I just cancelled reservations for a trip to Colorado Springs. The severe weather warning from the National Weather Service issued the morning of 6/22/17 for the weekend of 6/24/17 in the surrounding mountains advises that there will be snow above 10,000 feet, hail stones as large as the size of quarters, lightning, and wind in excess of 50 mph. We had planned to summit our first Colorado fourteener- Pikes Peak. The 7,500 foot 25 mile round trip hike is a major challenge on a clear day. The thought crossed my mind to power through. I am sullen.
Every year, thousands of otherwise well people die in the wilderness. The heavenly alpine is the light which draws the moth to the flame. Those who have not experienced it cannot understand the people who place their life at risk to travel to these places. I am a sick man, and at this time it is very hard for me to judge anyone who puts their life in danger or even dies chasing after the light. In the alpine, we find a compelling aspect of heavenly beauty and brutal and extreme conditions.
We have powered through many times. We did it in New Zealand for three weeks during the "summer" there in January 2017. We did it for 10 days in the Canadian Rockies in the "summer" of 2015. Well, sort of anyways. You can look back and see the posts featuring soul sucking wind, snow, hail, and rain.
Trying to get up to elevation in these conditions is like trying to push two large magnets together with the positive poles facing each other- you may get close, you may even tag a summit (not without significant risk and toil), but you just won't last. If you don't injure yourself, get hypothermia, or die, as thousands do every year.
In this short life, we seldom experience anything resembling the heavenly. The montane environment, in my experience, is about as close as we can get in the flesh. If you have ever spent time in the Alpine environment of Grand Teton, the American Rockies, the Canadian Rockies, The Sierra Nevada, New Zealand, the Andes, the Himalayas or any number of other alpine locales, you have experienced firsthand what I'm talking about. It is a difficult, dare I say impossible, to describe the energy to somebody who has not had the opportunity. I spoke with a respected colleague at work about the topic. He saw photo on my phone of a marmot on Forrester Pass which sparked the conversation.
He declared “you have a good life”.
We had a discussion about the experience. He had, for the first time in his 40 something years, recently traversed the alpine environment of Glacier National Park, a place I have not yet visited. My first time on heavens footstool was in Grand Teton in the summer of 2012. Words fail to describe it. All I could say is that I have never so reluctantly left a place. But we cannot stay.
If you share my love for the high country, you will likely relate. These places are both beautiful and terrifying. To be struck with ecstasy at times and awe and dread at others is to be human in these places.
I don't think it's random or by chance that many of the recorded encounters with God occurred in the mountains. As vast as the Bible account is, there are a few recorded direct encounters with God. Yet both Moses and Elijah had their closest experiences with God atop a mountain. In these too, we have both elements of awe and dread, as well as glory.
“Go out, and stand on the mountain before the LORD.” And behold, the LORD passed by, and a great and strong wind tore into the mountains and broke the rocks in pieces before the LORD, but the LORD was not in the wind; and after the wind an earthquake, but the LORD was not in the earthquake; and after the earthquake a fire, but the LORD was not in the fire; and after the fire a still small voice.” I Kings 19:11-12.
Indeed, "He waters the mountains from his upper chambers; the land is satisfied by the fruit of his work.. He who looks at the earth, and it trembles, who touches the mountains, and they smoke.":Psalm 104
So, I ask why do we find such strikingly heavenly places so frequently filled with intensely brutal resistance to our presence? For me, the answer may be doctrinal.
God is pure.
" God is light; in him there is no darkness at all" -John 1
We are not.
"God looks down from heaven on all mankind to see if there are any who understand, any who seek God.There is no one righteous, not even one; there is no one who understands; there is no one who seeks God. All have turned away" - Psalm 53
Originally, man was created to live forever in paradise. Without the extreme. However, man fell, and, consequently, man was prevented from returning to the created paradise on account of his impurity:
“Then the LORD God said, “Behold, the man has become like one of Us, to know good and evil. And now, lest he put out his hand and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live forever”— therefore the LORD God sent him out of the garden of Eden to till the ground from which he was taken. So He drove out the man; and He placed cherubim at the east of the garden of Eden, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to guard the way to the tree of life.” Genesis 3:22-24.
Are these conditions the cherubim and flaming sword described in Genesis? Maybe not literally, but perhaps a manifestation, in the same spirit. Man cannot stand long in heaven's footstool on his own, let alone in paradise itself.
If you share my love for the high country, you will likely relate to my frustration. You yourself may have, in the past, experienced both majesty and dread simultaneously. You may have felt both the awe and fear best explained by a near-God experience. These places are both beautiful and terrifying. Terrifying, for a reason.
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