"God was very good to put the 'going down' part of mountain climbing trips at the end." - Your truly, while coming down the mountain
"What are you, O mighty mountain? Before [God's man] you will become level ground. Then he will bring out the capstone to shouts of 'God bless it! God bless it!'" - Zach 4:7
We woke up to our last morning on the mountain. Before us was the task of packing everything once again on our backs, hiking down the 6.5 miles that we hiked up, and doing so with the deadline of when the Durango-Silverton train would arrive at Needleton.
There was much excitement stirring in us. We had a lot to come down for. Among them:
* Four ice-cold cans of Dr. Pepper than we hid near the train stop in the chilly waters of Needle Creek,
* The comfort of an "indoor" experience on the train.
* The concession car.
* Accessibility to a toilet.
* Hearing the voices of our families once in cell phone range.
* A car that carries us up-hills with the mere push of a pedal.
* A hotel hot-tub.
* A warm shower in the hotel.
* A feast of non-freeze dried food we would celebrate over that evening.
* A bed in a climate-controlled room complete with a pillows, lights, sheets, blankets and a TV.
It's amazing how those things that I take for granted all of the time, most of which I don't really need, become such motivators when I've been deprived of them for just a short time.
But more than anything, the most immediate and inward reward for me would come from what awaited us on the other side of that bridge over the Animas River. When we would take our packs off our backs for the last time and sit on the railroad ties waiting to wave the train down, the deep and satisfied feeling of faithfulness. The feeling of following through. Of doing something that mattered even when it was hard, inconvenient, and full of doubt. The feeling of getting to say "we did that" and "we did that together".
There is a deep excitement in the anticipation of doing something.
There is a different, but equally deep excitement in the actual doing of the something.
And there is also an excitement that comes with the thing being done, and it's transition into becoming a memory. I think I love them all, but this one is strangely special to me.
Memories are awesome. I'm not sure why. Maybe because they represent things that are permanent and unchangeable in a world where it seems there is not much of that.
Beautiful memories are tools for our current joy, funny memories are tools for our current laughter, painful memories are tools for our current healing, and formative memories are tools for our current teaching. All memories, in the sharing of them, are tools for our current relationship building ("baptism" into the fellowship of men that meet in my basement on Tuesday nights is to take a turn in the "hot seat," where you share your whole story from birth to now. An impossible task without memory. We always initiate this ritual with the words, "make us your friends tonight" - meaning: tell us everything). Memories are just cool.
My buddy Keith wrote me today and said he has enjoyed reading these chronicles with his son, and that he is amazed at how much he has already forgotten. Me too.
But I don't worry much about that. I know I have forgotten some of the greatest stories. But honestly, they seem to come right back whenever I need them or they need to serve a purpose that God wants served through or in me.
Anyway, we had a great and relatively speedy hike down. We found our hidden Dr. Peppers, went across the bridge way before our deadline to catch the train, sat down and sure enough, the feelings I was most looking forward to came rushing in. It was awesome.
The only thing we now HAD to do was wait. I love times like this (okay, in my frantic and normal days, I hate times like this...but in this setting, I loved it...and I need to learn to love it more). Waiting forces me into the present. I can't do anything else that I MUST do, so I have to find something TO do. I looked around with hours to kill, and, Hey! Look! There's my son, Shade!
That may sound strange that I noticed my son Shade since I have been with him 24-7 for days now, but that's how it is, isn't it? I've heard it said that "you are where your thoughts are," and even in the constant presence of my beloved son, I find myself leaving him for other things that aren't right there. (This is often how my prayer life with God seems to go, too. And appointments that I have with people in my office. And date night with my wife.) So, with nothing to do but wait, and rediscovering that I'm getting to be with my son...
Shade and I spent the couple of hours there exploring around this Needleton spot. We found a boarded up old outhouse that I'm sure was used by the gold miners back in the day while waiting for this same train (Shade squeezed in and used it before he called me over to check it out). We found what looked like an old ticketing station. We went down by the river and found an incredible outcropping of stones, where we searched for unique ones to take home as gifts for the family. We found a perfectly round one that looked like a ball for Jakin. We found one that would stand up and had the shape of a cross engraved in it naturally for Shade's mom. We found a heart shaped one for Callie. And then, believe it or not, we found one in the shape of a cannon for Shade Canon Mashburn to take home. We also found a very nice campsite down the tracks a bit...we laughed that we were sure it was there for mountain climbers who didn't make the train deadline and had to set up camp here until the next day...and we were glad we made it!
The blessed train horn bellowed in the distance, and Shade got on the tracks as the engine came around the mountain. He and I did the special wave of his arms that they told us to do to stop the train, it did, we loaded up and settled in for the 3 hour ride back to Durango.
Side note: As the train started to inch forward, a backpacker dude came running across the bridge from the wild, yelling for the train to wait, which it didn't, and the four of us looked at each other with deep compassion for the guy. We were smiling, though, because we understood exactly what that guy was feeling.
I was glad not to be him, but at the same time, there was a part of me (small...very small) that likes when things happen that take my choices away. If I HAD to stay one more night in the mountains, I would've done it. And it would've ended up great. It would've had all the secret treasures that "forced waiting" has.
It was very easy to enjoy the train ride down. It felt so good to be moving, and not by our own power.
What a grace this trip was. The lessons continue to this day. The memory of it is still serving us actively. Almost like Christ is still moving in us through this trip, but not by our own power.
The mountain represented a wild challenge for us. A mighty and overwhelming challenge, in so many ways, and we were walking into it. Having made it successfully, I connect with the spirit of the quote above from Scripture: "What are you mighty mountain? You have been made flat ground (achievable, explorable, experiencable) by God before our feet. You, the challenge, have become our blessing and teacher. God bless you! God bless you! God bless you!"
"'Not by might nor by power, but by my Spirit,' says the LORD Almighty." - Zech 4:6
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