Growing up, my family spent a lot of time together with extended family. I lived in the same town as my dad's brother and his family, another of his brother's lived just a few towns over, and my mom's parents were in the next city over. One of my aunts, my dad's sister, lived four hours away though, so we typically planned those visits over parts of summer or other vacations. I think that is where my love of nature began - on those hot, dusty drives through the Sierra Nevada mountains.
Whenever I hear cricket chirpings, I am immediately transported back in time, to dry, hot summer evenings in my aunt's home in Nevada. Their home didn't have central air, so those nights were spent on the floor in my cousin's room, the window open, a fan oscillating, the gossamer curtains fluttering in the occasional wind. Moonlight spilled onto my pillow, filtered only slightly by the thin fabric window treatment. The crickets would serenade for hours, the whole house asleep, extra full with all the visitors, and eventually the heat of the desert day would fade into the cool, yet heavy, night. I was probably only awake for a few minutes, but to me, those silver moments were long and mystical.
Moonlight paints everything in strange, alien shades, much the same way snow can transform any landscape into a glittering plain of diamonds. Foreign, yet still familiar, as certain shapes are remembered and compared to their day-lit counterparts. I loved bathing in that soft, white light. When I was younger I even used to orient my pillow to be in the moonbeams for as long as possible. Since then I have heard the old lore that sleeping in moonlight will lead to lunacy. That must simply mean most of us have spent at least some time in moonglow.
With all our modern conveniences of central air and heating, pest control and air filters, I think we tend to forget what it is like to be touched by nature. Don't get me wrong, I would just as soon forget about mosquitoes. When I was younger, I could wake up out of a dead sleep if I heard one of them nearby. One time in my high school science class, we were playing with tuning forks, and one of my classmates tried to sneak up behind me with a vibrating fork. My highly attuned mosquito-deflecting reflexes were such that I nearly smacked him in the face with my flailings.
I think those reflexes stayed with me for some time after my parents got central air in our house, though. I was bit by a deer fly once while hiking, and I was so ANGRY at the pain that when I swatted at my injured calf, I managed to kill the offending fly. I also smeared blood all over, but I did feel better for having slaughtered the pest!
Yet for all that, I still love pine and redwood forests. I spent at least nine weeks of summer, over the course of my life, in the woods. Most of my time camping was as a participant in my church's "Girl's Camp," for the girls ages 12 to 18. For most of the campers, this was their first time away from home, and it was very often their first opportunity to ask questions about God and their religion. I loved the program so much I came back as some sort of leader for three years past the norm, and I attended my cousin's Nevada girl's camp for at least two summers.
The best faith-building experience I recall at one of these camps involved a day hike, a mountain stream, and a pair of glasses. I was a youth leader for some twelve-year-old girls (the groups were called "nests" and each nest had an adult counselor with one or two teenage "junior" counselors), and part of our challenge that week included a day trek into the woods. Most of us wore swimsuits for splashing in the stream where we would lunch before heading back to camp, and the icy clear water was a welcome reward for our dusty hike. Unfortunately, in her excitement, one of the girls went all the way under the water, not realizing the current was strong enough to rip the glasses right off her face.
The rest of the afternoon was spent with us searching for the girl's glasses. She was so upset, fearing the reprimands from her parents for losing such an expensive item. But I, the expert in mountaineering from having read "My Side of the Mountain" so many times, I was determined to retrieve them. Keep in mind, however, despite the clear water, it was extremely hard to see the bottom of the rocky stream, even though it was just a couple feet deep at the most. Shapes and shadows get bent and distorted in water.
After some time of everyone searching carefully, but being tricked by the sun glinting on the moving water, most people gave up the search. It was almost time to start heading back. The idea came to me, however, to try and get a better idea of where the water would have carried her glasses. I borrowed another girl's glasses and firmly knotted them to some string, then stood where the girl thought she first stepped into the stream. I dropped the second pair of glasses into the water, keeping a tight grasp on the string, and watched as they drifted down into the current.
I reached my hand down, following the string, feeling around for any signs of glasses. Just as the last girls were leaving to get back on the trail, I felt something. I pulled out my prize, disbelieving but triumphant! I had managed to find her glasses! (And for the record, we didn't lose the second girl's glasses.) For that young lady, who I am sure was praying just as fervently as I was, she received her very own witness that Heavenly Father cares about one of his daughters retrieving her lost glasses.
There is a stillness in nature that we tend to forget, a largeness to life that makes one feel small and insignificant, yet still incredibly grateful to be alive and have the senses necessary to experience it all. The forest isn't necessarily less noisy than the city, however, what with all the animal activity in the day, and the rustling, rooting of the nocturnal creatures.
But if you are lucky enough to camp somewhere that has smaller hills in the area, and it is a clear night, you can hike up to some higher point and listen to a different sort of stillness. Imagine the tops of the tall, needled trees, swaying, shushing in a rhythm reminiscent of the vast ocean, all color washed out in the pale moonlight. It is a sound and a smell unlike any other (except, of course, for that of other, similar forests).
With flashlights dimmed, the Milky Way appears in stardust strewn glory, and the vastness of the night sky reveals itself over the stretch of sleeping giants, nodding and waving their needled arms in the rocking wind. It is a beauty meant to be shared, and those I have gone camping with will not soon be forgotten.
No comments:
Post a Comment