The Great Granite Wall at the Head of Stuart's Fork, Trinity River

Caribou Lakes 55 Years Later

Late in August 1954, I climbed from Portuguese Camp on the Stuart’s Fork of the Trinity River the 2000 vertical feet up the to the pass on Sawtooth Ridge and then dropped down to Caribou Lake. I can't remember whether or not I spent a night on the lake, but that afternoon or the next, I took a look at the clouds, which threatened rain, and decided to go on down to Big Flat. Sixteen years old and having spent most of the last 2 months backpacking in the Alps with only my elder brother’s .38 special Smith and Wesson revolver for company, I walked on out in one afternoon and evening without any problem.

This July, fifty-five years later at 71, it took me 3 days to walk the perhaps 10 miles of the new trail from Big Flat back up to Caribou Lake. Quite a contrast! Being older and wiser, I had replaced the 4-pound revolver and holster with my beat-up, 4-pound guitar. But with grub for 6 days (i.e., about 12 pounds of dried foods plus a few delicacies), my load was heavier than that of the nearly empty-of-food GI rucksack I had carried out in 1954. This time, I had to pace myself to about 1 mile an hour to make it at all. So I camped Thursday night at Brown’s Meadow, perhaps 3 or 4 miles short of the first lake in the basin.

Friday, I rested, headed out after 3 pm and arrived at Snowslide Lake at about 6:30 pm. I cooked my dinner of mac and cheese and bedded down in a copse of black hemlock with red fir, lodgepole pine and western white pine all around. I got unduly upset at the little white-footed mouse trying to get at the granola in my pack and tossed a shoe his way. Happily, I missed, but I remember his big, dark, mouse-in-the-flashlight eyes contrasting with his white underparts. It would have been a shame to have hurt him. Fortunately, my sturdy internal frame pack seems impervious to small rodents.

Saturday, by-passing the trail down to the Lower Caribou Lake, I took only about 45 minutes to finally make it up to Caribou Lake, which lies at an elevation of about 6800 feet. Its heavily glaciated basin has little soil so that the red fir and black hemlock are scarce except on some parts of Sawtooth Ridge south of the lake. Immediately recognizable by its pendulous branchlets, one weeping spruce stands on the east side of the lake, a rather rare tree said to be a relic species unable to compete with other conifers except in very steep or rocky terrain. Another healthier specimen grows along the trail ascending from Snowslide Lake towards Big Flat.

Sunday, I rested again, but it threatened rain so I moved my camp further south from the outlet to a site on the granite that had room to set up my tube tent. The two young men camped there had welcomed me and my guitar the night before, and we had traded a few folk, pop and praise songs, including as I recall, “I Ride an Old Paint,” “Thou Art Worthy” and “He decidido seguir a Cristo.” They had headed back to McKinleyville earlier in the afternoon, leaving me alone on the lake as far as I could tell.

Monday, I climbed the 7700-foot peak southwest of the lake for the view of the glacial gorge at the head of the Stuart’s Fork of the Trinity River containing Emerald, Sapphire and Mirror Lakes and of the wall of granite beyond them. This magnificent scene speaks to me of the glory of the Creator. And I found myself calling on him for help as I descended by a different route through the cliffs on the west side of the Lake—a route I don’t advise for anyone not equipped for rock climbing. In the evening, I moved my camp back down to Snowslide Lake to give me a head-start on the long march back to Big Flat. It was warm for the mountains and my down sleeping bag was pretty hot, what with the hood closed down to a tiny nose hole to avoid being eaten alive by the many mosquitoes, which had been absent from the upper lake.

I took the new trail both ways given its gentler gradients, but horsemen prefer the old route. Although my pack was about 12 pounds lighter, Tuesday I was on the trail about 9 hours to get from Snowslide Lake to the Salmon River at Big Flat Campground. So on this trip I learned that I’m not the hiker I was 55 years ago, but the mountains remain magnificent.

Miles Stuart Compton, RIP

I returned Stuart Compton's copy of "The Wind in the Willows" to my friend Sunday afternoon. I took over a year to get around to reading it, but Stuart never reproached me for my tardiness. And whatever Kenneth Grahame's personal beliefs, his animal fable masterfully evokes those immortal longings we all have for the transcendent, longings that C. S. Lewis describes in his essay, "The Weight of Glory."

Stuart had been having severe stomach pain and later decided he wanted to go to the Emergency Room for treatment. I wound up spending the night with him there, not that he seemed to be very sick, but for a couple of other reasons. I don't entirely trust hospitals with older patients and Stuart had turned 80 just last week. I wanted to have a prolife advocate present if his condition became serious. And having just read "The Wind in the Willows," I had in mind the the loyalty of Mole and Rat to each other and to their friends. Jesus' words about visiting Him when he was sick also encouraged me. Consequently, I got to see the early summer sunrise when I finally left the hospital after 5:00 am.


