Getting Lost Might Be The Best Route To Finding Your Way In Life
As a society we suffer from silence deficit disorder. Even Danali National Park in Alaska, one of the quietest places on earth, increasingly is afflicted with the sounds of jet planes roaring overhead. I try to escape whenever I can to places where quiet reigns. One of them is Starved Rock State Park, a beautiful nature center of canyons and waterfalls about an hour and a half from where I live in central Illinois.
What you hear there are the caws and calls of birds, the thrum of insects, the rustling of wind through the trees and the rush of waterfalls that run from the many sandstone cliffs s in the park. You go here to simply be.
As the naturalist John Muir once wrote, “I only went out for a walk … for going out, I found, was really going in.”
The park is infused with the spirit of Native Americans who once lived on these glacier-formed buffs. The park’s name derives from an old legend that tells of two warring native tribes, one of which became trapped during a battle on a high ledge. Its members starved to death there rather than surrender.
I’ve been to the park many times before, but a recent visit held an unexpected lesson. My husband, two friends and I wanted to visit St. Louis Canyon, one the remotest sections of the park, to see a famous waterfall there. The path to St. Louis Canyon isn’t a straight shot. It veers at some point to the left around a sharp curve. The trail isn’t very well marked at that point and you have to keep looking for that curve or you can easily miss it.
After we had hiked close to two miles, I began to question whether we had taken a wrong turn and should turn back the way we came. It was a cloudy day of misty rain and there were few other hikers on the trail to ask for help with directions.
We decided to go on. After about another quarter of a mile, we began to hear the pulse of rushing water. The waterfall eventually came into view — an amazing natural wonder in the heart of mostly landlocked Illinois. Who would have thought?
We gazed up at it for several moments — in silence — with the other hikers who were already there. It was like a collective prayer.
So often when doubt and fear set in, we are tempted to quit. But if there is a reasonable possibility of succeeding, we can’t let those setbacks prevent us from forging on. I once debated whether to submit one of my books, Atchison Blue: A Search for Silence, A Spiritual Home and a Living Faith, for an award. I had doubts over whether it fit the criteria of the contest. The book ended up being a winner.
For many years I have been submitting to the Thomas Merton Poetry of the Sacred Contest, sponsored by Louisville’s Center for Interfaith Relations. This year, I wondered whether to try again as the contest draws hundreds of submissions. I decided not to worry if my poem would appeal to the contest judges. Instead, I submitted a poem I happened to like. It won an Honorable Mention, and will appear in the winter issue of the wonderful journal, Parabola.
To be sure, there are times when you have to be reasonable about pressing on. When there is the potential for danger, for instance, or when changing course might hold out a better prospect for success. Still, walking along those canyons at Starved Rock recently, I was reminded that even when doubt sets in, it’s often a wise course to keep going.
Something grand — like that splendid waterfall — just might lie ahead.
