Know-Love-Obey God

High Calling Blogs Book Club:
The Wisdom of Wilderness, by Gerald G. May
Chapter One: The Call

By definition, Nature is wild and unpredictable, so your stories won’t be the same as mine.
- Gerald G. May, The Wisdom of Wildnerness, page xxiii.

Stories. What a perfect way to begin.

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I lived in Israel where pita and bread cost only a few coins, children really did call their dads “Abba,” conversation depth went well below the surface within seconds, the front of a book was with the spine on the right, and no one ate cold cereal for breakfast. Yet this culture shock was nothing compared to my first visit to my husband’s hometown: Montrose, Colorado.

Montrose, then with a population of about 10,000, was considered big. Charles drove me around town to see all the schools he attended. The Menoken-Colcreek Elementary school was—get this—a house. A red house, no less. What surrounded this red, two-room schoolhouse? Grass! And no fence!

The wonders did not stop there. Traffic lights hung and swung freely from cables instead of being fixed to a huge metal arm extending over the street. We went to Wal-Mart and actually ran into someone he knew. (This never happened to me before.) We went to the County Courthouse to get our marriage license; parking was easy, and we were the only ones in line! At the counter I got yet another shock: the clerk said, “Hi, Charles!” She knew him! Not only that, she had known him since he was a boy. They talked pleasantly about our upcoming marriage and his parents while I—city girl in a small town—stood blinking in amazement.

I grew up in Carson, California (Los Angeles County). I often sum up my L.A. experience in one word: concrete. I went to 232nd Place Elementary School where the baseball diamond was asphalt and the bases squares of white paint. (No sliding!) In my world then, strangers were dangerous until proven innocent, and real living happened at Del Amo Mall (at the time, the biggest shopping mall in the U.S.). To me, “Nature” was a television channel.

In the Preface and Chapter One of The Wisdom of Wilderness, May tells stories of wilderness calling him and says I have stories like that, too. With a childhood of big city and concrete, how can I? Do I, really?

Yes, I remember.

I was eight or nine years old sitting in the back seat. My parents and I were eastbound on the 60 (Pomona Freeway) about 45 minutes inland. (Our house was close to the coast.) How odd to look out the window at green- and brown-grassed hills (and even a cow now and then!) instead of the usual buildings and streets. As I viewed those hilltops a sudden grand desire came to me: if we stopped the car now, I can get out and walk to the top of that hill! What a unique (thought I) idea! I so wanted to hike up that little hill and be proud of the accomplishment. Oddly, nature first called to me while I was speeding along a six-lane Southern California freeway.

It was a small beginning, but I did hear the call.

A decade later, I heard echoes of that call reverberating out of my husband. He introduced me to the outdoors and is the reason I no longer call myself a city girl. Wilderness and I have grown from acquaintances to close friends. Now I call the mountains home and go backpacking several times a year.

But in The Wisdom of Wilderness, May says wildnerness is not limited to nature.

Wilderness is not just a place; it is also a state of being… Wilderness, then, is not only the nature you find outdoors. It can also refer to your own true Nature—the You that is closest to your birth. This inner wilderness is the untamed truth of who you really are.

- May, pages xix-xx.

. . . who I really am.

Running parallel to my city-to-wilderness trail was a trail of spiritual growth. My husband helped me climb this one, too, and I began to discover the inner wilderness of who I am in Christ, following the trail of the Me that is closest to my birth—my new birth. Looking back, it is “untamed truth,” indeed. Yet I hear another call to explore the wilderness of me; I have decided to do some self-tracking.

It is another small beginning.