The Trail
For a few weeks now, I’ve been ‘allowed’ to go back and hit ‘the Trail’, my walk through the Shelda Creek Swamp, following the path whose official name is ‘The Good Harbor Trail’. Yesterday’s walk was one of the best in some time. A fine mist filled the air, it barely dampened my coat. Then I was stunned by about a hundred yard stretch where some very young beeches retained their leaves that turned a ‘winter’ gold, dazzling against the backdrop of the black veins of the deciduous trees and the dark, often moss covered, conifers. Their gold aura lit up the air.
I thought of how easy it might be, if you were lost in thought, with your head down watching where you are walking, to miss the entire visual experience of the Creator’s given color of gold for just that moment. Gold enough to mix in with the color of the air. Gold that may no longer exist when I hit the trail again today.
Must be important as you ‘walk’ through life to look up once in a while, so you don’t miss ‘it’, the many ‘its’ and gifts He lays before us endlessly, if only we look.
And listen.
Our Master fills the air itself. After all He made it. He created the environment to evolve into what we have today, even with our constant attack on its very nature, polluting His ‘gold’ with the putridness of our waste, pumping noxious fumes out of the cars we drive. Yet, He remains firm in constantly sending through the air all kinds of Divine grace… sights and sounds…
And Hope.
The silence of the trail on a windless, damp, misty morning along the shore of the Great Fresh Water Sea whose voice too, is muted with no winds to drive it, is deafening. It is a quiet that permeates so intensely even my footsteps, clumsy as they can be, are muted. Every so often a winged creature of the air breaks the silence in the distance, but the fury ones who run the ground are caught up in the lack of any noise and remain hidden and still. I often stop, and just look around, cocking my head to pick up any sound. I can wait for minutes; time ceases in the silence. When this happens, I remember Elijah, who heard the voice of God not in…
… a strong and violent wind rending the mountains and crushing rocks before the LORD—but the LORD was not in the wind; after the wind, an earthquake—but the LORD was not in the earthquake; after the earthquake, fire—but the LORD was not in the fire; after the fire, a light silent sound.
When he heard this, Elijah hid his face in his cloak and went out and stood at the entrance of the cave. A voice said to him, Why are you here, Elijah? (1 Kings:11-13)
And I wonder, not why I am here, on this trail, but why I don’t silence myself often enough, so that I too can hear. Perhaps this is why day after day, week after week, month after month and year after year… I go to ‘the trail’.
It seems like such holy ground. I remember what Elijah replied to Him Who made all as he lived in a time when the Chosen People abandoned their Creator…
“I have been most zealous for the LORD, the God of hosts… (1 Kings: 14)
Would that we all be so zealous as Elijah, whether or not we are on ‘the trail’, because life is our real trail to Him. And it is up to us to set the example so people can follow us… Home. And we do this by loving Him and loving each other.
clement
clementcharles.org… fishtownproductions.com… clementcharles.substack.com
Beautiful job once again, my friend. Well said!