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It’s not very often that I have an experience which allows me to relive a bunch of recent memories in extremely vivid detail. Generally by the time I revisit a location, the memories of the experiences there are far enough in the past that I have to strain to remember them. This was definitely not the case for me a couple of days ago…

8:30 p.m. on Sunday, Aug. 7 — the last night of our last trip. Our team was huddled under a giant blue tarp having team time. It was quite chilly outside (we could see our breath) due to the decent-sized storm that had just come through camp. As we were evaluating ourselves and how we’d done as a team that day, I glanced over at one of the adult leaders and saw an icy look on his face — it was one of those looks you see and immediately know that something is wrong. I tied up the evaluation portion of team time and before going any further, the youth pastor said all of the adults should talk for a bit before continuing team time.

Some moments in life get etched in your brain indefinitely and can be played back in slow motion. The next couple of seconds is one of those moments for me. All of us adults huddled together just a couple of feet from our students. Without any preamble, the adult leader broke the news: “Guys… the keys to both of our vans… they’re back in the LT vehicle at the trailhead.” Now, I happen to enjoy a good prank every once in awhile and this adult leader was no different, but I could tell from the look in his eyes that this was no prank. “Ok… are you absolutely sure?” — “Yup.”

Now, a bit of background info for those of you not familiar with the trail we hike in the Bighorns: the trail is an 18-mile point-to-point trail with about another 2-3 miles of a forest service road at the beginning of the hike. Since the trail is a point-to-point trail and not a loop trail, we have to drive the vehicles all the way to the end of the trail before starting the hike and then take those vehicles back to the trailhead once we’re done in order to pick up the LT vehicle that’s left at the trailhead. Hopefully you’re starting to get the picture — with only 3 miles left in our hike, I had just found out that, somehow, we were going to need to get back to the LT vehicle at the trailhead. No problem, right? Just catch a lift from someone once you get done with the hike. Well… If I could adequately describe how remote our trailhead and trail end locations are, you’d understand why that wasn’t an option — not to mention that the drive from the trail end back to the trailhead is at least an hour and a half (just to get there). Yup… it was one of those moments where I was starkly aware of what needed to happen even as the words were being spoken: I was going to have to hike the whole trail back to the LT vehicle at the trailhead — the trail we had just spent the past 3 days hiking! And, to make matters worse (or at least a bit more challenging), I was going to need to do this in about 12 hours so I’d be able to meet our team in a timely manner at the trail end. To make things even a bit more dicey, I’d need to get a good start that evening which meant hiking the first 6-7 miles at night. It’s never a good idea to go hiking alone (especially at night), so we all agreed that the adult leader who left the keys in the van would accompany me.

We ended up starting our hike around 8:55 p.m. We hiked back to our campsite from the previous night and made camp there around 11:30 p.m. We woke up at 5:00 a.m. the next day and booked it as quickly as we could. We ended up getting to the LT vehicle around 9:30 a.m. After doing a little math, we figured we had covered a good 18 or so miles in about 6.5 hours of actual hike time — just a bit shy of 3 miles/hour. Not bad!

Now, back to the whole “retrospective” idea. Although having to hike the whole trail back on the last night wasn’t ideal, I began to notice something cool happening along the way: I was reliving and remembering great moments in students’ lives from the trail as I passed them. I’d say to myself “Hey, that’s were so-and-so learned…” or “That was where that student had a breakthrough moment where they realized something about themselves that they’d never known before” or “This is where the team came together and prayed for their teammate who was hiking with really hurt knees or right after one of them had just had an asthma attack.” These are often times the moments that, as staff, we highlight or think about that help us press on and persevere through the summer. It was pretty sweet to be able to experience them as I hiked the entire Little Horn trail on the last day of my last trip of the summer.

Experiences like this can also give you some very practical insight into some things. I was able to spend a good chunk of the hike back talking with the adult leader about how we deal with failure (he absolutely hated the circumstances in which he had place me and the team). We talked about how we so often hate failure the most when it affects others. I got to share some stories of student who had dealt with similar failures (hiking their team off the trail for awhile) and had witnessed their team surround them and support them instead of grumbling or harboring bitter feelings. Learning how to deal with failure and learn from our own personal shortcomings and failures is so important because we *ARE* going to fail at something again in the future. We can either “own” these circumstances and grow from them or simply choose to mope around and dwell on them — it’ our choice. In addition to this great conversation, I also learned three great things about hiking through the experience: 1) I have major respect for Search and Rescue teams who do this kind of stuff all the time. 2) I don’t want to do a night hike ever again! 3) Starting a hike at 5:00 a.m. and watching the sun rise over the canyon cliffs while hiking was simply amazing — even though I’m not a morning person, that’s something I’m totally willing to do again.