But Stuart had a bad abdominal hernia ever since they removed part of his colon 6 or 8 years ago, and the doctor and the surgeon wanted to repair it. I discussed the risks of surgery with Stuart, but the hernia was troublesome and he wanted to get rid of it. So they repaired the hernia on Monday and I called him at the hospital that evening and Tuesday as I recall. We prayed Tuesday, but I talked with him only briefly because he was in a lot of pain.

Wednesday morning Stuart's immortal longings were suddenly and unexpectedly fulfilled. And this is a realistic way of understanding his death. For as Christians we do not sorrow as those who have no certainty about going to that place for which we all long, the kingdom of God where the Lord Jesus Christ rules and reigns.

On "The Wind in the Willows"

“‘It’s gone!’ sighed the Rat, sinking back in his seat again. “so beautiful and strange and new! Since it was to end so soon, I almost wish I had never heard it. For it has roused a longing in me that is pain, and nothing seems worth while but just to hear that sound once more and go on listening to it forever. No! there it is again!’ he cried, alert once more. Entranced, he was silent for a long space, spellbound.

“‘Now it passes on and I begin to lose it,’ he said presently. ‘Oh, Mole! The beauty of it!! The merry bubble and joy, the thin, clear, happy call of the distant piping! Such music I never dreamed of and the call in it is stronger even that the music is sweet! Row on, Mole, row! For the music and the call must be for us.’

“The Mole, greatly wondering, obeyed. ‘I hear nothing myself,’ he said, ‘but the wind playing in the reeds and rushes and osiers.’

“The Rat never answered, if indeed he heard. Rapt, transported, trembling, he was possessed in all his senses by this new divine thing that caught up his helpless soul and swung and dandled it, a powerless but happy infant, in a strong sustaining grasp” (114, "The Wind in the Willows).

Well, is Grahame spoiling the Pagans of Pan, the “Piper at the Gates of Dawn’? I don’t know, but no matter. His masterful evocation of the ineffable longing for another world would be for C. S. Lewis a clue and invitation to seek that other, unknown world for which we long.

As an animal fable, the four main characters, Toad, Rat, Mole and Badger, represent the four humors or personality types of Sanguine, Melancholic, Phlegmatic and Choleric. Toad is certainly the Sanguine (‘expressive”) and Badger the Choleric (a leader who gets things done). I leave as an exercise Rat and Mole's classification although I think I've figured it out. But Grahame’s characters are like real people in that they sometimes act out of a humor other than their dominant one. For example, Mole's seizing the oars from Rat (and capsizing their boat) on their first outing is out of character for him (but might be expected of Toad).

What is remarkable is Grahame's evocation of those immortal longings we all have for something beyond our experience of this world, longings that tell us we are made for another world and that Lewis describes in his "The Weight of Glory." Grahame uses the Pagan Piper Pan to subcreate this experience in Rat and Mole during their mission of mercy to find the missing baby otter. The question I pose is whether Grahame is consciously using Pan for a Christian purpose or just describing the universal experience of longing for our home country of Paradise, the kingdom of God where the Son of God rules and reigns.

Exiles Longing for Our Native Land

Every scheme to establish human happiness founders on the rocks of our self-destructive nature and of this world as it is is not being the world for which we were made. On his "Writer's Almanac" yesterday, Friday, May 1, Garrison Keillor (surprisingly to me) read a poem by Anne Porter that powerfully expresses our exile's longing for our native land, a theme that C. S. Lewis developed in his essay, "Weight of Glory."

The address for Anne Porter's "Music" on "Writer's Almanac" is http://writersalmanac.publicradio.org/index.php?date=2009/05/01. Or ctrl-click here Anne Porter

for access to two of her poems and references to two others.

The poem is published as "Music" by Anne Porter from Living Things: Collected Poems. © Steerforth Press, 2006.

Truth Project: Rousseau's Revolution Redux

In my last blog, my unstated point was that Catholics had remained intellectually engaged with the problems of culture and society when American Fundamentalists and Evangelicals retreated to build a subculture disengaged from law, government, education and art. In so doing, we disregarded God's creation mandate to be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth (with people) and to subdue it. The strong Christian foundations of American society and government and the social and religious conservatism of the American Revolution made this luxury possible for a long time, but the secularists and skeptics (such as Thomas Payne) were there from the beginning and their hostility to God and to Christianity eventually bore bitter fruit.

By contrast, Catholics were a somewhat despised minority in America and a target of the French style revolutionary thought that swept away the monarchies of continental Europe during the 19th and early 20th Centuries. Therefore, they recognized the threat of the Revolution both to Catholicism and to the traditional structures of civil society. Their critique of the social effects of the Revolution was cogent, but their sometimes reactionary support of monarchy and the privileged position of the Roman church under it was flawed. In America, however, a Catholic thinker, Orestes Bronson, seems to have recognized the benefits of the ordered liberty experienced here and, I think, developed a Catholic political theory consonant with it. At any rate, American Catholicism adapted to American political freedoms and the result is that Evangelical Christians and many conservative Catholics stand shoulder to shoulder in defending them.

