Taking a Scenic View

I was inspired to blog my journey by my sister-in-law. She has been writing a blog for several years
now documenting her and her family's journey through fostering and adoption and life in general. This blog is a rambling, much like one would take through the woods, of my life and experiences, emotional ups and downs, and philosophical break throughs along the way. 

I have been wanting to write this since August of last year. I was determined, one may say "hell-bent", to create a hiking journal. In my head this would be the epitome of journaling with detailed writings about my experiences along the trail, but that was not what happened. I found myself composing the narrative as I walked, but I was not doing what I set out to do--to heal and meditate. 

When I put the journaling away and focused on the trail, I found signs everywhere. Things that made me think of those in my life, here and gone, that have been a guide for me in some way. Loss does that to you, it makes you reflect on who you are and who you are becoming--for me it also made me think of who came before me and what their legacy has left in my life. My grandparents where a big part of that. They molded and shaped me. I found myself wondering...am I on the right trail? Am I living up to what they thought I'd be (or at least what I thought they thought I'd be)?

While walking, I found myself turning to God. During the COVID-19 pandemic, I lost my connection to the physical church. The pews, the organ music, the people--those where the things that I always thought made church. I remembered a walk at Sachuest Point Nature Reserve (Middletown, RI) with my uncle in November 2019. It was a Sunday morning and he mentioned that the preserve was like his church--it was God's creation. I felt called to focus on that idea of Creationism. As an environmental biologist student, I gravitate to all things "green" and I wanted to dive more into that idea in my faith journey. 

I began hiking on Sunday mornings in Gambrill. I would start with a prayer and meditate as I walked the familiar trails listening for God's message. The first sign I saw that day were two wild turkeys in the distance. Funny enough, my nickname for my uncle is an "Old Turkey". In that moment I was transported back to the coastal trail we walked that Sunday three years earlier. Talking, observing, and as always, picking up litter--leaving the space we were in a bit better than we found it. This was a way that I could live my faith. I did not need a physical building or even a sacrament of communion to commune with God--I needed to let him back in. 

This realization has led to many twists and turns on my journey--I have learned so much about myself as a person, as a husband, a father, a teacher, and a Christian. I was not only healing the physical body by hiking, I was healing my heart. 

Costal View: Sachuest Point