What a great way to finish the summer!

As my third summer with LeaderTreks comes to a close in a couple of days, a number of thoughts and emotions come to mind, but one of them stands out above all the others — finishing strong. It’s one of the 10 leadership principles we teach to students. Every trip presents its own challenges and, inevitably, students get to a point in the trip where they’re worn down and just want to get back home and be done. It’s so important, though, for them to understand the value of seeing something through to the end and doing so with excellence. What would have happened if Jesus had chosen not to finish strong? How about the disciples or others in the early church?

Talking about finishing strong is one thing, but living it out is quite a different thing. One thing that is absolutely necessary when teaching others is being willing to model what you teach. To that end, I am continually reminding myself to embrace the notion of finishing my last trip with as much vigor as I had with my first team this summer. Two verses that have really helped me in this regard are 2 Corinthians 12:9-10. As I seek to finish strong, it’s very apparent to me that I am weak and unable to do so on my own, which is why these verses are so precious — God’s power is made perfect in weakness. Because of this… when I am weak, then I am strong.

I believe that if we seek to finish strong as we “run the race” as the Apostle Paul speaks about, that we will need to do so in all manners of what we do. If we choose to embrace this mindset in the many small “chunks” of life (wherever the Lord takes us), in the end, that will equate to us finishing strong overall.

It’s a little past midnight and I’m presently sitting in a campground in Buffalo, WY as the wind is picking up signaling the onset of another glorious storm.  I find myself looking back at the past two weeks and wondering where to begin.  Two weeks doesn’t seem like too long of time to update y’all on life with LeaderTreks out here in the better half of the U.S., but so much has happened and there’s so little time to capture it all in words.

We’re nearing the end of a 2000+ mile trek from Billings, MT down to Houck, AZ and back.  About 10 days ago, we said our goodbyes to the second of four teams that we’ll have in Montana.  After having spent 6 days on the trail with each other, we waved goodbye, hopped in our minivan and booked it down to Houck so we’d be there in time to welcome the next team we’d be working with.  The bustle of both trips along with so much travel sandwiched between them has given me little opportunity to “unpack” these experiences and what they’ve meant — both for the students we’ve worked with as well as for myself and my team.

It doesn’t seem like all that long ago, but just ten days ago, I was hiking the last mile of the Dead Indian Trail in the southern part of the Beartooth Mountains, watching a student who wasn’t sure she could make it through the first mile of the hike gallantly (and somewhat giddily) lead her team to the finish line, giving high fives to members of her team as they completely the trail we’d been hiking for nearly a week.  It’s moments like that that are hard to encapsulate in words — watching students go from doubting themselves and being unsure of their fellow teammates to being confident in themselves and empowered by the support of their team.  Seeing students be transformed from relying on themselves to realizing that they *MUST* depend on their team if they’re going to make it.  Seeing their confidence build as they make decisions for their team knowing that their team (including me) *WILL* follow them wherever they take us.  Yes, it’s moments like these (and many others that take place on the trail, during team time at night or during conversations late at night) that motivate me to continue doing what I do with LeaderTreks.

And then… after 7 or 10 shorts days… that team is gone and we start all over with a new team.  New team.  New location.  New trip type (missions vs. wilderness).  New opportunities.  Same challenges.  You can tell just by looking at the pictures below how stark of a transition it can be (the change in landscape is quite representative of what the change from group to group is like).  It’s these transitions that can sometimes be tough as we traverse the summer.  Spending a week pouring yourself into 15-20 students, seeing great breakthroughs and then saying goodbye and starting all over with a new group.  But it’s all worth it when you see the payoff with that group as well.  The cycle can be wearying, but keeping our eyes fixed on the goal of seeing transformation happen in students’ lives keeps me (and my staff) going.  Just a few short days and we’ll be starting another wilderness trip with another group — another transition.  I’m happy for the few days I have to catch my breath before our next group arrives.  Although we have much to do — setting up work projects for our last team, making sure we’ll be able to hike our trail, etc. — it’s nice to be able to have a moment to process the summer so far.

