You can't see it, but it's there!

That's what my friends kept telling me throughout our snowshoe trek today up the highest mountain in Washington, Mt. Rainier. The grey clouds and snowflakes falling around us hid the majestic peak of this volcanic mountain from our sight. But beyond the veil of clouds rose the mountain peak and a panoramic view of other peaks as well, including a far off Mt. St. Helens. I reassured them of my faith. After admiring this mountain for so long from a distance, I was just happy to finally be standing on it! After all, 2 Cor. 5:7, "We walk by faith and not by sight," right?

When the four of us set out in the early morning, it was pouring rain - not a promising start to the journey. Driving up the mountain, my faith began to waiver as I did not see any snow. Were we going to end up hiking in the rain? But our hardcore leader was undaunted, so we kept hoping.

Near the very top, at the entrance called "Paradise," the rain magically turned into snow within a mile! With gusto we unpacked our gear and began cresting the mountain one hill at a time. We’d say hello to fellow passersby and ask, “How is it higher up?” or “How high did you go?” And they’d give us a report, such as “Avoid that one slope over there where the wind is real bad.”

We climbed onward. It was my first snowshoeing experience, as well as my companion Giorgio’s, but our two other companions were pros, making sure we were well outfitted and assisting us in getting our gear on correctly. They’d been up these slopes before and were our guides, while we saw it all for the first time.

“The higher we go, the better we shall hear the voice of Christ,” such were words that a twenty-something Italian outdoorsman had spoken in the 1900s. Crazy about the outdoors, especially mountain climbing, Bl. Pier Giorgio Frassati was a vivacious young man who found the mountains a good place to commune with God. His famous phrase was “Verso l’alto” – or “to the top!”

I couldn’t help but think of this saint and wonder if he was with us in spirit as my companion Giorgio pointed and said, “To that tree up yonder!” – just when we were discussing heading back down. It looked a long way off. Could we make it up one last hill? We set our poles in the snow and climbed to the tree, forging our own path through the wet, heavy snow, pushing on until we finally made it up the slope and to the designated tree. 

Up here the only sound was the wind humming in the fir trees. “Where else can you go and find such silence?” asked one of my friends. Indeed. The stillness of the snow and the whispering winds quieted our souls. If I inclined my ear to listen to the wind, would I hear the voice of God?

 
Frassati, the Italian saint, once wrote to a friend: “I left my heart on the mountain peaks, and I hope to retrieve it this summer when I climb Mt. Blanc. If my studies permitted, I would spend whole days on the mountains admiring in that pure atmosphere the magnificence of God.” 

I decided that I would come back to this mountain someday - God willing, when the August sun was shining on meadows painted with wildflowers...

Going down was smooth and easy. When we came up, we were as strangers to each other. Now we descended as friends...

Steaming cups of hot cocoa in the lodge finished up the trek, and I felt the warmth of it penetrating through the layers of my soaking-wet clothing to my bones.

Pinch me! I’m in Washington!

I kept stopping on our path through the woods to marvel at the fact that I was no longer in the dry, colorful woods of Wisconsin with blades of grass and leaves crunching beneath my feet; but I was in Washington, in a wet and wild, misty forest with a bed of soft pine needles and dirt below me. The dark soil drew a contrast with the emerald green moss and ferns, growing up and out and over everything! Somehow I had gotten all the way out here and now I was in the place I had so often imagined, the place so many others, too, left homelands to discover - the Pacific Northwest.

There is something special about the area and the people of Seattle. I read in a book that the British expatriate writer Jonathan Raban mused, “Seattle is the only city in the world that people move to in order to get closer to nature” (Wild Seattle by Timothy Egan).

It’s not hard to see why, what with views of the Cascades or the Puget Sound and numerous forests to explore and wildlife, while the people and the city meld into it and love it and foster hobbies to enjoy it and stop their cars along the beach to watch the waves of the Puget Sound over their lunch break. I haven’t met anyone yet who takes this environment for granted. I pray I never do…for creation seems to want to be enjoyed.

