Date: March 5, 2017
1
“WELCOMING WILDERNESS”
SCRIPTURE: GENESIS
2:15
–
17; 3:1
–
7
; MATTHEW 4:1
–
11
GRACE COVENANT PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH, ASHEVILLE, NC
March 5, 2017
The Rev. Dr. Marcia Mount Shoop, Pastor
The Peace of Wild Things, Wendell Berry
When despair for the world grows in
me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not
tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day
–
blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
One person’s wilderness is another person
’s Garden of Eden.
Both places of temptation, both places of mysterious wisdom, both places wher
e we
learn what we are made of and
are
reminded of our place in the scheme of things.
Wilderness can restore harmony and generate dissonance. Welcoming it
may come
easy or be hard won
—
either way, the wildnerness
teaches us what it will.
Utah’s canyon lands look like the moon.
Enormous rocks stacked by the ages teetering and standing guard as if giants once
played with the terrain.
The landscape seems
otherworldly
—
even as it calls us human beings to a primal
groundedness.
Camping there was an adventure my friend Tara and I carefully planned and eagerly
anticipated for months.
We drove the
re from New Mexico to arrive at
first light of the morning.
W
e stopped
at the ranger station for maps and to tell them where we
would be camping in the
backcountry
—
and
what day we planned on coming out.
2
We strapped on our backpacks and began our walk into the wilderness. It was a
beautiful
day
—
bright sun and the o
ranges and browns of the rocks
invited us to
keep walking
—
past where we had told the ranger we would set up camp.
We were young and perhaps foolish
—
but most of all, we were in awe of this rugged
pl
ace. So, we kept going, following trails marked by stacke
d rocks,
and
eventually we
found a beautiful place to pitch our tent.
It felt good to set up camp, to
prepare ourselves a meal under the stars, and to listen
to the night sounds of this ethereal
place
.
It was a good day.
The sound of thunder in the c
anyon lands rattles your bones
—
the sound vibrated
the ground and bounced from the rocks
—
reverberating for what seemed like
minutes at a time. We slept very little while we listened to the unexpect
ed storm.
The rain sounded heavy and strange
.
This is befo
re cell phones or GPS or weather apps. So, we just listene
d and waited
.
And morning
ushered us into what would be days of
disorientation and
determination. That epic storm had been snow, not rain, and the intricacy of the
canyon landscape was now a tota
l white out. We could not see anything
—
no trails,
no markers, no
horizon
to give us our bearings.
We weren’t getting out of there any time soon and no one was getting to us either.
Our welcome to the wilderness became a harsh initiation into wildernes
s wisdom.
Our first decision was not to overstep our bounds
—
we needed to stay put and wait
for some kind of clearing
—
either in the sky or in snow melt
. We took a
n inventory
of our food, we passed
the time seeing how many songs to sitcoms we could
remember.
We talked about our lives and our unknown futures. We talked about
what ke
pt us going and what tempted us to give up.
And we waited.
After a couple of days, the landscape began to reappear. Most of the trails were s
till
covered, so we made the decision
to follow a map to try and
try to
get to a jeep trail
about 3 miles away
.
After we made it to the jeep trail, w
e estimated we had 3 hours
of daylight to walk what was probably 6 more miles to get to our car.
The jeep trail
ran out. The map we had was wro
ng. We tried backtracking and looking for a
different trail.
It was getting dark. We needed to find a place to sleep. We hadn’t seen any people
for days. Out of nowhere, a man’s voice spoke to us from the sh
adows.
“Where are we?” I asked. “Devil’s Kit
chen,” he said.
