Tag Archives: Mountain

Less-than-Perfect Pilgrimage

Years ago, I attended a Christian writer’s conference at a California camp located in redwood country. Before Palm Sunday services, worshipers made an early morning pilgrimage to a cross atop a mountain.

I skipped it. The drippy morning didn’t inspire my jet-lagged body to rise.

Later, though, I set aside the hour I’d been told would suffice for pilgrimage. I spiraled up the mountain road, marveling at enormous redwoods and giant ferns. Homes perched on mountainsides. No sleepwalker, this Hoosier observed, should attempt slumber here without wearing a parachute.

Image by Simi Luft from Pixabay.

Higher elevations made my head throb, but I inhaled evergreen fragrances and a spring tang that still eluded Indiana’s leafless forests.

As GPSes were not yet common, I carried a map. When the road reversed, then reversed again, I searched the map in vain. What to do? I walked and walked, huffing and puffing like my asthmatic coffee maker back home. Finally, I admitted I was lost. The only directions I felt sure of? Up and down.

Perhaps I’d trusted a pantheistic mapmaker who believed all roads led to the same destination.

Image by Jörg Möller from Pixabay.
Image by Clker-Free-Vector-Images from Pixabay.

Supper aromas emanated from houses I passed. My stomach, unstuffed for the first time in days (“starving writer” doesn’t apply to writers’ conferences) demanded I return the way I came. But I’d climbed an hour and a half to view the cross.

No turning back.

I spotted a fellow writer jogging, hoping he descended from my destination. Smiling, he ran toward me.

I considered tripping him. But my mission drove me to civility.

“Did you find the cross?” I gasped.

“That way.” He pointed, still jogging. And smiling.

Eventually, I spotted the cross.

It seemed to dwarf the cerulean sky. Its thick, wooden beams looked like they could hold a Man in their deadly grasp. Jesus carried something like that through streets of jeering people and up a hill called the Place of the Skull to atone for the sins of humankind.

I carried a water bottle.

I rested on a bench, thanking Him for His sacrifice. For my salvation. I savored alternating lush and dry vistas in Scotts Valley and beyond to Mount Umunhum and Loma Prieta. Then, unlike Jesus, I left the cross.

But because of Him, I, despite energy drain and grouchy stomach, went back full.

Your Extraordinary Ordinary: Have you attempted a pilgrimage? How did that go?

How to Get a Backache

Image by Pfüderi from Pixabay.

Achieving a backache often depends on the subject’s age.

Sadly, if you’re under 20, nothing induces a backache — unless Mom demands you clean your room.

However, creative 20- to 30-year-olds can realize backache goals. Try triple Axels on your skateboard. Carry your unmotivated friend piggyback up a mountain. Impress your lady by lifting her sofa above your head.

If all else fails to achieve back pain, your dad’s demand that you get a job will.

Thirty- and 40-somethings often succeed because they have jobs. Plus, they carry wailing three-year-olds into Little Overachiever Preschool. Every. Single. Day. They also drag 50-pound bags of manure to butterfly gardens for their grade-schoolers’ science projects. Pushing their cars from snowdrifts crisscrosses vertebrae. Nothing, however, works better than taking a terrified Lab to the Happy Doggy Clinic for shots. Paying for damages to furniture, building and staff will add a bonus headache for your Tylenol® pleasure.

Image by Mark Thornton from Pixabay.

More options materialize after a 50th birthday. You haul backbreaking bags of money to your student’s college. Your spouse finds that fitting into skinny jeans takes her to the ER. A game of pickup basketball lightens your mood, but not only will you hurt your back, you may lose a kidney or two. The pain will intensify when you sleep on the sofa because you played basketball instead of cleaning the garage.

At age 65, demonstrate to young whippersnappers what it was like in the good old days. When real men shoveled snow without wussy snowblowers. When real women scrubbed floors on their knees instead of using wussy Swiffers. Show everyone at the block party how real ice cream was made by cranking for six hours. All good-old-days activities are good for a week-long backache.

Image by J. Laso from Pixabay.

Soon, though, you’ll reach the ultimate in back pain with no effort whatsoever. Whereas, weeding flower beds to outdo another retiree once put you in a body cast, now, reading a seed catalog accomplishes the job. The past effects of pickup basketball occur when you pick up a basketball a kid tossed into your yard. Or when you pick up cards at a euchre party.

At age 20, nothing gave you backaches. Now everything gives you backaches.

Image by Kevin 120415 from Pixabay.

So, luxuriate on your heating pad. Lie back in your hot tub.

And don’t let anyone make you clean your room.

Your Extraordinary Ordinary: What’s your “favorite” way to achieve a backache?

OMG, It’s Monday! Prayer: Do I Want August to Go Away?

O Lord, part of me longs for the return of autumn’s regular schedules and button-down “Let’s do this!” Not to mention, pumpkin pie and hot cider.

But OMG, when crazy August’s heat wears on me, please remind me that ice cream and other summer delights don’t.    

  

Me on the trail in Anthony Lakes, Oregon