When you're in the Darkness, the Wilderness, or Climbing the Mountain

I’ve done my time in the darkness.  

Actually, I’ve done several stints in the darkness, and the thing that always gets me about the darkness is that I don’t actually realize I’m wandering around in it until the light begins to break through again.  I’ve been caving once, and, to be perfectly honest with you, I hated it. I’m not entirely sure what it is about crawling into the center of the earth, being cold, feeling constantly damp, and worrying about taking a wrong turn and getting lost forever in the bowels of the earth that actually appeals to people.  For some reason, though, there is this whole population of individuals who seem to think this is an enjoyable pastime.

I found myself on an adventure with some of these people once.  They assured me caving would be exhilarating and enjoyable.

They were wrong.

They assured me I wouldn’t feel like I was going to get swallowed up by the bowels of the earth.

They were wrong.

They assured me I wouldn’t have any moments where I would freak out.

They were wrong.

We were deep in this cave, and I was covered in mud, so I was already in a pretty crummy mood, when we arrived in this “room,” at least that’s what they called it.  After our entire group made their way into this “room,” our guide instructed us all to turn our headlamps off. Okay, so here’s the thing. When I’m on these adventures, I have to be a team player.  I couldn’t be the one person in the group who crossed her arms, tilted her head, looked the guide in the eye, and said, “Hell, no, I’m not turning my headlamp off,” regardless of the fact that I already felt like I was in the depths of Hell!  Nope, I couldn’t do that. So I followed orders like a good little lemming, and I turned my headlamp off.

Complete and utter darkness.

Darkness like I had never experienced before.

The beautiful thing about that complete and utter darkness was that all I had to do was reach up and flip my headlamp on to end it.  One flip of a switch, and I was bathed in light again.

And that’s been my experience with all of my stints in the darkness.  

Life is going along smoothly until a switch is flipped and I find myself stuck in the darkness.  I wish I could say the times I’ve spent in that complete and utter darkness have always been as short-lived as that day in the cave, but they haven’t.  

Some of them have lasted days.

Some of them have lasted months.

Some of them have lasted years.

During all of those stints, I’ve known the switch was there.  I’ve known I just needed to flip it to bathe in the light again, but some days that switch has felt out of my reach, and some months even my best efforts can’t get that switch to budge, and some years, my batteries seem to have gone dead.  

Thankfully, though, God has always provided me with the strength to reach a little higher to find that switch, to send me something to get that switch to budge, or to send me someone with an extra set of batteries.  

I’ve done some time in the darkness.

***

I’ve done some time in the wilderness.

There’s something about Maine that I’ve always just found endearing.  I think it might be because the abbreviation for the state of Maine is ME, and one of the first “state of Maine” shirts I ever saw read “I love ME.”  I scoured every tourist trap shop I passed on my first trip to Maine to find that shirt with no success! Regardless, Maine had my heart immediately.

Maybe it’s the water.

Or the sailboats.

Or the lobster.

Or the sunrises.

Or the adventure.

Maybe it’s all of those things that draw me to Maine, but I went to Maine in June for the adventure.  I spent hours researching Acadia National Park: the trails, the sights, the majesty, the adventure. By the time we arrived in Maine, I knew all of the trails I wanted to hike, the views I wanted to experience, and the adventures I wanted to take.  I had the apps on my phone, the times charted in my notes, and the plan made.

There was one minor detail I did not account for in my planning: the intersection of trails.  I’m not sure how these details slipped past me in my hours of attention to the trail maps, but I completely ignored the fact that certain trails would intersect at various places.  I know what you’re thinking: why does that matter? See, here’s the thing, when I would come upon one of these intersections, I could never just stick to my original plan. It was as if the signs were just taunting me!  I would get to an intersection, see the sign, read the mileage of this other trail I hadn’t planned on taking, and make an impulse decision that we should take that trail too!

Every stinkin’ time.

I got sucked in by the lure of another adventure in the wilderness every time.  And, typically, that worked out for us.

Except this one time.

We had spent the morning sea-kayaking.  Now, I am a pretty experienced kayaker, at least I like to think so, but I have never been sea-kayaking.  I wasn’t really concerned about this, though, because the weather was beautiful and our trip was booked with a reputable company with excellent reviews.  We started out on our adventure without any issues. The sky was a little cloudy, and the water was a little choppy, but it was nothing we couldn’t handle.  

At first.

