Mythic Landscapes: The Ordinary as Mask of the Holy - Tara Thompson

As a child my mother had me convinced that God was everywhere, all the time. I would look around the house and point to different things, “Is God in this lamp, mommy?” “What about in this banana? How can God fit into a banana!?” It was during that time that I was on my best behavior, I felt as though God was watching me everywhere I turned and I knew that I had to show Him that I was a good little girl. As I grew up, I slowly forgot about that. I began to only seek God where He is most expected to be, in church, while I was reading my bible, etc..

“In Christian thought, the one great practical truth of the incarnation is that the ordinary is no longer at all what it appears. Common things, common actions, common relationships are all granted new definition because the holy has once and for all become ordinary in Jesus Christ.” Lane couldn’t have phrased that better. I’m reading through Luke right now, and just as every where else through out the bible, it shares with you the ordinary things Jesus constantly used to exemplify the holy. Not only was Christ made ordinary, but he preached about ordinary things to reflect the sacredness of His Father. He taught parables about shepherds and their sheep, one of the most normal jobs in His day. He taught of normal people, and their normal duties, of farming and tax collecting. He taught parables of mustard seeds, and lanterns. Jesus screams ordinary, yet he is more extraordinary than we can even imagine. How is it that I could forget how simply extraordinary God is, that I would only see Him in Church?

Jesus said in Luke 18, “Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these. I tell you the truth, anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it.” Maybe that is because as we grow up, we forget to view God’s ordinary creation as His holy works. Yes, I would agree that if God were to split a sea right in front of me, I would be amazed by His holiness. However, the Lord is so cool that he masks His brilliance as ordinary, every day occurrences and things, such as a golden leaf falling from a tree, or the smile of a best friend. Once you realize how extraordinary the ordinary is though, the brilliance of our Creator is seen and you’re amazed by how much you’ve been missing out on.

Noland Trail - Josh Osteen

Looking at the map, frantically watching my speed and the road, I drive to the class meeting on the Noland Trail. I'm worried that i'm going to be terribly late and so my mind is freaking out. I watch the clock and get more nervous as each minute flashes up. I finally arrive at the bridge and step outside to the warm fall weather. I meet up with the class as they are just walking to the big statue that begins the trail portion we are walking. We talk about the history and we start our walk. We stop every 10-20 feet and find out something new; a berry, a historical fact about how something was changed, or how the trail has changed in the past few years. We get to the final stopping point for the entire class and I am finally getting in touch with the atmosphere of these woods. I start trekking back to my car and my mind is losing the frustration that once was blinding my thoughts. I begin my observations on my own.

As I walk back through the trail, I see small trails darting off into places that it seems things could not actually fit. I see trails winding back over small hills and to places I cannot see. These trails look like challenges to search for the new. I ask myself why people cannot sometimes enjoy the known instead of looking for new. I understand and have felt the need and passion for unknown adventure, but I had taken this hike in order to analyze and exist in the known. I also see in a tree initials cut into the bark. I instantly think of a movie called Ferngully: The Last Rainforest. This movie has a scene where one of the main characters puts the other main characters hand on a recently cut tree. She asks him if he can feel the pain. The fact that the first character was that connected to nature makes me very jealous. Thinking about the actual tree I saw, I wonder why people carve their names into trees. Do people feel the need to destroy in order to physically express what one can only feel emotionally? I continue on the trail and stop to see an ant carrying an unusually large piece of food. I also see a small troop of recon ants and I just admire the fact that they are navigating this huge world and working together. I get back to my car and sit on the bridge and look out upon the lake. The lake looks infinite yet enclosed. I can see part of the lake, but it winds around a bend and the rest is lost to my eyes. I feel as though it keeps going forever with ever-changing landscape and things to see, but i know that it is deceitfully finite.
Overall this hike was very interesting. I was able to change my mind and focus on the task at hand and was able to let go of the stress that was bothering me. I felt not completely centered and in sync with the trail, but I was able to see and feel the things we needed to feel and was able to understand in real life the things we've talked about in class.

James Joseph: Truth Hidden in Trails

The Noland trail is not quite the place we would want to have a picnic at, but it is beautiful and deep in it's own right. Having walked the paths, observed the animals, felt the trees, and pondered about life while looking over the pond, I feel like there's alot more to a trail or path than what we first take in. For example, looking at how a crane will flutter across the tranquil waters, only to take land on a log that a group of turtles happen to be take residence on. This seems to us as what most would call "Nature being nature" and we usually reside ourselves to that and don't look any deeper. But on the odd chance that we begin to take notice, and begin to wonder why animals do certain things, the truth becomes known to us. So looking at the example of a crane flying to a log that has turtles on it could be taken many different ways. Could it be that the turtles are prey to the crane, which is unlikely but not out of the question. Or is it possible that the crane and turtles work together on that log, to help catch prey for each other? Taking a different angle, it could also be a scene of turtle-crane romance (har har). But in all seriousness, trails and what you find on them can be alot more than what we first take it as. And as we compare nature trails to life, we realize that life is very similar, and things could be very different from what one first presumes. In relative terms, a book is just a book until it is opened and the pages are read and understood, then it becomes a story.

Noland Trail: PJ Leegan

My Noland Trail experience was pretty dull. I didn’t really feel or see anything that special. I go out there a lot so it was hard for me to actually “enter” the place. I did however enjoy the beginning when Professor Redick talked about the different plants, especially that thorny looking one, the devil’s stick or something. I also enjoyed looking at that drain where all of the water was flowing out really fast and I look forward to going back to that spot when all the carp are there, as Professor Redick explained. As I continued walking, I looked for a spot to stop and relax and I came upon some random bridge stood there for a little bit but became bored so I decided to spit in the water a few times. That was pretty fun. The bridge experience was probably my favorite part of the whole trail. I was alone and enjoyed just staring out into the water. On the walk back I was scared because I couldn’t think of anything to write about so I tried to come up with some random stuff, but I decided I might as well just admit that I didn’t really “connect” with the place. I did enjoy getting out of the classroom and getting some fresh air though.

