Life in the Wilderness a Practice of Mindfulness

Life in the wilderness is a marvelous exercise in mindfulness: the spiritual practice of purposely bringing one’s attention to the present-moment experience without evaluation. To my way of thinking, the more mindful one can become, the more existentially one can live life, focused on the moment, the here and now, rather than worrying over the past or fretting about the future. 

 

The wilderness is a wonderful lab for practicing mindfulness! First, as I mentioned in my last post, life in the wilderness focuses you intensely on the basics: providing shelter, food, security. One of your first tasks in the Boundary Waters Wilderness is to find a campsite. You do not have to thrash about to do this. You must camp on designated campsites. This minimizes the impact of human presence and activity on the wilderness. A designated site has a fire grate and a latrine box. They are clearly marked on the maps, though you might have to search a little to identify some of them.

 

Once at a site your focus becomes setting up camp, which is securing shelter. This involves unloading all your gear from the canoe. Identifying the most comfortable tent pad (a relatively flat area with as few roots and rocks as possible on which to place your tent); set up the tent. Then it is best to hang a rain fly to protect your gear from the elements. Finally, you must hang a rope assembly with a pully, from two trees. This is where you will hang your food pack to protect it overnight from bears and other critters desiring to share in your good smelling provisions. This is easier to describe than it usually is to execute. Some trips I have spent hours attempting to get the two ropes up over limbs of trees high enough to have the pack hang 10 feet off the ground and at least 10 feet from any other tree. This trip we completed the task in relatively short order.

 

Once camp is established, you have taken care of shelter and security. The other basic need is food. In the wilderness this involves cooking over a wood fire (which means you need to gather some firewood, preferably dry branches up to an inch in diameter) or cooking over a propane stove. We enjoyed steaks the first night in camp, so we cooked over a fire, but all the other nights we cooked over propane. It is easier, faster, and you don’t have to protect your pots and pans from soot by coating them with Fels-Naptha soap. (We also did not have any of that soap, as the Outfitter forget to provide it in our supplies!) It is also easier to cook over propane as most of the food is freeze dried and primarily involves boiling water. Not a lot of need for that smoky, woodsy flavor that comes from open fire grilling!

 

The second way life in the wilderness helps in the practice of mindfulness is by providing an abundance of life to observe all around you! From the beautiful vistas of the lakes, sky, clouds and weather on the macro level to the micro level of butterflies, moths, dragonflies, mushrooms, mosses, and all manners of plant life. Add in the larger birds and waterfowl, and other mammals, and there is just so much to observe. I will write more about this in my next post, but if one is not paying attention to all the life around you then you are missing an amazing smorgasbord of wonder and beauty.

 

Finally, the wilderness assists you with the practice of mindfulness because there are far fewer distractions than we normally surround ourselves with in our daily life. In the wilderness you do not have electricity (other than battery power); that means you don’t have TV, computers, Cell phones; no phone calls can reach you there. (I will admit this trip we discovered that we were still on the grid where we camped. Testament to improved cellular service, most likely influenced by the demand of the Outfitter to be connected to the wider world for their business needs, and to the fact that we were not very far into the BWCA. We did explore a couple lakes and rivers further north of our campsite one day and discovered that we quickly lost all cellular service, so most of the wilderness is still off the grid.) I did take my journal and my camera but writing in my journal and taking photographs help me be more fully present in the moment.

 

 

 

A Return to the Wilderness

 

 For four days in August of this year I returned to my slice of heaven on earth: the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness. This was my 9^th trip in 40 years. Five of those trips have been made from my homes in Miami, Florida and Savannah, Georgia, thus requiring a full two days of travel to get there and to return home. Clearly the lakes and rivers, spruce, pine and birch trees of the Northwoods of Minnesota have a strong pull on me. 

