Meet Yourself
I walked into the forest with the same feeling of uncertainty that had led me to nearly cancel this solo backpacking trip. I had waffled all week even as I prepped stuff to get ready to go. My foot and knee had inflamed tendons for which I was reentering physical therapy the following Monday and yet here it was, Friday morning, and I’d strapped all twenty-eight pounds of my pack to my back, and was striding away from the trailhead.
I had been saying all week that maybe I shouldn’t go because of my knee and foot, but the day before I was supposed to leave I realized that if I was planning to meet someone, I wouldn’t have canceled. My inflammation wasn’t that bad, and I wouldn’t have scuttled two people’s plans. So I decided I was going to go out that weekend after all and meet myself.
I found my stride, a bit slower than usual, but there was no need to rush. I got a half mile or so down the trail and a feeling of elation came over me. I was exactly where I was supposed to be. I passed a few people in the first couple of miles and exchanged passing greetings, but after I took turn onto the longer trail headed out to the campsite that is furthest from all trailheads at Savage Gulf State Park here in Tennessee, I saw no one. I had almost seven more miles alone with my thoughts and the old growth forest out on the plateau.
But I didn’t feel alone. All the seasonal streams were running again, and even though it was mid February, I could feel the trees waking up, the sap coursing in their veins as they prepared to leaf out once again. Distant rustling spoke to me of squirrels hard at play or work. It’s hard to tell with squirrels sometimes, they bounce and hop no matter what they’re doing so even their work looks playful. One chattered at me from above my head. I’m never sure if they’re hollering at me to get out of their space, or just greeting me as a passerby.
My crunching footfalls flushed a deer that had been hanging out near the trail and she flashed her white tail towards me and leapt away.
I moved through several stands of holly and began to feel as though the forest was suddenly creepy. I examined the feeling and realized that I was hungry. I found a flat spot and pulled my lunch out of my pack. Refueled, I continued on my way, and all at once the forest was friendly again. I sauntered onward wondering how often bodily needs like hunger color my vision in the rest of my life, but it’s harder to see because there is just so much going on.
Between my lunch stop and picture breaks, it took me nearly five hours to get to my campsite. I had been without the company of people for most of that, and so I was surprised as I rounded the corner near the campsites and found two men playing music from a portable speaker, drinking beer, and sitting at the overlook. I surprised them as I came up behind them, they hadn’t been paying attention, I guess, or the music masked my footsteps.
“Hey,” I said, surprised that it felt difficult after the profound silences of the forest.
We exchanged the bare minimum of small talk and I continued on to my campsite. Even in the winter, the sites are far enough apart you can barely see the other tents, so except for the occasional far-off voice, or clink of tent poles being untangled, I was once again alone.
I had dinner eaten and cleaned up and I sipped on some whiskey as I watched the light fade from the sky. It was overcast enough there wasn’t really a sunset to speak of, but not long after dusk, the clouds thinned for a moment revealing a nearly full moon right overhead.
I stared for a while at a pine tree not far off the camp site, realizing it had a dead top. There were living branches beneath it, but the wind was starting to pick up, activating one of my only fears of camping: that a tree will fall on my tent.
The rain began, and I climbed into my tent and changed clothes, curling up beneath my winter quilt, and reading some of Randy Woodley’s book Becoming Rooted on my phone. In chapter 11, he quotes Alice Walker: “In nature, nothing is perfect and everything is beautiful. Trees can be contorted, bent in weird ways and they’re still beautiful.”
He then opens the chapter saying, “Everything in creation is designed to survive.”
With that thought in my head, I put my phone down and listened to the wind whispering and then occasionally howling through the tree tops. I listened for the forest, and I remember thinking, please don’t fall on me, as though I could send my thoughts to the tree that concerned me.
All at once I heard, “We never fall if we can help it when we’re alive. Our purpose is to stand.”
The anxiety drained from my body, replaced by drowsiness, and I fell asleep.
