Season Hunting

I love going back to the same place throughout the year.  I think it's great to see the transition that a place goes through during the year and over a while, as well.  A sense of adventure is awesome.  But there's a beautiful feeling about being able to return to the same place time and again.  You also get to know the routes and map well enough to drive off on a random highway for a bit and know that you'll hit something else and take it 50 miles east and be back where you need (note: have a good atlas, and definitely not a GPS, especially one on your phone.  This will be a later post.).  My two years at Creighton University, I frequently wandered to Indian Cave State Park, Boyer-Chute National Wildlife Refuge, and De Soto National Wildlife Refuge.  One of my favorite and most trustworthy highways runs the route between all three--US 75, which runs from Dallas to the point where Minnesota and North Dakota hit Canada.  I hope to drive the length of it some day.  Why do I share all this information?  Because having a place to go inspires more adventures, and also somewhere to think and pray about them.

Indian Cave.  Courtesy Tim Nendick, currently in Spain, so he doesn't know.

I think returning to the same place again and again creates a sensitivity to the nuances and things that happen there.  It's a beautiful opportunity to explore hidden opportunities and trials that lie there.  I'm not referring to the environmental seasons--I mean my own.  But having the same physical location throughout the seasons helps as well.  I saw Indian Cave and US-75 in every season and state imaginable, especially as I began more seriously discerning entering the Jesuits.  This picture was a particularly fun camping trip that lots of friends came on.  But I saw it in winter with the sky laid bare by frigid winds.  I saw it in spring with buds starting to push out of the trees.  I saw it in steamy May when the green was almost overbearing.

I saw myself in these same places.  And I return to those same places quite frequently.  It helps me know what I've done, who I was and am, who I'm becoming.  This is a major and important part of discernment.  It can be a small daily return, the Examen.  Or it can be the place I went to wrestle with myself during the 30-day Spiritual Exercises (God is a hell of a personal trainer).  When we are there, we can also explore where to go next.  Standing frigid and sick with swine flu on a river bluff over the Missouri River, a hawk flew just over my shoulder and I realized I needed to move from that place of comfort and great happiness at Creighton to a new journey with the Jesuits.  These same movements come in the Spiritual Exercises as well.

It is also important how we get there.  We do not simply appear at a location.  I associate music with certain roads.  I-29 through Missouri and Iowa is Chuck Ragan,  State Radio and Eddie Vedder.   I-70 across Missouri is Cake and Franz Ferdinand.  If I listen to something different, or especially nothing at all, that deserves a special note.  What was different?  Why?  Was something happening?  Was nothing happening and I felt stagnant?  Was I restless?  Content?  These are all important questions about journey of spirit and physical journey as well.

Let us not forget where we have been, lest we forget the places we are going.

Skipping rock at De Soto NWR.  Again, stolen from Tim.

Next time:  Atlas vs. GPS--Is there Really a Difference?