This pull even overrides the strong physical test and toll that it takes on my body each trip I make. This is a designated Wilderness Area, which means no motorized transportation is allowed. The only way to enter is by canoe or on foot. You must transport all your equipment and food for your time in the wilderness by canoe or backpack. This involves paddling fully loaded canoes up and across lakes, sometimes battling strong headwinds, portaging your canoes and equipment on rocky trails or across beaver dams to access rivers and streams that connect the lakes. All in search of a campsite where you then must unload all your gear, set-up your tent, rain tarp, hang your bear ropes to hang your food pack at night, and then see to your meals! It returns life to the basics, securing food, shelter, security. 

But this is all done while you are surrounded by the most beautiful, glorious canvas of blues and greens, browns and whites. With fluffy clouds scudding across the deep blue sky on sunny days and ominous, low hanging gray clouds when overcast. The weather is constantly changing and often in dramatic ways. The water is crystal clear and, though the outfitters and National Forest Service warn you to sterilize your water before consuming it, (and there is risk of bacterial infection) still you can drink it if you do so far enough from shore and it tastes cold and pure and better than any tap water! 

So, while visiting the wilderness is challenging and hard on me physically, it is just the opposite for me emotionally and spiritually. The wilderness is renewing and freeing and relaxing. My mind and my heart and my spirit breathe more deeply and freely in the wilderness. That is why I have returned again and again, now for 9 times. 

It is also a place where I have always been able to journal, faithfully and prolifically. In the wilderness I am able to write freely and deeply, exploring life and my inner self. What else is there to do here, beyond meeting your basic needs for living? I easily find the time, focus, and energy for writing. In the Northwoods, off the technology grid, it is just me, and the loons, birds, fish, mosquitoes, flies, trees, lakes, and my own thoughts. It is a perfect setting for reflection, meditation, contemplation, and writing.

So, with this introduction, you have probably surmised I am hoping to revive this blog: Sabbath Tango. I have many more thoughts to share which I will be posting (be patient with me as I am now back home and no longer in the wilderness and daily life intrudes much more on this activity of writing and sharing) in the days to come.

 

A day for exercising the body & the spirit

A walled city where none of the streets are level, they either go up or down, not too steep, but definitely make walking interesting, especially since they are also cobblestone and extremely narrow. God forbid you meet a car coming or going. I actually had the zipper on my jacket clipped by the passenger-side mirror of a fairly quickly moving vehicle as I tried to edge around a corner that interrupted what little sidewalk was present, thus forcing you into the street. Too close a call for me!

Welcome to Toledo! It is a city with 2,500 years of history and somewhat frozen in time about 700 years ago. In fact the city is so well preserved it has been declared a national monument. The ENTIRE CITY! And the Spanish government has forbidden any modern exteriors. (Of course like any government, I guess they are exempt for the new entry they added to the Alcazar when they renovated it into a national military museum is extremely modern. It totally clashes with the rest of the building and the entire city!)

We spent a marvelous day wandering the streets of Toledo (which is exactly what you do. Even with the Guide Maps it is nearly impossible NOT to get lost. At some point it seems every tourist does so, some multiple times, or they just give in and wander and take what the city provides, which is actually a treasure around every bend or corner in the maze of streets.) For a city whose life-blood is tourism, the signage to assist visitors in getting around is extremely poor. You will start down one direction because a sign designates that way to the Mezquita, for example, and then you never see another sign the rest of the walk. Yet along the way there are multiple forks in the road and you enter numerous small plazas with numerous entrances and exits. I have had a far easier time navigating the lakes and streams of the Boundary Waters Canoe Wilderness Area in northern Minnesota than I did navigating Toledo.

Perhaps it is actually designed as a tremendous spiritual exercise?! After all, it is a walled city. Three sides are bounded by the Tajo River. It is set on top of a hill. So you really cannot get "lost" but will always bump into an edge with an option to head back toward the center. It becomes a problem if you are a goal-oriented, accomplishment-driven American who feels you must see "all" of the sights, or at least a major portion of them. So this spiritual exercise of the streets of Toledo will either drive you mad, or it will begin to break through your "expectations" of what must be achieved and experienced and begin to lead you to slow down, grow patient, go with the flow and simply experience what the city, what life, has to open up before you and, if you slow down enough to look for it, surprise you with.