I awoke to a world made new by a light snow covering, and I wondered if that anxiety would finally be gone. I hiked out in the sparkly sunlight, thinking about St. Julian of Norwich hearing Jesus say, “I am keeping you very safe.” As comforting as those words sounded and as peaceful as I felt in the snow-covered woods that morning, I couldn’t help but compare my feeling to the horrific violence in many places in the world right now where people just like me are anything but safe. And it seemed to me in that moment that most of the real danger in this world is from fellow humans. Yes, there are earthquakes, and floods, and tornados, and hurricanes, but with very rare exceptions, like the terrible tsunami in 2004, humans kill far more humans than any bad storm.
And yet we fear the wilderness, fear the woods as though it's a forbidden place we cannot go. As though the trees are more dangerous then the soldiers with guns, who cut their teeth on a diet of hatred. As though the possibility of meeting a bear is more dangerous than presidents and politicians who condemn protest with one hand while continuing to fund genocide with the other. As though I can’t trust my own feet to carry me safely home down this winding path.
The cold air kept me moving and I walked into the woods and my thoughts. Feet wet from the swollen streams, I couldn’t stop, and I didn’t want to put my last pair of dry socks on just in case of an emergency. I had to keep moving to keep my feet warm enough inside the wet wool. I hiked nine miles on a bit of oatmeal and dried mango and thought about how far those children in Gaza have walked on even less food. I am generally well-nourished so a few hours of walking without eating properly didn’t phase me. How did they keep going?
We feel the weight of trying to keep going in our lives with all this horror going on and yet we don’t have to live it. I think of how it would feel to be one of those parents, trying to keep my children safe and I can’t breathe.
My children are safe at home, well-fed, playing video games over the weekend while I take in sweeping views and revel in the newly fallen snow. Why can’t everyone’s children be safe? Why can’t everyone have time and space to pursue what makes them feel alive? Why do we settle for different standards for ourselves, content to be content as long as we’ve got ours? And yet not realizing this is a trap set for us all by those who would seek to condense wealth and power. Those who condemn a broken glass door as “violence” when forty thousand images of God have been erased from our world. Forty thousands worlds destroyed, and the peace of an entire people continues to be intentionally blotted out.
I’ve always loved the way fresh snow makes the whole world look different, as though it changed overnight. And yet change doesn’t happen overnight. It’s a long walk from here to mutual thriving. But like any long walk, it happens one step at a time, and I still believe we will get there, if we just don’t stop walking.
I went out into the forest on that trip to meet myself, and I found someone willing to keep walking knowing that steps add up to miles, and protests add up policy, and that only together do we overcome.
“I wish I could still believe in God, but I can’t be a Christian anymore because of ______” Fill-in-the-blank with racism, misogyny, homophobia, toxic capitalism, and so on. I’ve had this conversation with different people almost word-for-word over and over. White American Christianity has so defined God that many people cannot separate God from the toxic theology they were taught.
But this isn’t the God I see in the Bible. The Bible shows us a God meeting people where they are and nudging them towards justice and total thriving for all: shalom. The Bible details arcs of justice and societal reform. If we understand how radical those arcs were in the context of the day, we can extend them forward into the future and figure out how to work for justice, total thriving, and societal reformation in our day.
I grew up in that first world view. Come along, and I’ll tell you the story of how I escaped, and I’ll show you a theology that I believe paints a more accurate picture: a faith for the common good where everyone thrives and no one is left out.
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Anna Elisabeth Howard writes highly caffeinated takes on shalom as a lens for everything from her front porch in Hendersonville, TN where she lives with her husband and two sons. She is a community organizer and movement chaplain with a background in youth and family ministry and is a graduate of Fuller Theological Seminary. An avid hiker and backpacker, many thoughts start somewhere in the middle of the woods, or under a waterfall. She is a regular contributer to Earth & Altar and her latest book is Inward Apocalypse: Uncovering a Faith for the Common Good.
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