You can fly in, hike in, or “mush in,” but you cannot drive in! Gates of the Arctic National Park is inside the Arctic Circle, making it the most northern as well as the most remote of the national parks. It is unaltered, untamed wilderness with no roads, established trails, designated campgrounds, or cell service.
In Gates of the Arctic, you see the world as seven thousand years of human ancestry encountered it. Caribou, grizzly and black bear, Dall sheep, musk ox, wolves, fox, and moose wander the land making the most of a short summer season, tending to the matters of making life and then moving on to escape the harshness of the long polar winter.
Of course, travelers to Gates of the Arctic National Park aren’t the first to experience the wilderness. If we turn to scripture, Abraham, Moses, Elijah, John the Baptist, and Jesus all experienced the wilderness. And through church history, a host of known and unknown mystics and ascetics spent time in the wilderness.
Some ran away from the distractions of life or to break the daily routine in favor of a new way of being. Others ran toward an encounter with God or to discover the sacred in spaces where it dwells less camouflaged by the secular.
In Gates of the Arctic National Park, the wilderness is marked by mountains and wild rivers that meander through glacier-carved valleys. In scripture, the wilderness more often a rocky, daunting area of cliffs and caves, the haunt of wild beasts. Scripturally, the wilderness was a place generally avoided for fear of what lurked behind the rocks and hidden in the caves. It was an unsafe and terrifying place.
We know something of the wilderness too. Some of us know something of a physical wilderness, and some of us even choose to go to such places. We choose to turn off our cell phones, pack forty pounds of food, clothing and supplies and go into the wilderness, sleep on the ground, and play the game “is that sweat or an ant.”
But there’s other wildernesses too. Ones we know all too well. The wilderness might be a physical place, like a hospital room, a waiting room or even a surgical center. Or it might be the unexpected or untimely death when we lose someone we love and are left feeling cold and empty, with little idea of how the world keeps turning. Or it might be difficult relationships or divorce or our children who just can’t get along. Or it might be the loneliness of waiting at home while your child serves in the military, the constant feeling of dread and the unknown.
We usually don’t choose such wildernesses. We don’t volunteer for pain, loss, anger, or terror. But the wilderness happens. The wilderness appears unbidden and unwelcome, at our doorsteps. Sometimes the wilderness is just there.
Do you think God is more or less present or manifest in the wilderness than elsewhere? How might the wilderness change you? What would you hope to discover in the wilderness?
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