BitterSweetLife

Yesterday was Lindsay’s birthday, so we left the computer to collect dust (if it was a Mac we would have buckled it in, bought it a milkshake, and brought it with us) and headed out to our favorite state park.

The park is named Wallace. It does not look especially Scottish, and in lieu of the lack of heather, rills and misty valleys, we think that someone on the naming committee got confused. However, Wallace State Park does tend to serve up very satisfying woodland panoramas, and we always find new angles to fuel our photography.

The Park’s trail system is also very endearing, especially on fall afternoons when the sun has a warm, dusty smell. The various trails circle up behind you, slowly surround you, and force you to stop and stand in a pile of leaves. Then the orange and gold trees whisper something to you, something about stopping and taking a nap. You compromise by taking gratuitous numbers of photos.



The trail system is very poorly labeled. If you start in from the correct end, the maze makes a sort of lackadaisical sense—as if a slightly inebriated groundskeeper (Wallace?) stumbled through the woods, tacking up markers when the fancy took him. But the correct end of the system is not near the parking lot—and not being ones to waste time, Lindsay and I always just start in.

This has a way of lengthening the duration of our hikes. Yesterday our trail angled up and over a small ridgeline and across a creek. Faced with a three-pronged intersection, we opted for one that would take us away from the “Deer Run Loop,” an extra 1.5 miles that we’ve hiked in the past. Before the afternoon was over, we had hiked the Deer Run Loop twice—we think.

It was something like what Bilbo Baggins said: “It's a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don't keep your feet, there's no knowing where you might be swept off to.” Except in this case, the danger kicks in when you enter the Wallace trail system. The paths reach out leafy little fingers and grab you. You enter the trees knowing these trails take on a life of their own.



Connections could be made here. I won’t actually make them, but… When the trail forks, and it’s poorly labeled, you experience a sense of irritation, of necessary knowledge being yanked away. You feel that Wallace, for all his redeeming qualities, has taken things a little too far. That’s why it’s surprising to discover the strange freedom that accompanies getting lost. Life with Christ, we think, is like this. Intriguing, beautiful, and ultimately unchartable. We're all walking in this huge park, several switchbacks out from Eden.

Not that we’re complaining.