This brief time I’ve had has helped me to realize how often I push forward and don’t take the time to see how the past days, weeks and months have transformed me.  I’d encourage you to take a moment (or an hour or two) and “catch your breath” and ponder the past days, weeks and months in your life.  I think you’ll find it to be refreshing in the midst of our ever-increasing fast-paced lifestyle.

I was about five minutes into an extremely relaxing shower after a decent-length hike when I heard the voice of my *FEMALE* intern, Holly, in the bathroom at the KOA where we were staying: “Uh… Dave???”  I thought it rather strange that she would be in the guy’s bathroom.  I responded “Uh… yeah?”  She responded “Um… you *DO* know you’re in the women’s bathroom, right???”  I’m sure you get the picture from that point on.  Ya know… there are some times in life when you just don’t care about social inhibitions — *LIKE BEING IN THE SHOWER OF A WOMEN’S BATHROOM*.  I simply didn’t care.  I enjoyed the rest of my shower and did my best to be discreet when leaving the bathroom so as to not encounter any women on my way out or cause any distress (if they were in the bathroom).

We had just finished what was supposed to have been a 2-day, 35-mile in-and-out hike to scout the trail we were planning on taking with our next team.  About 8.5 miles in, there’s a good chunk of the trail which runs along the Yellowstone River.  The Yellowstone River, of course, did not consult us as to what its water level should be and about a half mile or so of the trail looked to be completely under water.  We would have considered bushwhacking it but for the fact that there were rock faces a couple of hundred feet high on either side of the river at this point on the trail.  We set up camp for the night and hiked back out the next day, which is where things pick up with the shower story above.

Now… you might be asking yourself where mosquitos come into the story (ref. title of this post).  Well… they come into the story about a half mile into the hike and leave the story… let’s see… about a half mile from the end of the hike.  For those of you who are not so mathematically inclined, that means that we spent roughly 16 miles of the trail hiking through the mother of all mosquito dens.  This place was mosquito heaven on earth.  It was the Rome of mosquito-dom on earth.  The Mecca of the mosquito world — where all female mosquitos must trek in their crazy-short 1-2 week lifespan in order to bite a random human that may have unsuspectedly decided to hike into their domain.  I know… I know… there are some places (the BWCA, etc.) that trump where we hiked in terms of mosquito-per-capita, but seriously… this place was close to the top.

A couple of hundred mosquito bites later (I kid you not — I have the photos to back it up), I became numb to societal inhibitions (ref. shower story above) and also took quite an interest in what the heck is going on when a mosquito bites you.  Right from the source of all good information on earth (Wikipedia, of course):

Both male and female mosquitoes are nectar feeders, but the females of many species are also capable of drinking blood from many mammals. Females do not require blood for their own survival, but they do need supplemental substances such as proteins and iron to develop eggs.

With regard to host location, female mosquitoes hunt their blood host by detecting organic substances such as carbon dioxide and 1-octen-3-ol produced from the host and through optical recognition. Mosquitoes prefer some people (ed. read: me) over others. The preferential victim’s sweat simply smells better than others because of the proportions of the carbon dioxide, octenol and other compounds that make up body odor.

So… basically… a female mosquito needs to bite me and ingest some of my blood so that it can make a bunch of baby mosquitos… that can… bite me and continue the process ad infinitum.  Great.  Good to know.  That makes me feel better.

Now… why the itching???  *WHY DO MOSQUITO BITES ITCH SO STINKIN’ MUCH?!*  Again… from Wikipedia:

In order for the mosquito to obtain a blood meal it must circumvent the vertebrate physiological responses. The mosquito, as with all blood-feeding arthropods, has mechanisms to effectively block the hemostasis system with their saliva, which contains a mixture of secreted proteins. Mosquito saliva negatively affects vascular constriction, blood clotting, platelet aggregation, angiogenesis and immunity and creates inflammation.

And from About.com:

Only the female mosquito feeds on blood. Though we commonly call them mosquito bites, she’s not really biting you at all. The mosquito pierces the upper layer of your skin with her proboscis, a straw-like mouthpart that allows her to drink fluids. Once the proboscis breaks through the epidermis, the mosquito uses it to search for a blood vessel in the dermal layer underneath.

When she locates a vessel, the mosquito releases some of her saliva into the wound. Mosquito saliva contains an anti-coagulant that keeps your blood flowing until she is finished with her meal.