We did see some of the sights: the Cathedral (huge, immense, awe-inspiring, although after a little while inside, it actually began to feel "oppressive" for Dianne), the Synagogue which houses the National Jewish Museum, a second synagogue which was once a mosque, a Christian church, and for a while served as the stables for Napoleon's horses, and the Mezquita, a very ancient ruined mosque which also was once a Christian church and has some remaining Christian frescoes on the ceiling and the walls.

But we also enjoyed a delicious and slow-paced lunch at a little restaurant where the inside was packed with locals and the outside tables filled with tourists from Germany, Italy, USA, and several other places. We ordered the Menu de Dia (a three course meal). We each had the traditional Catalan Soup; Dianne had a veal steak that looked exactly like a Palomilla and I had venison stew (Toledo is known for its wild game options for dining). It was all washed down with a cheap bottle of Red Table Wine and topped off with flan. It was good and the afternoon sun warm and enjoyable and a nice respite in the middle of the day.

We also enjoyed a surprising invitation immediately after arriving and walking up the hill to the Cathedral, by a very friendly man who told us all about a little shop of artisans just 2 minutes away where we could watch them working, for free! We decided to accept his invitation, since it was only open until noon and it was already 10:30 a.m. He walked us down the hill about two blocks to a charming little shop in a back-alley where we were introduced to two gentlemen working on gold damascene jewelry. We then entered their shop and of course purchased some very nice quality craft work from craftsmen who have been plying their trade for 25, 30, and 48 years! It was a pleasant surprise!

Toledo was a good experience at just the right time. It invited us to slow down and soak in the location, rather than keep driving to achieve all the notches we could count on our traveler's staff. After today I feel we are beginning to find that balance we wanted to achieve between sight-seeing and simply living in and soaking up the surrounding culture and environment which is Spain.

The Power of Memory: Remembering & Reliving the Sabbatical

While on a roll, I want to post something other than a complaint-based rant. There have actually been a number of experiences and reflections I have enjoyed this month, related to my Sabbatical of last year, that I just never found the time to sit down and write about on my blog. (That is part of the source of the complaint-based rant.) So, today, my last day of vacation in Chicago, I want to share some reflections on remembering the Sabbatical this month.

When July 1 rolled around this year I discovered a strong sense of melancholy also arrived with the turning of the calendar page. I began remembering exactly where I was and what I was doing one year ago: Paul and I had just arrived in Minnesota; Paul and I were entering the Boundary Waters via canoe; there were no fire-works on the Fourth of July last year as Paul and I were deep in the north woods, far away from civilization. That experience has continued almost all month. In fact, other people have joined me in remembering. My daughter-in-law, Erika, commented last night that I have set a precedent now, two years in a row in Chicago visiting them in July. There are now expectations that I will return to Chicago again in July now that the precedent is set! It was also noted shortly after we arrived this year that last year at this time we had actually just left Chicago to head to St. Louis. I was also very aware on my father's birthday this year, July 19, that last year we were in St. Louis just a few days before his birthday to celebrate with him and this year he is no longer with us, having died in February.

There was another incident earlier in the month that evoked a slightly different take on this nostalgia. Early in July one Saturday morning, in fact I believe it was the Fourth, I made my morning walk to the bay and upon arrival was greeted by several folks embarking from the landing area for a day of fishing from kayaks. As I stood on the landing watching two of the kayaks paddle off toward the bay into the rising sun it seemed to me they were in the wrong place. They should have been paddling away from the Sawbill Landing heading out into a wilderness adventure in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness in northern Minnesota!

There is no memory I can recall of ever having experienced this same sort of nostalgia so strongly as I am experiencing right now around my Sabbatical experience of one year ago. Will this be prominent in my thoughts and feelings for the next three months? Will I in essence relive the Sabbatical in some form this year? And what about in the years to come? Will I have some of these same thoughts and feelings every year during July, August, September and October? Vivid memories are a common part of my life. But never do I recall this strong recollection of where I was and what I was doing at the same time one year ago as I am experiencing with the Sabbatical. Perhaps this is another indication of what a once-in-a-lifetime, life-changing, foundational experience was my adventure of last year.