Take for example, the tree trunks and rocks covered in shaggy, bright green moss so when you reach out and touch them, they feel like a dog’s curly hair under your fingertips! I named my favorite, an especially mossy one, “The Petting Tree.”

Here and there are splashes of bright color, in the face of a wildflower or in a multi-colored mushroom – such as this one, that grows out a rotting tree trunk.

“Old forests have a singular mystery, where young life embraces death and rot,” writes Timothy Egan in Wild Seattle. How is it that life can bud right out of death?

These splashes of color surprise me every time, and so much of the living and the dying are companions intertwined that you hardly know where one ends and the other begins. If you looked away and then glanced back, would the dead be coming to life?

This fallen tree, with its curved limbs sprawled out like the legs of a gigantic centipede…when the magician snaps his fingers, will the force of life return to it? Could it come lurching across my path?

 Or this tree, standing above the ground on its roots. What lovely fuel for the imagination! Is it the cozy home of a little leprechaun who sleeps under its roof? Or will it thrust its roots forward and start walking, tree and all? I can't help but think that these are the scenes books are made out of, like The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.

 

 Every forest feels enchanted. It is a stage for the circle of life and the drama of created things reaching for the sun. From high up in the tree trunk, this daring "Zacchaeus" fern waves its leaves to catch as much sunlight as it can, reminding me of the short-of-stature tax collector, who climbed a tree to see Jesus through the crowds.

Light! It always comes from beyond and all the plants are reaching towards it. It moves across the sky to shine through the mist and to reach all things as it goes its course, and to quench the desires of all that stretch out to absorb its warming rays.

The hikers whom we pass on the trail up the mountain greet us. They are friendly, asking us how we are doing, and it feels good to share the joy of being out here with fellow human beings.

I realized why the artist Thomas Kinkade’s paintings always seem so fictitious to me. My friend says there is nothing dead in his woods; all nature is alive, and the light emanates from all things rather than one source. Perhaps this was the way it was in Eden, nature pure and fruitful, or the way it was meant to be…but those paintings do not mirror the world that I inhabit. Let me rather be found in these woods I know, where, though nature is fallen, she shows that even the dead can rise again.

Mountain climbing, the Lenten journey

“For writers, musicians, artists and all who create beauty: for attention to the divine voice within them as they work so that they may do their part in the transfiguration of the world…we pray.”

My ear instantly caught on the word “writers” and my thoughts reeled around to hear the rest. Suddenly, my whole attention was rapt in the words being spoken from the sanctuary. I was in shock and felt touched, empowered and like I wanted to cry - all at the same time. These were words of comfort, oh sweet comfort, after a long and grueling few weeks of work. Out of the ordinariness of my life, this prayer drew me and refreshed my heart with meaning and purpose. Just as the prayer was lifted up by the church, alighting on wings to the throne of God, my soul felt lifted up. I wondered if anyone else had heard what I heard in the Prayer of the Faithful last Sunday at Mass. I felt acknowledged and appreciated by mother Church.

The words reverberated in my mind, cooling it with the fresh water of knowing that I was not alone. My work mattered and the Church was praying for me. She was praying and appreciating the intimate, personal workings of artistic creation and the writer-artist. While contemplating on the divine miracle of Jesus' Transfiguration on the mountain (Sunday's Gospel reading), the Church was thinking of me, the artist...this small, weak creature who is invited to participate in the work of the divine artist!

“Beauty will save the world,” said Fyodor Dostoevsky. This, in a way, is the writer's mission. And someone recently reminded me, "With wisdom and experience come words that carry great responsibility."

***

I am reading Purgatorio from Dante’s Divine Comedy for Lent. It is a fascinating and soul-cleansing way to stare at the seven deadly sins and their effects in our lives and to strengthen our resolve to pursue virtue rather than vice. Despite the punishments we bring upon ourselves because of our sin, God's mercy is abundantly greater. I love the way Dante shows this via the beautiful instrument of poetry.

