Mountaintops, Getting Lost ... and Found

People have been talking about mountains a lot the last few days. Yesterday in Sunday School someone referred to MLK's "Mountaintop" speech in which he assured his listeners that he had seen the Promised Land and was less concerned about reaching it than he was to do God's will -- for his eyes had seen the Glory of the Coming of the Lord. Cool. Yesterday evening in my book group we talked about the spiritual discipline of wandering -- something that Barbara Brown Taylor refers to as "The Practice of Getting Lost." We also talked about the 40 years of desert wandering of the released captives -- with Moses -- who also saw a glimpse of, but never reached, the Promised Land. One must wonder what took them so long! How lost were they?

Then today my daughter started tagging photos of some mountaintops that we had reached together. She claimed that she was not really homesick; she does, however, want to be home. She has dragged me up a few big hills right here in Virginia -- and in North Carolina. A few years ago, it would have been nothing for me; last year it was painful. This girl is out of shape! But I made it up one of the toughest climbs in central Virginia -- Old Rag. That mountain is popular -- and crowded (reminiscent of Mt. Everest stories). We did experience bottlenecks! and certainly understood that the summit was only half-way. Our goal eluded us as we climbed higher and higher until, at last, we reached the mountaintop. The view of the Shenandoah Valley on the other side was breathtaking -- perhaps not unlike a land of milk and honey. We had already climbed well over 5,000 ft on Grandfather Mountain in North Carolina and stood atop Mt. Mitchell, the highest peak east of the Mississippi at 6,684 ft. Mountaintops.

Back in 2006 our family vacationed on Beech Mountain, NC. The elevation is pretty high up there, too. Our lodge was just about at the top, so there wasn't any "summit'ing" to be done, necessarily, but hiking abounded. We chose a trail and set-out. We happened upon an abandoned golf course project which felt sort of like a ghost town. It was April, so the weather was perfect. We began to wander and enjoy God's creation -- like the spiritual practice. And we did get lost on that mountain. It was fun for a while, but then the sun began to take its trip toward the west and dusk threatened to descend on us. David and I knew that it was going to get cold and that there were plenty of bears on the mountain, so we began to get concerned as we continued to search for signs of the trail. It wasn't as simple as "go down," because our lodge wasn't lower on the mountain -- and it surely would have been possible to find ourselves on the total opposite side of the mountain which had no roads, so no people -- only forest. Of course we did find our path -- working together, playing pioneering games, checking the sun's path and looking for landmarks that we had already observed. We have photos of us trailing behind each other, relieved to be wandering out of our wilderness.

David and I became quite lost on Snowbird Mountain in Utah. We were there for a concert and to celebrate our anniversary. There was an event called "Survivors at the Summit," so we took the tramway up from 8,000 feet or so to over 11,000 ft. Many people had chosen to walk up, but we decided that we would walk down. That wasn't a great choice on a couple levels. One way down was a road. How boring! We weren't going to take the road. We were rugged! We soon discovered that we might not really be enjoying this climb downward. An enormous rock field lay between us and smoother terrain. It was incredibly difficult to navigate those large rocks at such a steep decline -- hard on the knees. You had to watch every single step to be certain that you didn't twist an ankle or even break a leg. Again, we started to play a game -- pretending we were descending the Khumbu Icefall on Mt. Everest. We may have already been lost at that point. At least we knew that down was the right direction and that we were on the correct side of the mountain. It was a really, really long and challenging hike down that mountain, albeit humorously dotted with ski lifts here and there. We finally made it down, but our descent was too slow, ultimately, for David, and our ascent had been too fast. He began to develop pretty serious altitude sickness and we almost didn't make it home.

This altitude sickness was very disappointing to David. He had long been a fan of climbing stories. He had read every single biographical piece of the famous climbs of Mt. Everest and the Seven Summits (the highest peaks on each of the continents). He was even invited to climb Kilimanjaro as part of a cancer survivors' climb. Kilimanjaro, the highest peak in Africa, is over 19,000 ft. He had struggled at 11,000 ft, so this was probably an unlikely venture for him, though he still loved to ponder the possibility -- tossing around various acclimatizing methods that might make it possible. I was secretly relieved that he wouldn't be going. I tend to get a bit fearful about the dangers of mountaintops -- like getting lost at dusk, getting trapped in stone fields -- and the agonizing headache and nausea that accompanies altitude sickness.

I wonder why it's such a big deal to get to the top. Does it really so decisively denote achievement? Success? In David's case, survival? Maybe it's just for the vista -- the view of the Promised Land. You still have to turn around and come back down, though -- back down to your regular old life with the same challenges and joys and busy-ness and pleasures that you left behind when you embarked on your journey. Is it so that we continue to exercise our ability to reach a goal? Is it just for physical fitness or the companionship with each other and with nature? To experience true joy that causes us to "Sing to the Lord a new song, his praise from the end of the earth?" Do we climb to wander with the possibility of getting lost? Taylor suggests that the times in our lives that change us for the better are those "wilderness times." She's not necessarily talking about missing the trail blazes ... but, maybe, more about the Amazing Grace kind of lost.

Amazing grace! How sweet the sound That saved a wretch like me. I once was lost, but now am found, Was blind but now I see. Clearly, John Newton believed he had strayed off of his path and was wandering in the wrong direction. Sometimes we're just lost because of fear or of circumstances that send us into downward spirals. That's why I like the third verse: Through many dangers, toils and snares I have already come; 'Tis Grace that brought me safe thus far and Grace will lead me home. Without question, God's grace has brought me out of many wildernesses -- literal mountaintop wildernesses, as well as times of deep sorrow, heartbreak and hopelessness. Sadly, some people remain lost.

Lost River, Natural Bridge, VA

David wrote a song about being lost, of course. I love this gentle song with its twists and turns.

Lost River
Nobody knows where it begins
They cannot find where it ends
But if you're quiet you can hear it rolling by
People come from miles away to hear that water's cry
They call it the lost river as if it doesn't know where to go
Isn't that so typical, a perspective so predictable
We redefine our miracles when they don't fit what we know
Nobody knows where it begins
Though some have searched their whole life long
It's something you can hear, but you may never see
Not unlike the music in this song
They call it the lost river as if it doesn't know where it is
Isn't that so typical, our response to the invisible
The things we cannot find we say are lost
So we disregard the quest and pay the cost
But the river might suggest it is we who are lost
                                                                 ~ David M. Bailey

My daughter has a cool shirt that she got in the Shenandoah National Forest -- It reads: "The mountains are calling and I must go." It is a quote by John Muir, a naturalist and "Father of the National Parks." I think he understood this art of getting lost, getting found ... and all the possibilities along the way.