My experience with flow: Josh Osteen

So I live right at the base of the George Washington National Forest and I love the woods and wilderness. I feel as though this is one of the reasons I felt so compelled to take this course. Anyways, I am a short drive to the Blue Ridge Parkway and Skyline Drive which are both roads that traverse a small portion of the Blue Ridge Mountains. The entire drive is a spectacle and around every turn there is a new view of the Shenandoah Valley below and each one is as breathtaking as the last. During Fall Break I proceeded to take an hour hike up to a popular, but not too popular tourist site known as Humpback Rock. This rock formation is not at the highest peak, but what makes it special is what it looks like.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Humpbackrock5.jpg
This is a link of what the summit looks like. The thing about this hike is that it's very short and some people even take their dogs up on the mountain. With all of this touristy actions, the place does not seem to be that sacred. From my experiences on the mountain I can testify that no matter what you see on your way up, the view from the top gives you the most wonderful feeling. I consider this to be a sure-fire spiritual renewal opportunity. Everytime I hike this, I feel as though nothing back in the real world matters anymore. Every worry or thought just melts away from the rolling mountains and the green valleys.
So, now that I have explained stuff that isn't the main point I will now continue to the reason for this post.
Over fall break I decided to take on this hike for the umpteenth time and I decided to take my sister along with me. We started out right before the sun was about to set and we started walking. The hike at first is not natural at all. The trail has been graveled and set up to prevent rock slides and to divert things such as water. The trail does not help with any type of mindset. After the halfway mark the trail starts to immediately get more treacherous on one of the path options. Of course being the adventurous type that my sister and I are, we chose the path that was harder. We began to run out of things to talk about and so we fell silent for a while. I began to look down at my feet and then out of nowhere I felt as though I snapped out of a trance. I realized I was almost done with the hike and I had no idea how I was so far up and how I had gotten there. I felt completely happy and content with everything around me. It took me a minute but I finally connected that I had just experienced flow for the first time. I was in a state of a merging of awareness and action. I had been walking for what felt like no time at all, but I was farther along than I thought I was. My mind completely stopped processing what I was doing and started to soar higher than the mountain. My mind was wandering and my body was walking. I felt so out of it and didn't even know where I was. It was an amazing experience and It changed the way I viewed hiking. I got to the top of the mountain and sat there to journal and looked out as the sun was beginning to fall behind the mountains right beside us. The hike had finally showed me some of the things we has talked about in class. The idea of flow had always intrigued me and I finally was able to experience. I wish I could explain it with more detail but the pure state of no action awareness is indescribable. I now wonder if I can experience flow in more places than in wilderness alone.

Nature Walk-Will Geiger

At 2:10 on that Thursday, I awoke with a start at the sound of my obnoxious alarm clock. I vaulted myself out of my bed, assuming the floor was under me (it luckily was), grabbed my backpack and sprinted out of my room. I was in a delirious state of mind because a stone cold nap is a hard thing to get out of in the first place and then when it so happens that, without a ride, my only option is to hoof it a mile down the road, the mental and physical transition is difficult to make. When I finally get to the trail and join the class, fifteen minutes late, shirt soaked through with sweat, Dr. Redick was speaking of the variety of plant life found along the trail. The most striking visual experience I had the entire time on the trail was at one point when the sun had made a glare on the eclectic amassing of foliage on the trail floor and it was as if all the colors were jumping aggressively at my eyes. I paused a handful of times to soak up this effect and began to think about how singular this moment would be for me. Flow is the merger of action and spirit, and as I thought about this moment, the way the sun was reflecting off of the leaves to project a vibrant golden aura, I could focus on nothing else but this seemingly tangible energy. My thoughts even seemed to decelerate to a standstill. When the apex of my flow experience subsided and I was brought back from whatever planet I had drifted to, I began to relate the idea of the absolute present to the setting. What I had just experienced would only be possible in the fall, one of the many reasons why people like the fall is because the leaves of most trees turn to characteristically autumn shades of orange and yellow and red. When Dr. Redick showed us the Holly tree, time sped up and my thoughts found their way to the winter setting of the trail, with three feet of snow and the entire lake frozen over...I wish. Then further on, as we observed the damage that hurricane Isabel did to the Nolan, having knocked down thousands of trees and crippling the habitat, the park had to be closed for months. I could see the difference in height of trees that had re-grown in the time following Isabel and those that had survived and it made me think of the life span of a tree, how insignificant six months is when one lives for potentially hundreds of years. The contrast between the expanse of time that the Nolan Trail symbolizes and the specificity of the moment of flow that I experienced earlier blew my mind.

Landscapes of the Sacred: Darshan- Samantha Anderson

In the American culture, silence has become a bad sign. However, the Hindus believe in darshan, “absorbing the unspoken presence of a nobler spirit” p. 91. Why is it that our culture finds silence awkward, chilling, and uncomfortable? Where did the constant need for conversation arrive from? I feel as a culture we would be more at peace if we practiced darshan. I believe a true sign of friendship to be the ability to sit together and not have a need to say anything to each other. The silence between friends is a representation of how close we are; the fact that we are not afraid of our silence together, but rather we embrace the time and reflect on our own thoughts and friendship. How much would our culture change if we practiced darshan on a regular basis?