Tag: Outdoors

adventure, Camping, canoeing, Faithful Living, God, Lessons from the Wilderness, Outdoor Adventures, Uncategorized, wilderness, Wilderness Paddling, wisdom

I Wish I May, I Wish I Might…

This Side of the River

At the canoe shows, I like to watch people who stop to admire my husband’s and his brother Hugh’s Sea Wind canoes. These hardy vessels were both built by the famous Michigan paddling pioneer Verlen Kruger. The boats have handsome lines and a certain robust utility about them, and have rightly earned their reputation as having “cavernous storage and bombproof construction.”[1] They can even be joined with a cross arm for catamaran sailing on windy days. Some of the folks-usually men- are seasoned and avid paddlers, and the conversation wags excitedly back and forth around paddle characteristics, dry bags, portage-ability, steering, and stowage. But, by far, most of the people who stop by simply stare at the canoes with their bright yellow sail with what always transmits as a deep longing.

I resonate with that feeling of “I wish I may, I wish I might…” For one, the Sea Wind is a one-man canoe, so I cannot trip along with the men unless I get my own boat. For another, the boats weight 70 pounds, and the gear upwards of 200-300 pounds. I cannot physically carry that much on portage, and the first rule of wilderness adventure is that the group is as weak as its weakest member. More importantly though, the brothers’ yearly adventure trips are wilderness getaways that they’ve shared for 30 years or more, a time so sacred to their deep relationship that I really have no right to intrude. It’s okay, though. We all still paddle together plenty of other times each year.

No, the longing I observe is of the person who wants to be more than a casual weekend paddler who haunts the canoe shows. Who yearns to seek out true wilderness and pit him/herself against the fickle elements of nature, to share the nighttime stars with the moose and the bear. This person wants to do exactly what the brothers do, but can never get past the dreaming.

In all my years as a college professor and academic advisor, I had certain students with the same problem-they thought they wanted something quite badly, but simply could not summon the wherewithal to do what it took to make it happen. The biggest impediment was almost always their lack of confidence that they could, in fact, do this thing. As a result, they took few risks, settled too early, failed to do the hard work required, and missed out on a lot of life’s adventures. Of course, this same lack of confidence holds any of us back in myriad situations. We won’t risk the adventure of a job change, a move out of state, or going back to school to finally study the one thing we always loved. We long for a change we haven’t the grit to embrace and see through to its rewarding end.

I have to say that I think God himself is a risk taker.

He risked becoming a man in order to put the world back to rights. He certainly takes risks on us every day. The Bible is FULL of fragile people God bet on when they thought they couldn’t; just take a look at the weak-kneed lives of Moses, Jonah, and Peter. But, God equips us in every endeavor to which he calls us. And this is the secret: the strength is never our own, but God’s! What have you always wanted to do, felt called to do, but were afraid to try? Maybe it’s time to get in the boat, stop wishing and start paddling!

I wish I may, I wish I might, have the strength to start tonight.

~J.A.P. Walton

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Verlen Kruger

Quiet Water Symposium

[1] Phil Peterson. All Things are Possible: the Verlin Kruger Story: 100,000 miles by Paddle. Adventure Pulbications. Cambridge, MN. 2006. p.257.

Accomodation, Affirmation, Camping, Close Quarters, Uncategorized

The Buck Snorts of Life

This Side of the River

One intent of this blog is to challenge us to live life fully… grace-fully, wonder-fully, hope-fully.  Because being around the Walton brothers is such a hoot, I hope to experiment with using humor to face our challenges with this grace, wonder, and hope.  Here’s to first attempts!

My husband Mark and his younger brother Hugh have been paddling their sea canoes in the wilds of the north for over 25 years. For most of those years the brothers always shared a small tent. Mark will readily tell you that his brother snores. Not the little snips and snorts of a sleepy tongue relaxing at the back of the mouth, but the giant, gaping, mawing croaks that sound like an angry and randy buck. If you have spent much time around deer, you know about the buck snort. It’s a cross between a loud grunt, a sneeze, and a bawl.  Earplugs don’t begin to help Mark with Hugh’s buck-snorting antics. The noise keeps him awake through the watches of the night, as he lies there rigidly, imagining the tent looking like a flimsy lung inhaling through his brother’s open mouth, followed by a cracking and whiffling forced expulsion of air out his face. Snuffle in. Snort out. All the blessed night long.