About 20 minutes into our adventure, the sky clouded over and the wind kicked up and switched directions.  Completely oblivious to the fact that this was not normal, we kept paddling. Soon, the waves were coming over the top of my kayak, the sky was black, and things started to feel as if they were not going to end well.

I think it was about at this point that I started to question the decision to try “sea-kayaking.”  

That decision was further confirmed when I looked over and saw our guide tearing her cover off her cockpit and desperately scavenging for the map of the water.  Trying not to appear panicked, she yelled at us to take a left turn into a cove between a couple of islands.

It was the first calm water we had been on in an hour.  

We all made it into the cove, and the guide told us how well we were doing, how the winds had changed, how this wasn’t the weather that was predicted, and how she had strict instructions to avoid this cove, but for safety purposes, we didn’t have a choice.

What had I gotten myself into?

2 ½ hours later we made it to the pick-up point.

My arms were numb.

BUT, it was only noon, and we had a solid 8 hours of daylight left that I couldn’t bare the thought of squandering!  So, we headed from the exhausting sea-kayaking nightmare to the wilderness of the western side of Acadia. We hiked for four hours, and all was well with the world.

And then I hit one of those intersections.

And it was for a new trail that wasn’t on my app and hadn’t been on my radar.

But it was only a mile and a half.

A mile and a half is nothing.

Right?

We took off on this unplanned hike, a hike that I didn’t have a map for because it was such a new trail that it wasn’t even on the maps!

What could possibly go wrong?

About ¼ mile into the hike, we hit a series of steps built into the side of a mountain.  We were going down them, and I remember thinking how horrible it would be if we were going the other direction and had to hike up them.  I remember thinking how thankful I was that this wouldn’t be our return route because this trail was going to take us to the parking lot where our car was.

Correction: the original trail would have taken us to the parking lot where our car was.

A mile and a half later, we were standing on a road in front of a parking lot that definitely didn’t hold our car.  Have I told you about the cell service in Acadia?

There isn’t any.

I pulled out my map of this side of the park and desperately tried to determine where we were and if this road would take us to our car.  I’m sure you see where I’m going here. It was 5:30 pm at this point. We had kayaked 3-4 hours and hiked 40,000 steps. And we were two miles and about 2000 steps up a mountain away from our car.  

We turned around and started the trek back to the intersection of the trails where I had abandoned my original plan, up the 2,000 steps (and I can assure they were just as bad going up as I had envisioned), cursing my decision to veer off course the entire time.

And I think that’s the thing about the wilderness: no one plans on veering off course and having to backtrack while wandering around in the wilderness.  No, when we’re in the wilderness, our goal is to make it out. We aren’t trying to stay there. We aren’t trying to thrive there. We’re just trying to get out of there.  

Because we’re scared of the wilderness.

Sometimes, though, I think we just have to stop in the wilderness.

And wait.

And listen.

And breathe.

Because the wilderness can actually be a beautiful place.  

There is something surreal and divine about finding yourself in a place untouched, undefiled by human hands.  There’s a closeness and a connection to the Creator when we are standing amongst Creation, relying on him for protection and provision, separated from the outside world, and just being.  

I’ve done some time in the wilderness.

***

I’ve done some time on mountains.

That’s a lie.  

Really, I’ve only “climbed” a mountain once.  

Still…

I’ve technically done some time on a mountain!

Sometimes, I get these ideas, ideas that seem great at the time, but that actually prove to be...challenging.  My mountain experience was one of these ideas. It was another day in Maine that had been filled with challenging hikes, dangerous climbs, and breathtaking views (do you see a pattern here?).   It was our last day, and I was determined to cram as much hiking into the precious daylight as I could.

Now, let me preface this by saying that the most challenging trail in Acadia was closed because it was Peregrine Falcon Nesting season, so I was bummed about that.  But, I shouldn’t have been because I probably would have killed myself on that trail. See, I’m not a skilled hiker. I actually had very little hiking experience before I ever went to Acadia!  Yes, I understand how laughable this is, but for some reason, I seemed to think that I was going to magically turn into this super-technical, absolutely amazing mountain climbing phenom on this 3 day trip to Acadia.  

Delusional.

Completely delusional.

So, really, I’m choosing to believe that God knew I would kill myself on that trail, and He knew the only way to keep me off of it was to close it!  

Obviously, since that trail was closed, I had to find the second most dangerous trail in Acadia and head for it.  