Dante wasn’t kidding when he compared purgatory–the aligning of our spiritual lives to God’s divine and loving will–to climbing a mountain. The mountain is an appropriate allegory to our spiritual journeys on earth, for the way is narrow and steep, treacherous and demanding. In our upward climbing, we are prone to slipping backward, and the climb requires vigilance and attention. Sometimes we must watch our every step. I remember hiking up the Alps in Austria. The journey was exhausting but worth every drop of sweat!

In the Scriptures, it says Jesus often went up the mountain to pray. Jesus preached the Beatitudes and taught the crowds about the kingdom of God...from a mountaintop. Jesus invited his disciples to see His glory in the Transfiguration...on a mountain top. Jesus carried a wooden cross up the mountain of Calvary and gave his life for us...on a mountaintop.

The message is clear and simple. In order to see God, we must go up the mountain. In order to understand His Word, to witness His glory, to encounter His saving grace, we must go up the mountain. We shall ascend by leaving our vices and sins behind, by conforming our lives to godly virtues and purifying our hearts. In the same way, those who have died in faith but still bear the weight of sin, must go through a period of time whereby they are refined by God's love. "Blessed are the pure of heart, for they will see God" (Matt. 5:8).

Let's make it our goal this Lent to follow Christ up the mountain. As we do, we will draw closer to understanding and seeing the awesome power and grace of God. Refined by virtue, we might attain the hope of our salvation at the summit of our lives: to look on the astounding beauty of the Lord’s countenance and to be in communion with divine love.

I'm Blogging!

I have a confession to make. I have not sat down to blog in the last three weeks! NOR have I been diligent in taking daily walks.

“Walking itself is a cognitive act. The more I hike, the more I find my words,” said Mary Kay Baum, a courageous woman I met recently with early-onset Alzheimer’s disease. I was attending her inspirational talk as a reporter and taking down her words, so I could write an article about her. How true about the cognitive power of walking! How often do we think of hiking, or biking, or ballroom dancing, or any kind of exercise for that matter, as a cognitive act? Yet, it is employing our mental faculties. And so often as a writer, I find that when I’m walking, then the words come.

This fall, I’ve gotten the chance to hike several times on wooded trails with friends. We call these excursions Emmaus Hikes because we use it as a time to reflect on the Scriptures and pray with each other, as well as to explore and appreciate God’s breathtaking creation. Last week, we trekked over a carpet of gold, leaves of the most lustrous golden hue, under the arches of a wooded cathedral. We followed a trail beside a running creek that gurgled as it fell over grey rocks and flowed on its course. We walked through a field of prairie grass with purple wild flowers. We moved within this still setting of tranquility.

A different experience with nature happened to me last month. I went to Lakeside Park alone and sat down on a rock by the edge of the largest lake in Wisconsin. Rather than being in the cloister of the woods with the companionship of friends, here I was out in the open air with the lake stretched out so deep and wide before me. This time the wind was stirring up the water and forcing it to come crashing against the rocks. Nature’s commotion seemed to aptly express the emotions in my heart that day. And in the wild roughness of the wind and water, my only companion was a forlorn fisherman, who kept moving along the rocks in search of a lucrative spot. Seemed he was as restless as my heart, though I didn’t move. The cut in the chill autumn breeze kissed my face. It was a brisk beauty, wild and free, rough and crashing. And as I sat there, my frantic heart found rescue and peace. I related with the duck, bobbing up and down on the water, being pushed along by forces greater than it, which it hardly understood. I became filled with awe of how small I was and great I am at the same time. Here was this little writer, this broken seeker, on the rocks being swept up into God’s awesome creation. How wonderful are the works of your Hands, O God! And who am I to tell of them? The rhythm of the waves, rough as they were, calmed my heart.

I have walked the park with many people. I have sat by the water’s edge with different friends. And I’ve learned that not everyone reacts the same way. While one person walks with deliberate step and purpose, another walks leisurely, savoring the moment. While one walks to conquer, another walks to be conquered–by beauty, by nature, by conversation and by nature’s romance. Myself, I walk to be conquered. The words come as I breathe in deeply and reflectively of the larger purpose through which I trek.

It’s good to be back.