(The pictures are from the time in the Boundary Waters last year. Just a chance to share more of my thousands of photos with you and to share some of my nostalgia.)

The Healing Power of Nature

Life continues to be relaxed, yet very full, in Buenos Aires. It has been a couple of days since my last post and I have had a variety of experiences. On Wednesday, I finally made my return visit to the Ecologica Reserva. This is a large park on the coast of the Rio Plata beyond the Puerto Madero. There is an amazing story behind this park. Before the 1960's the land on which this park sits did not even exist! At least, not above the water of the Rio Plata. This park is a testament to the ability of creation to heal itself. In the 1960's & 1970's Buenos Aires was engaged in a large building campaign: building a highway system (las autopistas). In the process they had to tear down lots of buildings and tear up lots of old roadways. What to do with the demolition and construction debris became a problem they solved by unceremoniously dumping it in the Rio Plata! This is not all that surprising when one examines the map of the coastline. From the delta to the northwest past the city to the southeast there are no real opportunities to get to the coast because it is all industrialized.

Except for the Ecologica Reserva! What happened after they dumped the construction debris was that nature reclaimed the space. Over the years sand and sediment from the Rio Plata collected and built up on the debris. This was followed by plants and now birds use the area as a prime breeding ground. It is a marvelous oasis just blocks from the city. As you will see in the photos, you can see the high rise buildings being constructed in Puerto Madero, but you cannot hear any of the city noise. (Except for the occasional airplane either taking off or landing at the Aeroparque farther up the coast near Palermo.) Plus you can walk along the coast of the Rio Plata (which residents of Buenos Aires claim is actually a river, but it sure looks like the South Atlantic Ocean to me. You cannot see any opposing shore on the horizon, and there are large, ocean-going ships moving in and out of the port nearby.) You don't want to get into the water for swimming, though, as it is highly polluted!

I first visited the Reserve at the end of my first three week stay in the city the day before I boarded the bus to Cordoba. It was a breath of fresh air for my soul. I had gone three weeks without seeing the ocean (except for a brief, distant glimpse from the upper deck of la Bombanera, the futbol stadium where I enjoyed the futbol match one Sunday afternoon.) I had not realized how much I have become connected, spiritually, to water. One of the things so renewing for me about Bariloche, even more than the strong presence of the mountains, was the comforting presence of Lago Nahuel Huapi. Being able to view that large body of water each day did more to bring peace and comfort to my soul than just about anything else I have experienced on this Sabbatical. I think it is a huge reason why I love the Boundary Waters in Minnesota and always yearn to return as soon as I leave.

Along with the visual contact with the water, the Reserva was also renewing because of the large variety of birds present and very active. I was able to take some amazing photos of birds, some quite colorful. All of this - the water, the birds, the feeling of a wild space that buffered the reality of the city - contributed to lifting my spirit and to leaving me with a desire to return as soon as I could when I moved back to Buenos Aires. It was why I tried for the first two days of the week to get back there. It was why I finally made sure I did on Wednesday. (And that even though I had decided on Tuesday evening that I really did not want to return to the downtown area because of the noise, crowds, traffic, and fumes, very much until Dianne arrived.) But I did go and Wednesday was a glorious day of sun (in fact, I ended up with a sun-burned face) and I did have an enjoyable visit.

I will talk about my other, very different experiences on Thursday and Friday in my next post. To view the pictures I took at the Ecologica Reserva on my two visits, follow this link to the Kodak Gallery Album: http://www.kodakgallery.com/I.jsp?c=6d2p4u6.33z7gfgq&x=0&y=-g6u917&localeid=en_US

Deer in Texas

After traveling all the way up to the Boundary Waters in upstate Minnesota to see wildlife in its natural habitat, Paul and I encountered lots of white-tailed deer, does and fawns, roaming around my Aunt and Uncle's place in Sun City, Texas. We saw them every day, sometimes multiple times, as we drove around or sat on the back porch. So, in a way, we began and ended our trip in the company of wildlife!

