Thou Art the King of Glory

I came across a journal I kept on a backpacking trip through the Sierra last summer (2021) & thought I would share what I found.

Day 1

I’m kinda tired right now to be honest with you but Anne and Andrew told me to write so here goes…

The view is faded, like a curtain of dusty linen pulled across to shield the many few aching travelers from finding solace in the clarity of their old lives. Both an illusion, but under their feet many miles away.

I do think the view is pleasant, with a dusty mountain range interesting enough to perplex the eyes for an afternoon. but faint and irrelevant it still remains.

to be cont… now to pray.

Day 2

Today was a momentous day and concluded with a mental scare that submerged my brain in amnesia. We were tired and we couldn’t find the last leg of the trail, after the massive ridge ascent (which was the culmination of our weeks of training)(& freakin satisfying) and the gorgeous alpine lake (which never disappoints). We were alone, miles from civilization (back down the massive ascent) and didn’t know how to get down. Using our common sense and orienteering skills we of course found the trail and are now neatly in our little cacoon of the camp. The scare was the isolation, & creeping loneliness (and the physical discomfort didn’t help). The moment has passed on and now I’m alone at a lake gazing at the so long-awaited Sierra Crest. The present fear has washed away in the God-given grace of time.

what a gentle redemption.

~

You are my hiding place. You preserve me from trouble. You surround me with songs of deliverance.

Day 3

*the morning of the 4th day*

yesterday was many things… I felt the wilderness slow me down for the first time on this trip & take me in as I took it in. I felt the sense/peace of one residing and not just traveling through and found rest finally in the obscurity of my location. THough miles separate me from (most of) the people that I love, miles that I will have to walk, the land without a face. These foreign basins have begun to bare the image of the places I have loved, that have shaped me, places like Mammoth & Tahoe & Hume. familiar faces, found now in the faces of these mountains. now & forever a friendly face.

I was also deeply sad yesterday. I missed my mom. I dreaded when my dad wouldn’t be sitting beside me. The eventual came over me too soon and I broke. The gradual can be cold & icy for the soul without comfort. But comfort is always near, always present in the glory. sometimes you need comfort form the glory & sometimes the glory is comfort. Its hard to tell in places like these. When the height is too high & the depth too deep, the near & the close are the lovely places, beloved spaces, maybe even divine.

Both belong to the complete picture, & each completes the other.

-Julia, Lake Divine (60 lakes basin)

Day 4

This is the last day in the valley. Im sitting by the lake. Its dusk. The sun has set behind the mountains. The breeze is cool. Tomorrow we hike up out of here, back where we came. Our neighbor just caught a fish. The lake rumbles & is still. The fish is returned. The surface vibrates with white ripples of jumping fish. The breeze has stopped. It starts again, this time like a blanket of crystal over the lake. The fish stop. The fisherman fishes. Its 7:52pm.

These last two days have been an enchanting time. This place has become a friend. My soul has seeped into the earth & found its peace. T.S. Eliot’s “Four Quartets” talks about all time as one moment & timeless moments as a glimpse of eternity, true time, made known by the Incarnation. Beauty itself can open to Heaven with Christ as its door. Life w/ death. Time w/ end, yet only in time. Time creates its own end but beyond time is life’s true end -purpose, being.

~

comfort for the traveler, misplaced, searching. rest for the burdened, weakened by time’s effects/affections. heart for the hardened, icy unfeeling senses. conviction for the proud, ants of gigantic ego. love for the fearful, anxious for time lost. soul for the pagan, ignorant of beauty’s substance, people for the peace.

God’s gift to the wilderness folk.

~

The world is fainter, though my eyes are prone to faintness. The colors remain the same though deeper, richer in their own shadows. The sky descends and blankets the lake in dusky light; soon it will touch the tree’s peaks with its black and cover the earth in a blackened rest.

Day 5

I am completely alone for the first time this whole trip. I overlook the gateway back and ponder the journey set behind and before me. The light has shifted since last I saw this valley. The dusty curtain now chields the earth form its Heavens. Only the peaks can pierce it now.

I have not words, not senses, and strongly no need. I just am, being where I am, from where I was, & soon toward where Ill be… but not now. I am simply here, from there, beyond the ridge, miles away, where the light touches the earth, & all is familiar.

In the glory.