hiking2christ

There is a humility and a seasoned wisdom to be learned in the natural world, as they are learned no other place.

Listen and hear my voice;
pay attention and hear what I say.
When a farmer plows for planting, does he plow continually?
Does he keep on breaking up and harrowing the soil?
When he has leveled the surface,
does he not sow caraway and cummin? . . .
His God instructs him
and teaches him the right way.
Caraway is not threshed with a sledge,
nor is a cartwheel rolled over cummin;
caraway is beaten out with a rod,
and cummin with a stick. (Isa. 28:23-27 NIV)

Isaiah is pointing to the experiences of farming-to man engaging the natural world-to remind us that there is a way things work. That is one of the great lessons nature has for us. There is a way things work. You cannot simply walk through this world any old way you want. Turn a canoe sideways and it will tip. Approach an elk upwind and it will spook. Run your hand along the grain of wood and you’ll get a splinter. There is a way things work. Oh, what a crucial lesson this is for a man. In the realm of nature, you can’t just order room service, or change the channel, or write a new program to solve your problems. You can’t ignore the way things work. You must be taught by it. Humility and wisdom come to a man when he learns those ways, and learns to live his life accordingly.

So, yes, I am saying that an encounter with the natural world-the world God set us in-is essential for masculine initiation. I’m not saying that every man needs to love to fish and hunt. But yes-there are things to learn through nature, lessons that simply cannot be learned anywhere else. It might be out on the open sea. It might take place bicycling through farmlands. Does this mean that a man who loves the city cannot enter into masculine initiation and maturity? Not at all. C. S. Lewis was not an outdoorsman. He spent his days with books, in the academies of England. But I find it important that he felt his day was never complete without a walk outside. Not a fifty-mile backpacking trip. A walk in the woods. Time spent in the field. It’s worth a try, and I’ll guarantee God will meet you there, if you’ll let him.

-John Eldredge, The Way of the Wild Heart, 102, 103