Learning to Appreciate Small Pleasures

One learning I was reminded of by the time in the Boundary Waters was how important simple pleasures can be toward bringing comfort to us in our daily lives. Dealing with the basics of living in the wilderness is so difficult that you become much more aware of the simple things which can bring true pleasure and joy to life. For instance:

1. It was a great thing when I finally cleaned off the lenses of my glasses with soap and water in the lake rather than using the soft lens cloth I was carrying, which only worked to a certain extent in removing the grease and grime of daily life. Having a clean pair of glasses I realized was almost a greater joy than having clean skin or hair. To have my glasses clean and have clear vision again - a true joy!

2. When you are truly hungry and physically spent almost anything tastes delicious - even Peanut Butter & Jelly sandwiches (which I ate for three lunches, and which I could not even begin to remember when I last had a PB & J sandwich before this). Even freeze dried fruit, which actually tastes sort of like Styrofoam, with a little bit of flavor added.

3. Being able to spend a lazy afternoon with my son, laying on the rocks by the shore of a beautiful lake, gazing up at the clouds floating by, changing shapes as they go, watching what they turn into and transform into and just chat with him about whatever comes to mind. A true Sabbath experience.

4. And the hot shower when you emerge from the wilderness that the Outfitters provides. This is by far the best shower, most luxurious feeling, you can have, after spending 6 days in the woods with only cold lake water to provide bathing options for you and even then tempered by the need to almost immediately recover your body with DEET mosquito repellent. Every time I have ended one of these trips I have luxuriated in the hot shower for at least 30 minutes (I know, probably very wasteful of water to all my eco-friendly, green friends), totally scrubbing my body with soap twice and shampooing my hair with large quantities of shampoo and conditioner. It is a true taste of heaven!

5. The taste of Dairy Queen hot dogs and Blizzards for a first meal after eating freeze dried food for a week. There is a Dairy Queen in the Two Harbors, the first sizable town we drive through after leaving the wilderness and heading south along the northern shore of Lake Superior. We stopped there five years ago for our first meal when I first took Paul and Rebekah on one of these trips with me and Paul and I stopped again this time. I would never, ever, order a Dairy Queen hot dog any other time or place, but at this moment after emerging from the wilderness it tastes divine.

The dilemma is how to be aware of these simple pleasures upon returning to the hustle and bustle and daily grind of regular life. I am sure that if I could be more aware of life at this level my life would be much richer and less stressed. I will have to keep meditating on this truth during the sabbatical.

Hanging the Pack

One of the tasks you must deal with at each campsite is identifying one or two trees which you can use to hang your food pack. This must be done to protect it primarily from black bears, who are voracious scavengers, but also from other critters such as chipmunks and squirrels. This is always a difficult chore because you must hang the pack at least 10 feet off the ground and at least 6 feet from any tree. The area is loaded with trees, but not many of them are good bear trees. The outfitter provides you with two ropes, one with a metal pulley attached to one end, which you can use for this project. Paul and I were able to hang our pack the first night by having him climb on my shoulders against one tree to wrap the rope around a high branch and the trunk and then eventually through a stick with the other rope attached over another tree, high enough so we could get the pack elevated. It was more than 6 feet from either tree, but we not quite 10 feet off the ground. Paul, who is 6 feet could just touch the bottom the pack with his fingers stretched high, so it was probably about 8-9 feet high. But it worked and we had no problems that night. The next campsite was on an island about 100 yards from shore. The water was very shallow between the island and the shore. Nevertheless, knowing a bear could probably get over to the island if it really wanted to, we did not hang our food the three nights we were on this campsite. We took this risk primarily because we absolutely could not find a decent tree to use. There were trees, but either they did not have large branches, or they were way back from the campsite area in the woods. So we closed everything up tightly, covered it with the tarp, and prayed. Again, we have no problems. The final campsite we did find a pretty good tree to use by throwing the pulley over a thick branch, lowering it to the ground and running the other rope through the pulley and then tying both ropes off to another tree. This time the pack was much higher than 10 feet. But, it was also right up against a lower branch of that tree that looked rather dead and I was trusting it would not hold the weight of a bear. Again, we had no problems. This rather lengthy post illustrates the amount of concern this chore elicits in me. The above pictures illustrate the two different times we got the pack hung.