Now your immune system realizes something is going on, and histamine is produced to combat the foreign substance. The histamine reaches the area under attack, causing blood vessels there to swell. It’s the action of the histamine that causes the red bump, called a wheal.

But what about the itching? When the blood vessels expand, nerves in the area become irritated by the swelling. You feel this irritation as an itchy sensation.

And there you have it.  I tend to take the side of the scientists who believe that there would be no adverse effects to eradicating mosquitos from any and all ecosystems.  Obviously, that’ll never happen.  But, hey… look on the bright side… some doctor’s are studying mosquito saliva to see if they can use it as an anti-clotting drug for blood for heart disease patients.  Who knows… someday you and I may be happy mosquitos (and their precious saliva) still exist.  Until then…

One of the things we encourage students to do on trips is to set goals.  It sounds like a simple thing, but the more I challenge students to do it, the more I realize how easy it is to go through life without setting any goals at all — sometimes I’ve even found that’s been the case in my life.  It’s always good, though, to have others around me who are asking me what my goals are and then holding me accountable to achieving them.

When I talk to students who are leading their team for the day, I typically ask them if they have any goals for themselves or for their team.  I generally get a blank stare from them, which is OK.  It’s not natural for people to set goals unless they have done it before or been trained to do so.  This is always a great time to talk with them about the value of setting goals (both for themselves and for their team).  Generally the goals pertain to the the day: let’s get to base camp by such and so a time, let’s make sure everyone is drinking one Nalgene of water every hour, let’s make sure every person shares their testimony with three other people on the trail today.  These are great goals for a team to have on the trail, but I always like to take it to the next level — it’s easy to talk about goals on a one-week or two-week missions trip, but the real gold is when you can take the principle of goal-setting and bring it back home.  I always like to take the last night of our trips and talk to students about how they’re going to take the principles and lessons from the trip and live them out at home — many times this is done by helping them set good goals.  For many students this is completely new and so I always encourage them to start small and dream big — there’s nothing that can get you down more than setting a massive goal that is unachievable and then becoming beaten down because you didn’t even come close to achieving it.  The key is to not short-change yourself on challenge, though!

Good goals should be challenging to complete, tangible and measurable (having an endpoint in mind).  It’s one thing to set a goal that can be easily achieved and it’s another thing to set a goal that is going to take a ton of effort and struggle and reliance on God to complete.  The latter is always more rewarding.  Making a goal tangible and measurable allows you to look back and identify if you’ve reached it or not.  As with all things I do with students, I don’t expect them to do anything I’m not willing to do myself, which means I’ve set some goals for myself for the summer.  I was challenged by someone before the summer started to read the ESV translation of the New Testament, so that is one of my goals for this summer.  I also have set a goal to memorize Ephesians 5:1-33 by the end of the summer as well as 2 Corinthians 12:9-10 (a verse that always sees me through the summer).  And what’s a well-rounded set of goals without a physical goal… so on that end of things, my goal is to be able to do 40 pushups by the end of the summer.

Are you a goal setter?  What goals do you have for the summer?  In what ways would you like to see God work in you and through you this summer?  Feel free to share in the comments…

Start small and dream big!

“Well… you’re welcome to head up there, but you’ll be hiking in anywhere from 1-10 feet of snow…”

Those words from a park ranger at Burgess Junction in reference to the trail we were supposed to take our first group on — those words define the very essence of the first trip I led this summer with LeaderTreks.  It was the day before our first group arrived and we were just going to “scout out” the area where we were going to be hiking so that my interns knew where the trailhead and trail end were located.  We stopped at the visitor center at Burgess Junction only to find out from a couple of park rangers that Bighorn National Forest has had somewhere around 300% of its regular annual snowfall this year.  Our entire trail was still a snowcap.  Our plans needed to be thrown out the door and a new trip needed to be planned — all in less than 24 hours.