Another life experience that relates to the continuing Revolution recognized by the Truth Project was my time with Christian World Liberation Front (CWLF) in Berkeley. This countercultural Christian ministry was founded by two former Campus Crusade for Christ workers, Professor Jack Sparks and Pat Matriciano, in the late 60s in Berkeley. Some of the Christians in CWLF, such as I, had a traditional church background, but others came to Christ straight out of the Counter Culture with its sex, drugs, rock music, Eastern religion and Revolution. Most of these Christians soon shed their sexual immorality, drugs and Eastern religion, but the rock music and revolutionary politics were more enduring, especially, the politics.

The two ministries growing directly out of CWLF that still exist illustrate the division in its ranks: Right On!, (then a newspaper, now a journal) and Spiritual Counterfeits Project (SCP [an apologetics ministry]). Right On!, in view of the real injustices abroad in the world, tends to side with the revolutionaries, as exemplified by Barack Obama, the latter, with the traditional American political virtues as exemplified by Ron Paul.

For my part, the anti-Christian essence of the Revolution, makes the practical matter of choosing which side I come down in the context of American politics easy. I'll admit that if I were a Native American living in El Salvador, Guatemala, or Columbia (where their majority status makes them a threat to the white ruling class), I might see things differently. But one thing Jesus was not, was a violent revolutionary. Neither were the early Christians who triumphed through Roman persecution by faithfulness, flight and martyrdom.

Truth Project: So What?

By now I think that I've seen enough of the Truth Project to get the big picture and so have you if you think about it. Del Tackett raises a profound subject and cites Scripture to show how the Triune God of the Bible relates to that matter. The primary goal is to glorify God by showing that while he utterly transcends the material universe, he is present and active (in the fullness of his being) at every point within it. The secondary goal is to show that Christian faith relates to every area of life and to provide some guidance in how we should live in God's creation while not being part of the passing world system.

Focus on the Family and Del are well aware that some of their interpretations about origins and about the social and political implications will be controversial among their Evangelical Christian viewers. They (and Pastor Mark) view this as a good thing; we ought to be aware of our differences and be willing to discuss them without condemning those with whom we differ over issues that have not been settled by the ancient councils and creeds as heresies (e.g., the age of the earth, the best form of government). No doubt there is a correct answer to some of these issues, but we may have to await the return of our Lord for certainty about them.

Last night I realized that because I did my graduate work in Political Philosophy and Literature at a Catholic University, I have a perspective on the Truth Project that perhaps few Evangelicals share. Did you notice, for example, that as an authority on the economics of poverty, Del cites a Catholic scholar? And did you ever wonder why, when Bush wanted to please his conservative Evangelical base, he was able to nominate two Roman Catholic judges with the academic and intellectual credentials to overcome the opposition of the Democrats in the Senate and the elites who love the "Living Constitution" instead of the document as written and intended? And why the Evangelicals welcomed Catholics John Roberts and Samuel Alito with open arms?

The answers go back, in part, to the retreat of conservative Evangelicals from engagement with the intellectual, political, social and artistic spheres of American life in the wake of their rejection by the mainline denominations. Indeed, as I understand it, J. Gresham Machen was, in effect, excommunicated from the Presbyterian Church for his outspoken opposition to Modernism (Liberalism) at Princeton. Many of the "Fundamentalists," as those who maintained the essentials of the faith such as the deity of Jesus, his Virgin Birth and his bloody atonement were called, accepted the Dispensationalist theology that emerged early in the 19th Century with its portrayal of Christians as always and only a beleaguered minority on the periphery of society.

Their theme song was, "This world is not my home, I'm just a passing through" and this truth was taken to mean that Christians had no cultural mandate to fulfill as a godly leaven in every legitimate aspect of society. Evangelism and Christian ministry was the way to really serve God and the concept of farming or business or even education as a calling or vocation from God as Luther had seen it waned. Without realizing it, Fundamentalists and the Evangelicals who emerged as a distinct group after WWII, were living on social and political capital borrowed from the Christians among the founders and the frontier evangelists of the 18th and early 19th Centuries. Only when the anti-Christian agenda of the secularist elites became law through critical Supreme Court decisions in the 1940s through the 1970s did Fundamentalists and Evangelicals wake up to the reality that their retreat from a holistic living out of the gospel was having dire spiritual consequences. Only with the earth shaking consequences of the Roe v. Wade decision's disregard of the biblical view of the sacredness of human life, did Fundamentalists and Evangelicals begin to awaken to what was happening.

More later. Gotta gather and stack the wood before my neighbor rebukes me more firmly.