THE WOODS ARE LOVELY, DARK, AND DEEP…

This past month has been especially stressful for me, in a number of ways, and I needed a “de-tox day” which I took this past Friday.

As I was driving up to Montgomery, it occurred to me that I hadn’t tramped around the grounds of Talladega National Forest and Cheaha State Park in a long while. So, my day was spent in the woods of north Alabama.

When I was a teacher I, a teacher-buddy and another buddy would take kids camping in and around Lake Chinnabee in Talladega, and sometimes over spring break (in those days, AEA holidays) in Great Smoky National Park, at the North Carolina/Tennessee border. We sometimes hiked parts of the Odom or Pinhoti trails, sometimes fished in the creeks and rivers, sometimes swam in the waters, and generally had a good time being outdoors. It was a relatively easy drive from Montgomery (further, of course, going to the Smokies). But we managed to enjoy the time (and yes, some of the trips were co-ed—separate tents!). This was (obviously) in the days before child-protect standards for chaperones, legal releases, permission forms…

So as I was re-living those days, I remembered how important it was to pay attention to the trail when hiking (and the weather—but the saga of Mt Leconte will remain under wraps for the time being). And on the trails I was walking on Friday there were large numbers of rocks (mini-boulders, really) and tree roots sticking up. Eyes open, people!

They could be seen as obstacles to trip one up, and if a person were not attentive this is exactly what could happen. On the other hand, by paying attention one could easily use those rocks/boulders (most of them securely fixed in the ground) and roots as footholds while hiking uphill or downhill. In either case, they are the same items; how we perceive them and how we use them makes all the difference. [This allusion to Robert Frost is brought to you by the same man who gave the title to this essay.]

How many realities in our lives (physical, spiritual, emotional…) are actually either obstacles or aids, depending on how we approach them? The circumstance of the realities and our encounter with them are the same, regardless—the difference is up to us. I recently solved a crypto-quote that said brick walls are not there to keep us from something but to reveal to us how badly we want something. So they can prevent or facilitate.

I’m not trying to make a huge point out of sayings like “If life gives you lemons…” It’s more than that. In my hiking I’m not changing rocks and roots into something else; I’m seeing what they are, using them as they are, and growing from the process. St Thomas More (6-22 in our liturgical calendar) wrote to his daughter that being imprisoned in the Tower of London by King Henry VIII was perhaps the greatest blessing, spiritually speaking, that the King ever gave him. Cardinal Nguyen Van Thuan of Vietnam, imprisoned for the Faith by the communists for years, said pretty well the same thing. What are the roots/rocks in our path? Do we see them as obstacles or helps? What really helps us grow spiritually—ease or striving, being oblivious or being attentive? Welcome to orld of St Ignatius Loyola and his “consciousness examen”!