It’s funny — you expect to lead a trip and teach many lessons to students and come to find that you are re-learning many of those same lessons over again.  Patience.  Endurance.  Tenacity.  Flexibility.  Thinking quickly on your feet.  Looking out for the needs of everyone on the team.  These were all lessons we continued to learn from the moment we talked to the park ranger to the last step we took on the trail.  He showed us a location quite a bit south from where we were where there wasn’t a lot of snow and we could begin a good hike.  After scouting the area, it appeared to be decent and would involve quite a bit of challenge for our team.  Once the team arrived, we began our hike, only to discover that all of the “streams” that were on our contour map were completely dried up.  In fact, the arid region had little to offer in the way of water and my concern with our plan was that this would continue as we went further into the backcountry.  After one of the students badly sprained his ankle within the first 2 miles of the hike, we decided to set up base camp and take care of the needs of the team — water and rest.  After a night of rest, the student’s ankle wasn’t much better (he couldn’t put any pressure on it) and we decided to evacuate him and move the entire team to our trail end and go hiking there (while it was higher in elevation, there was plenty of water there).  We didn’t anticipate that Rt. 14 would be blocked due to mudslides that were causing the road to literally crumble away.

Miraculously, the road crews were able to clear the road and patch up the spot and we made it to our campsite by the end of the day.  After a night of rain, we were off on our hike.  We hiked up to a place called “Snowshoe Pass”, which was true to its name.  The next day we headed along a trail which was supposed to take us to a very beautiful lake only to discover the entire trail was washed away by (and, if fact, was) a rather large stream from glacial melting.  We changed our plans once again and decided to take a nice loop trail which would take us back to our initial campsite.  I could go on for quite some time, but I’ll let some of the pictures tell the story for me.  Hiking through 3-4 foot snow drifts, encountering a number of swollen streams from glacial runoff, having 6-8 inches of snowfall at our campsite on our last night before hiking out… these are just a few of the challenges we encountered on the last two days of our hike.

Sometimes you just have to throw out the playbook and “roll with the punches”.  The many different challenges we encountered as a team drew us together.  I like to believe that anytime a team encounters adversity and difficult circumstances and overcomes them that they are drawn together and united through those experiences and that was definitely the case with this last team.  When tough times come, it’s important for a team to become one unit — working in harmony with one another and seeing how God pulls them through the difficulties in front of them.  Looking to the needs of others on the team.  Putting others before yourself.  Finding ways to bless others in the midst of difficult circumstances.  These are the some of the qualities that describe servant leadership and are lessons that bring about transformation in students lives and in their youth ministry back home.  Those lessons and the transformation that comes from them are what we’re about and it’s exciting to see them take form in students’ lives!

The first week of June is always an exciting time at LeaderTreks! As we finish up final preparations for the summer, we get to see a ton of new faces walk in the door as we welcome all of the interns that will be working with us this summer. This will be my third summer leading trips with LeaderTreks and the start of each summer brings to mind an announcer at a horse race: “and…… they’re off!”. Obviously, we’re not doing any racing, but it is exciting to know God has great things in store for the summer as each team heads off to the airport or starts the drive to their ministry site.

As for me and my team, we left the LeaderTreks office early yesterday morning (in the middle of a massive downpour) and will arrive at Bighorn National Forest later today. That’ll be home for us for most of the summer as most of our trips are wilderness trips. I’m privileged to work alongside and build into Robbie Carter and Holly Mikulas, who are both interning with LeaderTreks this summer. Robbie is going into his senior year at Cedarville University and is studying Bible and Philosophy. Holly just finished her first year at Indiana Wesleyan and is transferring to Northern Arizona State University where she will continue her studies in Parks and Recreation (she *LOVES* the outdoors and, apparently, Indiana was just “too flat” for her — I believe those were he exact words).

Out first team arrives this Sunday and we’ll be hiking right into the Bighorns that afternoon. The backcountry is such a wonderful forum to teach students about leadership and I’m really looking forward to seeing how God challenges and grows the students that I’m privileged to work with this summer.

“Kinesthetic” — I love that word.  It’s one of those “I know a big word” words, but in reality, it has a very basic meaning.  Most of us are aware that there are three different learning modes: visual, auditory and kinesthetic.  Kinesthetic learning just means that you actually do what you’re being taught (instead of just hearing or seeing it).  For me, it is the most effective of the three learning styles.  I’m able to pick things up faster and remember them longer.

I can think of few better examples of this than the WFR (Wilderness First Responder) course I just took over the past two weeks through the Wilderness Medicine Institute.  The course is designed to be quite intensive — all of the material is covered in a 10-day period.  I believe one of the keys to the success of the course is its structure.  There are two instructors which switch off with one another.  They use a combination of visual aids as well as writing things out on a whiteboard while verbalizing it.  The last two parts are what make it all “gel” though.  First, after talking about the medical issue we’re dealing with, they’d ask for a volunteer and show us what was happening on that person and then perform whatever assessment and treatment were necessary.  Second, after doing this, we would move into a scenario where some of the people in the class would leave the room and have all sorts of makeup put on them to make the situation more realistic.  Once they were ready, we would pair up and head out to help our patient.  The scenarios are what make the class really work.  Verbally teaching something is OK.  Showing visual aids and writing things down on a whiteboard is good.  But, actually having us deal with the situation at hand with one another a couple of times a day for 10 days really make it all come together when you *REALLY* need to recall what to do.