Mosquitoes!!!!

There is another piece of the wildlife in the Boundary Waters which I did not mention last post. MOSQUITOES!!!! They are extremely numerous in the wilderness and you must find creative ways to deal with them or they can ruin a trip. Since we booked the upgraded outfitting package this time they gave us mosquito netting we could wear on our heads (The picture shows Paul wearing his netting as a "hoody" so it was at the ready and he could flip it over to cover his face whenever necessary.) This was a tremendous asset. The nets were especially handy on the portages, for this is one of the worst areas for mosquitoes. Especially when carrying a canoe over your head. It becomes like a long, hollow hat and the mosquitoes become trapped in the hull with you. The other handy place for this netting was going to the latrine (which is lovingly depicted in the other picture), another location where the mosquitoes congregate, waiting for fresh meat (or I guess it is really the blood they are after.) The mosquitoes were especially bad this year since they have had such a wet spring and early summer. The blessing to that is the water levels are high which sometimes means shorter portages because you can paddle up some of the beaver creeks and ponds. It also means there is no fire ban so you can have a wood fire, although we only did that twice. (More about that later.) There are two refuges from the mosquitoes: out on the water for they do not fly out there, unless they have attached themselves to you when you push off from the land. But those few mosquitoes you eventually kill or the breeze on the lake blows them away. The other refuge is in the tent. So, besides applying massive qualities of DEET mosquito repellent, far beyond what the manufacturer's label recommends, we often stayed out on the water in our canoe, or we went to the tent, often turning in before daylight was completely erased from the sky. (At this northern latitude during the summer the sun rises about 5:30 a.m. and does not set until about 9:30 p.m. We did stay up late enough to see some stars on one of the evenings and I saw the millions of stars that appear when the night is darkest on one of my late night latrine trips. It was disappointing that we did not get to see the Northern Lights, the Aurora Borealis. We were especially hoping for them on July 4th to be our fireworks show.

Wildlife in the Boundary Waters

It has been a few days since I last posted. We have been visiting my family (my Dad and one brother and one sister with her little boy) since landing in St. Louis on Sunday, July 13. I will share reflections on this part of the trip in a later post. With this post I want to share the wonderful wildlife Paul and I encountered in the Boundary Waters. This was, without a doubt, the most richly blessed trip I have ever made to this wilderness area in terms of the variety and amount of wildlife I observed. The list included:
2 white-tailed deer
4 Bald Eagles, one up close
1 Golden Eagle, very close (right above our campsite in a tree)
Many loons, some in flight
Vultures
Crows
numerous song birds
Canadian Jays
3 Beaver
4 - 7 otter
Several wood ducks
Several sea gulls
A leech
A painted turtle laying eggs on one of our campsites
several frogs
several different kinds of butterflies
Dragonflies
1 Pine Marten
squirrels
1 Snake
1 Moose!

I have seen most of these things before on trips to the Boundary Waters, but I cannot recall ever seeing this much variety and this many critters all in one trip. I can certainly enjoy the wilderness without seeing many of these animals, but they truly add to the joy and excitement and wonder of the trip. If you would like to see some photos of some of the wildlife, click on this link to go to my gallery. http://www.kodakgallery.com/I.jsp?c=6d2p4u6.4zlns29e&x=0&y=rcj95a&localeid=en_US