Mark has tried pushing Hugh over. Turns out a true buck-snorter can snort as well on his stomach as his back. Each morning he awakes refreshed and looking forward to his coffee, while Mark groggily assess how much sleep he did, or did not actually get. Why it took over twenty years for Mark to start bringing his own tent-pitched as far from his brother’s as the campsite will allow-is something for the psychologists to study. In the end, Hugh’s snoring is likely why they’ve had so little trouble in camp with bears.

We who live intimately with other people know firsthand the little, but many annoyances that intrude on day-to-day life. The power of love in such relationships is to learn to accommodate with grace.

It is the most basic premise of hospitality to accommodate. And it is always your choice: you can either affirm or infirm those you love with your gestures and words (and the tone you use). You can be grandly grace-filled, or you can belittle. One builds, the other tears down.

Take a look at your closest relationships. Can you accommodate the little annoyances without taking offense? Without self-importance? It means to make room for somebody, to be obliging, to tolerate with sacrificial humility. I am not saying you must become a doormat- sometimes the solution is to get another tent! But for most of us, it is just like being in your sleeping bag; it may be time to roll over and cherish the one you’re with, no matter how loud the snorting.

~J.A.P. Walton

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adventure, Life's Storms, Orienteering, Outdoor Adventures, Saint David, Serving Others, Technical Climbing, Uncategorized, Wales, White Water Paddling, wisdom

Saint David, the Wilds of Wales, & Doing the Little Things

This Side of the River

March 1st is Saint David’s Day. My family has always celebrated it with pride, and not a little relief that the winter months are behind us. My great-grandmother was an immigrant from Wales in the 1880’s. Her father left the poverty-stricken slate mines of north Wales to settle in eastern Iowa as a farmer. Nearly one hundred years later, I found myself a student at Trinity College in south Wales where I could study Welsh (a difficult, guttural language to be sure). My other classes were Russian History, Outdoor Pursuits, and Chorale, because when you are in Wales, you must sing!

It was the OP class that captured my heart. Over 12 weeks, we learned technical climbing on the steep western cliffs facing the Irish Sea, whitewater kayaking in the wild, foaming rivers of Wales, hiking up the brooding mountains of the north, and the sport of orienteering. It challenged me physically, and I learned quickly to trust ~ my peers, the ropes, the kayak, and the compass. When we live with our petty suspicions about the motives and nature of others, it is wonderfully freeing to learn, experientially, that trust is a virtue to be cultivated.

My brother is named after Saint David, who was a teacher and a monk in the 6th century. Native Welsh, Saint David established Christian enclaves throughout the country. He was no stranger to challenges, and it was his faith that led him on as he shared the gospel with Atlantic pirates and poor Welsh villagers alike.

His trust in God never wavered. On his deathbed, he admonished people to be joyful, to keep their faith, and do the little things in life.

In future posts, I will describe the thrill of running rapids, racing through deep snow to find the orange control flags at an orienteering competition, and rappelling down the steep sea cliffs in a wildly beautiful, breathtaking country. But today is Saint David’s Day, March 1, and I am thinking about “doing the little things” that, when added up, make for a life of meaning and service…things like sharing a meal, sitting with the sick, imprisoned, or widowed, taking on extra at work so a co-worker can get a break, driving your car without ranting at other drivers, keeping your space neat so people don’t have to live with your mess. Joining folks in their sorrow. Saying thank you.

It’s rarely about the thrill, is it? Life is about trusting God that he made you to lighten the burden of other people. It takes trust to step backwards off a high cliff. To paddle over a waterfall, or to run in deep snow after hidden clues. But to trust in God is so much grander. It means that all will be well, even as waters pour over our heads, even as we slip and fall, even as we persist in the mundane. The secret is in staying focused on the little things of life! Happy Saint David’s Day!   Dydd Gŵyl Dewi Hapus!

~ J.A.P. Walton

Photo Credit: Google images (because mine are all slides!) My chorale class sang a Christmas Concert here on a cold, snowy evening in December 1978.  For more information about Wales, see here: Wales | History, Geography, Facts, & Points of Interest | Britannica.com      Wales travel guide

Backpacking, Costa Rica, Creation, Faithful Living, God, Hope, Lessons from the Wilderness, Outdoor Adventures, Outward Bound, Rainforest, Trees, Uncategorized, wilderness, wisdom

Lessons from the Rain Forest

This Side of the River

I turned 46 the month I led a group of college students on an Outward Bound trip through the Costa Rica rainforest. Twenty year olds can go all day on enthusiasm alone, but my middle-aged middling fitness brought multiple challenges, the least of which was just keeping pace with my students.

