As my lungs gasped for air and my legs screamed invective at me, the memories came flooding back. This. This was the pain I had forgotten from backpacking trips into the wilderness.
I could not help but smile, though, as three words tumbled quietly off of my lips: "It's worth it."
It had been 15 years since I had done a backpacking trip. The last one ended with me getting bitten by a mack-daddy of a copperhead, and my hiking buddies bailed out after that. Sure, they claimed they were just busy, but I knew the real story: If the copperhead didn't kill me, there was no use dragging me out there anymore unless they could find some place with cobras in which to hike.
Fast forward to last week. Me, my son (who was a year old when last I went) and three other great men from my church went on a two-day backpacking trip on Mount Mitchell in North Carolina. We took the Deep Gap Trail from the summit.
That, by the way, is why my lungs were gasping and my legs screaming. The Deep Gap Trail is, to put it mildly, strenuous. But it offers easily the most amazing views on the East Coast.
After a 4.3-mile jaunt, we arrived at Deep Gap and set up camp. There was nary a soul around. If one desires solitude, going to a place others will not likely walk to is a good way to get it.
Once camp was set, though, my son and I had a fairly serious task. We all needed water. I remembered from those many years past that, somewhere in the vicinity, there were water sources from which to draw.
We finally found two small seeps of water down Colbert Trail, then a much larger one down a different trail that did not have any signage, yet looked wide enough for ATVs or horses.
It was then that we set about the most important task of all: filtering the water. That which looks clear and pristine is actually an extreme hazard. There are often unseen-yet-deadly bacteria and parasites in those waters; these critters are extremely dangerous and possibly even lethal. An unsuspecting soul may drink that water and be lucky to live to regret it.
That thought wiggled around in my head as I began to muse on how similar that is to humanity, to society. We can visually discern things that are dangerous - tanks, missiles, bombs - but we often cannot see with our eyes things that are far more destructive. Things like the redefinition of truth from an external standard to which we all must submit, to an internal standard which we can twist to our own lusts, thus making truth itself as substantive as cotton candy.
Things like rebellion against any authority in which any standard, code, regulation, order or structure is assaulted until it falls.
Things like self-indulgence, which produces far more sponges than soldiers and far more lawbreakers than law enforcers.
Things like entertainment saturation, where books lie idly in the dust as the flickering glow of the latest mindless sitcom steals another hour.
Things like humanism, in which man makes a god of himself while being excessively unqualified for the job.
Things like moral relativism which, at best, cannot discern the difference between good people defending themselves from bombs lobbed daily on their population and bad people chopping off heads and burning people alive in cages and, at worst, regards the bad as good and the good as bad.
1 Thessalonians 5:21 says, "Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." That verse lets us know that there are some things that are in and of themselves good and, conversely, that there are some things that are in and of themselves bad. We are to prove, to put to the test, all things; we must hold to the good and discard the bad.
In other words, filter out the bad stuff before you end up with consequences that you will be lucky to live to regret.
Bo Wagner is pastor of the Cornerstone Baptist Church of Mooresboro, N.C., and the author of several books available at www.wordofhismouth.com. Contact him at 2knowhim@cbc-web.org.