Wilderness Camping Brings Life Down to Basics

It was most definitely the best decision I made to begin my Sabbatical with 6 days in a wilderness setting where I was literally disconnected from the rest of the world. It helped me to begin making the shift from working pastor to renewing pastor and I am confident it helped the Church to make the shift from relying on me to trusting their own resources and capabilities. In the woods life is reduced to its most basic functions. You spend your time preparing your meals, eating, sleeping, bringing water from the middle of the lake (where is more pure) to your campsite, taking care of your campsite, moving camp -- in otherwords, you basically spend your time taking care of yourself at the level of very basic needs , along with taking care of those immediately with you. There is not time to strive after things, possessions -- not much you could do with them if you had them anyway. There is just basic life, taking care of yourself and those you love. Which is really all life is about and all it really needs to be about. We have laid so many layers of expectations over life in civilization that at times we really lose the essence of life and what is most important at its core. Taking care of our basic needs and taking care of those we love. That is what Jesus called us to remember: Love God and love our neighbor as we love ourself. He also expanded our circle of love to include everyone around us, including those we don't much like or are afraid of. Take care of those you love! Do that and in truth most of life will take care of itself.

We Made It!

Paul and I have survived and emerged from the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness. Six days in the north woods was amazing, wonderful, enriching, exhilarating, relaxing, physically demanding and a great time. We are now in Chicago. We arrived here on July 9th, and were instantly engulfed in the family life of my step-son and his family, including a 3 year old and a 3 month old. Needless to say there was no time to post yesterday. Today Paul and I are off to the city to visit the Art Institute of Chicago Museum and do some other sight-seeing. I will post more about the Boundary Waters later tonight and hopefully be able to include some pictures. (Assuming I can figure out how to post pix.)

The Sabbatical Begins

My son Paul and I have traveled in 4 hours from hot, humid Miami to hot (90 degrees this afternoon when our plane landed), dry Minnesota. The adventure has begun! What seemed so far away when I first began writing the grant proposal over 15 months ago and then when I received the grant in September, 2007, has finally arrived. I am on an actual, honest to goodness Sabbatical. For the next 4 months I do not have to think about Church stuff. I do not have to write any sermons, or plan worship, or teach a class, or mediate a conflict, or plan a program, or keep a calendar. For the next 4 months I have only one have-to: to learn Spanish. I don't even start that for a month.

These first 3 weeks Paul and I will just spend time "being". No expectatioins. No requirements. We are going into the Boundary Waters Wilderness Canoe Area (BWWCA) for 6 days/5 nights. We will paddle and swim, camp and cook, eat and relax, take pictures and see what we can see. We will be without cell phones, laptops, ipods, TV, video games. We will be spending life at its most basic level. I am excited and looking forward to these first 8 days almost as much as the entire rest of the sabbatical. I am very excited about my time in South America, but I love the Boundary Waters. This is my sixth trip into this wilderness and it always restores and renews my soul. This place touches the romantic in me and evokes my yearnings for closer connections with the natural world in all its wonder and glory.

Last Sunday was my final worship service and really my last day of responsibility at the church for the next 4 months. I did not have to preach, thanks to my friend and colleague, Bill Koch, Southeast Regional Conference Minister of the Florida Conference UCC who joined our celebration and delivered the sermon. It was a relatively easy Sunday for me and the congregation threw a wonderful Bon Voyage Luncheon/Party after worship. Lots of heartfelt well wishes and encouragement was shared and a generous gift that surprised me. The gift of the time away was generous enough, but this additional support speaks of a deep love and sense of support. My heart was deeply touched. They truly sent me off in style!

There were a million details to arrange before I left. I feel I have done all I can and everything needed to prepare them to function well in the next 4 months. It was a much larger task than I envisioned and I am not sure I started preparing the congregation and myself early enough, but all has been done and at this point I can do no more. I leave them in God's care and in the capable hands of the Rev. Dr. Sheila Guillaume, who is Sabbatical Interim Pastor, and in the capable hands of many leaders in the Church, all of whom are very capable. I know they will do well and the church will do fine. It will be most interesting when we come back together to share our experiences.

This was a long post, but I will not be posting anymore for the next seven days until we come out of the woods. Until then, I pray you find your own time for sabbath.