The rainforest is as unforgiving as it is beautiful. On the first day, we hiked UP for 4 straight hours in a relentless rain that made the 90 degree heat unbearable. (Most people don’t even know that Costa Rica has high mountains with rugged wilderness terrain, and that you can easily get altitude sick and lost in the same day). Everything inside of me was, as the Brits say, upsot. Lungs desperate for air, sweat joined to raindrops with nowhere to evaporate, leg and back muscles screaming for relief from the 50 pound pack. Hot spots on both heels you pray are not becoming blisters. All while the young ones traipsed with joyful abandon happily shouting out lines from the Princess Bride movie.

It was hard for me to get outside of my own physical misery long enough to appreciate the stillness, the deep emerald greenness in a fine mist that nearly assaults the senses, the cheerfulness of my companions to finally be underway, and the teeming, fecund, inconceivable LIFE at every turn. Sapphire-tinged moths as big as your hand. Armies of leaf-cutting ants-whole platoons of them winding their way through the jungle, carrying, like me, a heavy load with unwavering duty. Cockroaches as fat as mice. Birds singing. Birds winging. Birds, birds, birds!

In matters of faith, it takes a willful choosing to be outwardly focused. To look at this hurting world with compassion and care even when we ourselves are hurting is, I think, the most difficult, and stridently unnatural thing that God calls us to do. The secret is in the abandon. The giving over in order to give out. To give out and not give up.

 Much of what Outward Bound teaches is how to keep going in the face of physical challenge, and how to embrace a physical challenge that you know will bring pain, tears, doubts, and, always, the bedeviling whisper that you can’t go another step. What God teaches is that there is a strength from unwavering belief that no man, certainly no devil can match. And it is true for all of our difficulties. In the midst of life’s wilderness of hurt, fear, doubt and misery, God is there to be our strength, our immovable rock. But, only if we let Him. Climb on, and BELIEVE that you need never climb alone. It is INCONCEIVABLE!

~J.A.P. Walton

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(more posts about the Costa Rica experience are in the offing, stay tuned. Oh, and lest you think me wimpy, on Day 2 of this trip a student asked if he could take something from my pack to lighten my load.  I was so grateful!  Only later, on the plane home, would I read his reaction in his trip journal:  “I took Dr. Walton’s food sack on the 2nd day to help her out.  HOLY CRAP!! It was heavy!”

 

 

canoeing, Creation, death, Faithful Living, God, Lessons from the Wilderness, Outdoor Adventures, Uncategorized, wilderness, Wilderness Paddling, wisdom

The Tired Barn

This Side of the River

“When God established the force of the wind
and measured out the waters,
when he made a decree for the rain
and a path for the thunderstorm,
then he looked at wisdom and appraised it;
he confirmed it and tested it.
And he said to the human race,
“The fear of the Lord—that is wisdom,
and to shun evil is understanding.” Job 28: 25-28

Wilderness paddlers never underestimate how much time and effort it takes to get afloat on a wild river untouched by man. That is because everywhere people go, there is ample evidence of repeated assaults on the natural environment. It is part of our conquering DNA I suppose, of a deep, inner impulse to remake, refashion, and call it “mine”. Although this drive to create is God-given, we often do so with egotistical abandon, unwisely usurping the title and glory of the Creator. Just visit ruins though-the great pyramids, the Acropolis, Petra, Stonehenge-all manmade things built in a race to command and control, intimidate and dominate. Even these are only temporary. The re-engineered rivers, the cement kingdoms we call home, and the miles of coastline we’ve tamed will, all too soon, crack, decay and return to the earth as surely as we do, victims of fire, flood, neglect, and time.

Not far from the Mississippi River there is a barn on a hill in western Illinois that has, at least in our lifetime, stood proud, defiant in the face of stinging northwest winds, its bones leached by decades of relentless summer sun. Sixty years ago it was a robust symbol of the agricultural subjugation of the vast prairies. We drove by it last week, and found instead a tired, sagging structure with sun streaming through multiple holes in the roof-only one generation left until it returns to dust.

Take a good, long look across the River of this life. We too are simply time-warped dust while God stands outside of time, unchanging, and all wise. We paddlers are apt to seek out the remotest rivers to escape into unsullied nature, and the beauty of what we encounter always hushes our hearts and makes our spirits soar. But, we are mistaken if we worship nature instead of the Creator who made it all. Everything but God is a tired, old barn. Wisdom alone knows what counts.

~J.A.P. Walton

Please leave your comments and suggestions.  I am happy to dialogue and debate with you!  Thank you for reading.