Hiking as Spiritual Practice
Time with nature and time with friends creates a healthy rhythm for the spiritual life
I can’t help it. When I have a day off, I have to lace up my boots and find somewhere wild outside to explore. And because the weekends are work days, I usually go hiking alone or with a single friend whom I can steal away from their routine. The experience is a crackling contrast to indoor artificial light, persistent glowing screens, sitting chairs, and writing tasks. It seems to shake something loose inside me— some creativity, some spiritual sensitivity. In the quiet and solitude, the ways I have been trained to live a distracted 21st-century life are shelved and I am able to enter back into part of what it has meant to be human for countless millennia.
A recent hike took me up Lower Rock Creek in the Eastern Sierra. Spring snowmelt was rushing down the canyon, sometimes with a quiet trickle, and around certain corners, with a whoosh so loud I would have to shout to be heard. Indian paintbrush, the bright red variety, sang the melody, while a collection of purple lupine joined in a harmonious choir. The air smelled of pungent sage to start, and then softened toward moist rocks and hints of pine. I usually mix my time on the trail with a book or story that I listen to in my earbuds, an occasional chat with a fellow adventurer, and times of quiet to listen to the forest and to allow my untamed thoughts to take shape like modulating clouds. On this particular hike, I listened to a tense scene from Leif Enger’s new book, spent some time in my own thoughts while I scrambled up to a high lookout, and then enjoyed the reflective thoughts by Edmund Morris about the conclusion of Teddy Roosevelt’s presidency.
The activity is scenic and gets the blood moving, but is it really spiritual? It doesn’t have to be. You can certainly go for a walk without ever turning your attention to nature’s beauty, its stillness, and its Author. But walking among the trees, ‘forest bathing’ as the Japanese call it, can be a healthy correction to the despirited world we live in. We are in a strange time in our culture in which our technological tools and entertainment are starting to squeeze us into a distracted isolation. We find ourselves sitting in front of a phone or screen, mildly entertained, but alone, apart from our relationship with our Creator, and apart from our family or community that is sitting in the room next to us. Instead of this bland, shallow existence, we would be wise to lean into the dance that happens between deep silence and deep community. A spiritual walk, hiking as true solitude, is a chance to unplug from the multitude of distractions. It invites us to be quiet before our Creator, to listen to his kindness in the song of the chickadee, and come close to his strength at the base of a crag. Truly, as the psalm proclaims, “He makes the clouds his chariot and rides on the wings of the wind” (104:3). In the quiet, some of the part of us that lays hidden to us, under the surface of busyness and soundbite distractions, gets dislodged and floats to the surface. Before our God, we get to know ourselves, and to find new thoughts and ideas that are shy, and only come out of their caves when we are walking slowly in the forest.
On my recent hike, it was space for me to reflect on a blessed and busy Easter season. I was able to express my unhurried thanks to God. I was able to think about ideas for sequels to my fiction novels, and I was able to take one step to prepare my heart for whatever next step God would call me to with my writing. A true experience of solitude with God while hiking prepares me to engage with community more meaningfully. I know myself better. I have something to contribute when I have a cup of tea with my wife, when I ask my buddy to grab a drink, when I stand in a circle after church. Walking with God in nature is one side of a seesaw that finds its counterweight with village community— a little group of people that you get to know and share your life with. The refreshment of nature is part of the contribution that you can bring back to your weave of friendship. This rise and fall of real solitude and real community is the exact opposite of the distracted isolation that our culture is squeezing us into. We don’t need an easy gray twilight. We need a cloud by day and a fire by night. This is where is the presence of God is. Find your trail, and know that you don’t hike alone.
Together in the Journey,
CT Lemons
Beautifully written.