I often return to memories of my time on the Appalachian Trail with the Sacred Communication and Sacred Journeys class. Each time I come back I have the pleasure of enjoying deeper meaning of the trip in total. Throughout the two weeks of hiking together I was immersed in nature in the most intimate way I had ever been in my life. Also I was freed to enjoy humans in a way that I had never been given the chance to.
Looking back on this time I quickly remember certain flashes of memory from Tylor warming up his water bottle to sleep with on a chilly day, or filtering water at a trickling brook, or walking on my lonesome with birds fluttering about me. However I find myself most often returning back to a moment in the Greyson Highlands where I gazed out at the stars with two close friends of mine. Everyone else on the trip had decided to hike down to a concert a couple miles away and we felt it would be fun to sit back and enjoy stories together. So I heard from these two. I heard their deepest thoughts, their biggest struggles, and some of their funniest joys.
Now when I think back to this memory I go now to the relation our space had with the conversation and connection. If we were to have walked to the concert with everyone else these thoughts never would have occurred. This may be true, but I also want to make a difference between mere context and the spiritual implications of different ecology.
It was the rocks, the stars, the grasses, the trees hiding us away, that allowed for that moment. It granted us a feeling of security, a feeling of wonder, and a feeling of freedom. We were in a place of humility and nakedness of soul, there was nothing to hide here in the wild.
I am thankful for that night. I am thankful for that space. For, without those things I do not believe I would have known myself or known those two to the extend I know them today.
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