It took us an hour hike to even get to the trailhead, and when we turned off the head-trail to attempt this hike, the people behind us mumbled how we must be crazy.  It didn’t phase me. So, up we went. We hiked for maybe fifteen minutes straight up before we got to an intersection of another trail. Now, you already know what happens when these little signs are right in front of me, taunting me to go another way.  And, this, this was an especially tempting little sign. This sign read “Sargent Mountain: 1.3 miles.” Here’s what I knew about Sargent Mountain: it was the second highest peak in Acadia, second only to Cadillac Mountain, the highest peak north of Rio De Janeiro.  And, the elevation of Sargent Mountain was only 60 feet less than Cadillac Mountain.

I promise I’m not an adrenaline junkie, but something just totally overtakes me in these situations, and I have to take the challenge.  I knew I was climbing Sargent Mountain. And we took off. We took off straight up the 1.5 miles of the mountain. Straight up, literally straight up.

There was a moment, maybe 15 minutes into the climb, where that little voice in my head told me how stupid this was, where it reminded me that I was going to have to come down this mountain too, where it chastised me for doing something that could potentially render my child motherless.  But, I trudged on, hiking for a few minutes, then looking up at the next section I would have to clear, paying attention to where I would put my hands and feet, and thinking through my strategy, knowing all the time I would have to do the same thing coming back down. The first mile was slow-going and just as mentally challenging as it was physically grueling.

Finally, I cleared what I thought was the top of the mountain, only to be met with another .3 miles of granite to climb to reach the summit.  It was beautiful. The sun was shining, and I felt like I could reach out and touch the clouds. I don’t really remember much of that last ¼ of a mile because I was so taken with the beauty of the world around me.

 

Those last few steps to the summit were a challenge of their own.  See, when you get that high, the wind can become ridiculously strong.  It took every bit of concentration and balance I had to pick one foot up, place it down, steady myself, and repeat with the other foot.  I positioned myself on the summit in front of the trail marker and attempted to get my phone out and take a picture. Again, it took every ounce of balance and strength I had to stand on the summit.  My feet were solidly planted, but it still took every bit of strength I had just to stand there.

I’ve done my time on mountains.

***

Sometimes, I think we desperately want to be basking in the sunlight all the time, where the world is bright and life is easy.  There’s nothing more peaceful to me than standing in the sun, closing my eyes, and breathing the world in. Here’s the thing, though: I just don’t think we can truly appreciate the sunlight if we never face the darkness, traverse the wilderness, climb the mountains, and struggle to stay planted on the summits.  

I’m not gonna lie; I like to focus on the highlights of stories.  

I like to think about the resurrected Jesus, not the Jesus who was tempted in the wilderness or on the mountaintop, not the Jesus who was tortured or crucified in the darkness.  

I like to think about the David who killed Goliath, not the David who knocked up not-his-wife Bathsheba in the darkness,  had her husband killed in the wilderness, and traversed the rocky path of watching his son die.

I like to think about the John the Baptist who baptized Jesus in the sunlight, not the John who was kind of a crazy man wandering around in the wilderness.

I like to think of the Noah who built the Ark and saved humanity, not the Noah who got blacked-out drunk and naked in front of his kids in the darkness.

I like to think of the Jonah who saved the Ninevites in the daylight, not the Jonah who ran from God, spent 3 days in the dark belly of a fish, and then suffered underneath the withered up Mustard tree.

I like to think of the Moses who led the Israelites out of Egypt, not the Moses who killed a man, wandered around in the wilderness, and was refused entrance to the promised land because of his anger.  

Do you see a pattern here?

I don’t know what part of your journey you are on, whether you are alone and lost in the darkness, wandering around letting God guide you through the wilderness, going through the grueling climb of the mountain, using all your strength and balancing to keep your feet planted firmly on the summit, or standing outside in the sunlight breathing in the peace and warmth.  But I can assure you of this:

This is only temporary.  

I’ve gone through all of these parts of the journey in the past two years, all of them.  I’ve had months of darkness, months of wilderness, months of the climb, and now, now I’m standing on the summit, feet planted while the wind whips around me.  The summit might seem like a scary place to be, and, honestly, it definitely can be.

Here’s the thing I love about the summit, though: the sunlight is there too.  

There are moments where the wind feels like it is going to blow me right off the mountain.  

There are moments where I know if I even shift my weight one little bit, I will fall.

There are moments where it takes every bit of concentration, balance, and focus to keep my feet firmly planted.

But, during each of these moments, all I have to do is look up, close my eyes, and breathe in the peace of the sunlight.  

Good luck on your journeys, my friends.