Sunday, April 19, 2020

A Hike in The Woods. An Unexpected Spiritual Experience.

April 20, 2020

A few weeks back a friend posted a picture of a trail and there was the lake and it looked peaceful and fairly flat.  On my birthday last year I decided that this year I would hike 12 different trails and then the pandemic hit. We managed to get to three trails (one twice) by March.
Every time I am in the woods it soothes me. The smell, the earth, the wind, the sun, I need it all, like my body needs air, my soul needs nature.
My son Cole and I set out to the state park with honestly no idea the length of the trail or how difficult it would be. For some reason I assumed it wouldn't be very long or hard. I assumed wrong. We found the trail head and from the map it didn't look to hard, until it started going up, and up, and narrow, and over rocks and "Wow, there is the lake"! What felt like 2 miles in my son says "I think we are at a half a mile mom". What! Oh my gosh, the first mile and a half my body wanted to quit. It wasn't terrible but it was challenging and the thought of going on for 3 more miles of this I did't know if I could do. Then we hit the summit and the overlook. A nearly 360 degree view of the lake and mountains and it was breath taking. Lake Quachita is home for me. As a child my dad worked for the state park so we I literally lived there on the weekends.
 I believe I would like my ashes scattered here one day when I pass on. This lake has always been part of me since I was a baby and I raised my babies in this water, baptized by nature. It was here that I taught my babies about the importance of leaving things better than you found them. We would take our old party barge out and we would clean up any trash before we would swim or eat, always leaving it better than we found it.
As we were leaving the summit I could not see the trail except for the one we came in on, and my son pointed to the sign leading us on and I looked up through boulders at the small path going up and over as a man who approached said "It doesn't get any easier going that way". There was a moment I thought "I need to go back downhill the way we came". That was 1.5 miles back or we could go 2.5 miles and finish the trail, I decided to proceed.  *I should mention here that I am pretty fit. I walk at least a mile a day on my treadmill and my pedometer often shows on any given day I walk six to seven miles, I also do yoga, calisthenics, and cardio on the regular. So I knew I could do it if I had to.
As we went on the trail went up, and down, over rocks, near the shore, over bridges, through scrub and at one point we were at the bottom of a very rough looking hill going straight up. This is when I felt it deep inside my soul, this was a metaphor for what is happening in the world now, "Don't look up, look at what is right before you, put one foot in front of the other. You don't know whats ahead of you or how long you have to go but there will be an end to this. You can do this, you are strong." As I walked the feeling of walking the Labyrinth at our church camp came over me and that same feeling of the journey, the dark night of the soul, came over me. It may seem over dramatized but it wasn't so much the difficulty of the trail, in fact four miles is not that much for me. It was the message I was feeling in my heart. Not something you think, but something you feel in your soul. "This is beautiful and hard." Yes, life is beautiful in it's stillness and hard in the unknowing right now. There is so much pain in the world now, anger, sadness, and also so much beauty in the slowing down, learning what truly matters.
We didn't know what we were in for yesterday but we knew we could do it. We had each other, water, and what we needed. We had conversation and beauty. We had our collective strength. At one point about half way through we both said later we thought about turning around at the summit and decided in our own minds to move forward. We also talked about how we both felt that after we left the summit we felt a new strength. My son was talking about his future, his career, his plans and desires for the future and I told him my feelings about proceeding with your passion & not to take the easy route. Even if I didn't fully understand what he is wanting to do, I do know that when you have a God given passion in your soul you should follow that. He told me as we reached the end of the trail, "That last part of the trail went by so fast as I talked about what I wanted for my future.  It became easier as I discussed what I really cared about".  (Paraphrased)
Sometimes you know that you are experiencing something special and for me yesterday in the Ouachita Mountains, my home, I felt it. That message one feels from their soul is something you don't forget, it's a shift. That is what I want to convey, sometimes you feel a shift and you know that it is changing you.  This life we are in right now, its' going to be hard, and beautiful, long and tough, up hill and down hill but there will be an end and you will come out of it maybe sore, tired, a little beat up and sunburned but you will have a whole new respect for yourself, your body, your mind, and what is truly important in life.
Courtney and Cole (Mom and Son)

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