Life has never been normal

Gird up your loins and get serious

Of course I’m going to write about my hike today, and it won’t solve a single problem in the world. With all the awful things that we have witnessed in the last few weeks, of which I have nothing new to say, a hike will not cure anything but it may scrub my brain a little bit.

One thing about living in this new place is that I cannot really just go for a walk, like I used to. We are at nearly the top of a mountain. If I walk down to the mailbox, it’s a quarter mile hike back up to the house and a rise of about 300 feet according, to my watch. My other option is to hike up through the forest on a thin deer trail, to the dirt road that will take me even higher. Both options are great and I love them, but sometimes I just want an easy amble to think and process and breathe new air, and each direction here requires me to “gird up my loins” and get serious.

This morning I decide to get serious and go up into the woods. Scout waits warily at the front door, checking to see if I’m getting in the car to leave her or actually taking her for a hike. When she sees me cross the driveway to where the forest is our front yard, she bounds out the door into the woods ahead of me. She knows the shortcut already so I follow her, avoiding the open spring with the log-crossing that requires the balance and eyesight I had 10 years ago. No amount of girding or seriousness has helped me see better on the trail.

We follow a short path up through the sword ferns and vine maple, around Douglas fir and sugar pine trees. To our right the mountain drops off into wildness. I am eye-level with the tops of ancient trees. I hear intermittent crashes, things falling or, I imagine, being thrown from the tops of trees to the forest floor below—squirrels, I tell myself. I don’t wear earbuds here because it feels so wild and I want to be alert. I don’t know this place well yet, don’t know where the last cougar was sited or if the bears are friendly and keep to themselves. I know they are here, but do they care that I am here, too?

I have my pistol with me, like always. I’m telling you that because it feels relevant today. I carry a weapon when I hike because I know that not every bump and crash in the woods is a harmless squirrel or deer. There really are wild things and I really do need to be prepared. But a gun is a whole can of worms—not only to some of you, but to me, as well. I have opinions that most people in my circle don’t hold, about the unnecessary ubiquity¹ of guns and especially the kind that can hold multiple rounds of ammunition and kill at 200 yards. This is a conversation, not a statement. I live on multiple sides of the discussion and I carry a gun when I walk in the woods.

When we reach the top of the trail and come out onto the road, the path is still precarious. This is not a well-used road. It is overgrown and rutty, and the rain has made everything sticky.

Scout cares zero bits about anything in the way, she is just so happy to be out on her adventure. She disturbs some quail in the bushes and stops to point them out to me, lithe and attentive and unable to hurt a thing with all her nervous energy and lack of malice. There have been two instances in her 8 years of life where I have seen her respond to what she perceived as a threat towards me or Tim with some sense of protection, and both times she surprised me with her aggression. I hope that she would have my back in the event of a cougar attack, but to birds she is just the minor nuisance of a neon sign, pointing.

The road is thick with trailing blackberry vines, the kind that creep along the ground and grab at your ankles. I’ve made a rookie mistake and worn my short socks today, and my left ankle is lashed. At one point a vine completely wraps itself around my leg— full circle, aggressive, nearly taking me down. It’s as though they are alive, in the sentient sense, and just lying in wait for me to blissfully amble by.

The vines make a lazy metaphor. I untangle myself and wonder what sense it makes to keep trying to do creative things in a world like this. Why read books, write essays, paint pictures or enjoy anything beautiful when evil is rampant and can attack at anytime? To walk for pleasure or do any creative work in the world, this world, feels completely pointless. (I can get pretty existential on a solo hike.)

When I get back home I find my copy of CS Lewis’ The Weight of Glory, and I read again his essay titled “Learning in War-Time”². He is writing to scholars at university during the second world war, assuring them it is still worthy to pursue scholarly things. I’m no scholar, but the gist of his reasoning applies to the writer or artist, or any lover of what might be considered “frivolous” in a time of war.

If men had postponed the search for knowledge and beauty until they were secure, the search would never have begun. We are mistaken when we compare war with “normal life.” Life has never been normal.

Life has never been normal and the lazy metaphor worked for me. There are forces that want to trip me up and they are always lying in wait, but I can’t let them stop me from pursuing truth and goodness and beauty. There is work for all of us; mine might only be to point at beautiful things, but it’s work I’m committed to.

Wherefore gird up the loins of your mind, be sober, and hope to the end for the grace that is to be brought unto you at the revelation of Jesus Christ; 1Pe 1:13 KJV

1. I love words and etymology, and my many years of teaching homeschool Latin only fed this nerdery. Look at this, from etymonline.com: ubiquity(n.) "omnipresence, capacity of being in an indefinite number of places at the same time," 1570s, originally theological (of God, Christ)

2. You can find copies of the essay online but I couldn’t find any assurance that is legal for me to share a link to it ; )