Our class culminated with a final “night scenario” which lasted quite a long time and went pretty late into the night.  While I can’t go into a ton of details (lest I spoil the surprise for any future WFR students), I’ll say that when you combine a real-life location with darkness and then it starts to rain in the middle of your rescue, you really begin to value the fact that you’ve actually done this stuff before and not just had someone tell you about it.

I just finished doing laundry (yet again).  As I was in the middle of the process, it occurred to me that there are many parallels between doing laundry and maintaining spiritual disciplines in our life.  Not that it *SHOULD* be that way, but often times it is:

1. It’s one of those things you know you need to do, but often don’t want to do…
2. It should be done regularly
3. Not doing it regularly can have a profound impact in your life (provided you care about social interaction)
4. No matter how often you do it, there’ll always be more…
5. Every time you finish doing it, you feel a sense of accomplishment and fulfillment and are happy you did it

Let’s step through these one at a time…

1. I hate doing laundry!  While I wouldn’t necessarily say that I hate being spiritually disciplined, it does seem that it’s quite easy to find something else to do instead of studying/memorizing scripture or spending time in prayer.
2. The more time you spend studying/memorizing the Word and in prayer, the more you enjoy it, the more impact it has in your life and the more you will desire to do it again.
3. Regularly spending time reading/studying/memorizing scripture and communing with God is vital to spiritual growth and not doing these things distances us from the true source of joy and strength in our life — God.
4. Being content with the truths that God has taught you today is vital — there’ll always be another great book to read or another area of scripture to grouse around in… remembering that you’ll never “arrive” is key to not becoming overwhelmed at everything else you need to learn in the future.
5. Every time I come before God and ask the Holy Spirit to open up the Word to me, I find it changes the entire course of my day — it makes me more cheerful, gives me strength to deal with hardships I might encounter throughout the day and allows me to live my life more in the image of Christ.

So… the next time you find yourself doing laundry, perhaps you’ll decide to crack open your Bible and spend some time with the Lord while your clothes are soaked, cleaned, rinsed and dried.

Here’s hoping you don’t need to use the “sanitary” cycle…

“Wanna get away?” — ah… the ever-so-popular tagline of Southwest Airlines… to that, my answer is “No, I *NEED* to get away.”  Obviously, they’re trying to get me to buy an airplane ticket, but the fact of the matter is, I *NEED* to get away and “recharge” and spend some time alone — just time for me and the Lord.  My bet is that you do too.  This past weekend, I took the opportunity to do so again — something I’ve tried to do every month or two — it’s called “Solo Day”.

The idea of “Solo Day” was something I was first introduced to while on our LeaderTreks staff wilderness trip this past September.  After a couple of days of sea kayaking, we spent somewhere between 4-5 hours on one of the islands in the Apostle Islands and each of us went off to be alone.  It was an amazing time and very refreshing.  I remember going for a hike for the first half hour or so and finding a nice perch on a rock at the top of a 20-30 foot sheer cliff that dropped off into the dark (and somewhat “angry”) waters of Lake Superior.  This is where I spent the rest of my time.  It was on that rock I had the chance to just clear my mind — I spent some time journaling, reading my Bible, praying and even singing a few songs all by myself.

There’s something about being alone with God — no one else around — that is extremely refreshing.  No agenda.  No cell phone.  No Facebook.  No Internet.  No computer.  No external voices.  No distractions.  No noise.  Just peace and quiet — for me on that day… just the sound of some birds chirping and water crashing into the rocks below me.

Jesus needed times like this in his life and ministry (Mark 1:35, Luke 5:16, Luke 6:12) — as a side note, I love that scripture says he went to “a solitary place”, “a lonely place” and of course, a “mountainside”.  We all need times and places like this in our life.  I try to take one day a month and do something like this — even if it is only for a couple of hours.  I’d encourage you to do the same.  I think you’ll find it to be refreshing, rejuvenating and rewarding.