stand on the summit of peaks like Orizaba, Denali or Aconcogua. There have been many cold nights that I have fallen asleep dreaming of Everest. I see myself waking in my tent on the South Col, going over the Balcony, South Summit and the Hilary Step to finally stand on top of the world. Still, I may just find myself on a Colorado 14er or struggling through a crisis of life with the people I love, but as Eldredge so profoundly ends Wild at Heart, God tells us that together, “We are climbing Everest.”
“The glory of God is man fully alive.” – St. Irenaus
Climb On!
Patrick
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