Breaking the Routine

Nothing is better for perspective than time in the wild

On Sunday morning my wife seemed to let go of my hand, maritally speaking. She didn’t tell me she wanted to divorce, but then, she didn’t really have to.

Because I was born a fool and will likely die a fool, I still have some hope that we can save our marriage, and I therefore won’t go into detail right now. However, this wound is going to bleed for awhile. 

Needless to say, this was a cause for some reflection. And I reflect best, or at least most clearly, in the forest. So, I motored out to the Ozarks, a place so new and alien to me that it might as well have been a mythical kingdom. 

I’d had no time to plan in any responsible detail. I threw some sandwiches and granola bars into my pack, along with some absolutely essential essentials, and prayed to St. Whomever that my truck would make it there and back. The man with the third largest beard at church - the one who drives a Subaru with big, knobby tires and a roof rack - told me where to go. He was a little light on the details, but he got me there.

The idea: I was going to pray for my marriage until the daylight faded and my flashlight batteries died. I’d pray all night if I had to. I’d journal my guts out until I could make it clear that it was all my fault. 

In reality, the light faded almost as fast as my strength to pray. I managed to get through most of the Small Compline, at least. Then I wrote. I reflected on where I failed in my marriage, jotted some hopeful strategies down, but then closed up the journal and just sat and watched the fireflies. 

It’s over, I concluded. No amount of post-facto reflection was going to change the reality of it.

As I sat there on my sleeping bag in the back of my truck, I had this idea that I hadn’t actually been brought out there to get some kind of new insight into how to save the marriage. No, I concluded, I’d been brought out there to be prepared, maybe even strengthened for the trials to come.

I laid down and went to sleep with the Jesus Prayer on my lips.

***

I woke up several hours before the sun, as one does on campouts. I quickly packed up my gear and headed toward the trailhead. It was literally the darkest hour before the dawn.

The road was washed out. Not…”maybe accessible with four-wheel drive and contempt for my personal safety” but gone. In the complete darkness of 5:00 AM, it looked like a bottomless chasm. I had to back up about half a mile to get out of there. 

I did not pass…

Thinking my grand hiking plan was thwarted, I aimed the truck toward Oklahoma and decided to go home and start planning for the days and and weeks and months ahead. I was quitting. It seemed that this trip had been pointless, and I was heading “home” even more demoralized than when I left.

But then I saw a dot on the map that said, “Devil’s Canyon Waterfall.” Since I was already reeking with the sweat of a campout, bathing in a mountain waterfall sounded pretty good. 

I somehow found the trailhead right away in this unfamiliar territory, and dawn broke over the hills just after I got there. Rays of light coming perpendicularly through the valley ignited mist rising from reddish clay. Raindrops slipped off of leaves far above and bullseyed the back of my neck. The air was cool but humid. It would soon boil.

It was glorious. 

I hit the trail - an old logging road, really - and reddish-orangish clay caked my boots immediately. 

The trail/road wound around the edge of a cliff, and then due east into the rising sun. To my right was a wall of rock, to the left, it dropped off into the Devil’s Canyon. To my surprise, there were some fantastic (and free!) camping spots along the cliffside. Some were taken by enterprising campers with tricked-out SUVs that could make it down the muddy trail. I made a note to remember this place.

It took some orienteering, but I found the waterfall. Despite the recent rains, the creek that fed it was down to a trickle, so the falls were less than impressive. But the cavern it had carved over the years (the centuries?) created a gloriously intimate little grotto. There was a pool at the bottom, though the low level of the water made it look stagnant and dark. I’d take a dip the next time.

I climbed down into the grotto and looked around. I found an old fire pit under an overhang of rock. I imagined that people had been sheltering there for centuries, at least. I wasn’t surprised - a perfect campsite like this doesn’t stay a secret for very long. 

So, in that quiet place, that almost holy place, I opened my prayer book and said the morning prayers. 

“But thou has shown they usual love for mankind, and has raised me up as I lay helpless, that I might rise early and glorify they dominion…”

I prayed for my family. I prayed for true repentance. I prayed for peace amidst the chaos of a situation I can’t possibly quantify and control. 

---

I guess if there’s a point to this meandering travelogue, it’s this: sometimes you just have to remove yourself from the routine. The routine just reinforces certain patterns of thought or action. You have to get uncomfortable, to say the least, to get perspective. 

And when you do set out to break the routine for awhile, don’t come to any conclusions too soon. What we think, particularly when we’re under duress, is almost certainly not on target. 

I think, also, that the more sentimental of us fall to a temptation to mark certain moments as milestones. “It was this way, then this happened, and now it’s this way…” Maybe, but I think we’re drawing scribbles on someone Else’s map when we do it.