by Belden C. Lane
Oxford University Press, New York. 266 pages
REVIEWED BY CAROLINE GOODEN
Belden Lane describes a journey of spiritual transformation through backpacking wilderness places in his beloved Ozarks and the American Southwest. For each journey, he selects spiritual teachers including monks, religious leaders or political leaders who frame his passage to the next level of spiritual growth. He writes of a God who is completely and wildly in love with us, who cannot be contained or understood by human conception and who is met and experienced in wilderness. His goal “in this book is to foster a conversation between those … who hunger for a sensuous spirituality and those … who are fed by an earthy experience of the natural world.”
Lane traces four stages of spiritual growth through his backpacking experiences in wild places. The first stage of spiritual searching includes leaving the familiar and responding to the call to risk. He travels to the Ozarks carrying the writings of the monk Columba of Iona; to Laramie Peak with the nun Therese of Lisieux; and to Rockpile Mountain with poet Thomas Traherne. He begins the journey in a place of his Irish roots, working to let go of grandiosity and learning to be open to love and the desire to be with God. “Amid all the reasons not to leap, not to risk yourself to desire and its anguish-in spite of all of the chances of being hurt yet again-you leap! You do it because God leaps first.”
The second stage focuses on the discipline necessary for spiritual practice. Lane travels to the Bell Mountain wilderness reading Søren Kierkegaard and to Gunstack and Moonshine Hollows in Missouri with Dag Hammarskjöld and Thich Nhat Hanh. He studies solitude, silence, simplicity, mindfulness and being fully present to awe and wonder.
In the third stage, Lane faces the darkness of the soul. He travels to the Canyonlands in Utah with John of the Cross; to Mt. Whitney with Martin Luther; and to the Mudlick Mountain Trail with the anonymous author of “The Cloud of the Unknowing.” He faces fear and finds the triumphant love of God. He fails to summit Mt. Whitney and learns the redemption of imperfection. He practices prayer without words and learns to experience the unspeakable mystery of God’s presence.
In the final and fourth stage, Lane returns home with delight in his step. He travels to Taum Sauk Mountain with Rumi; Lower Rock Creek with Teilhard de Chardin; the Meramec River with Ghandi; and to Aravaipa Canyon with Thomas Merton. He practices discernment, finding clarity of purpose for the next chapter of his life. He finds community and a hunger for social justice in caring for the planet that we all share. Lastly, with Merton, he finds the ability to laugh at himself through acceptance of every part of this experience of life.
Through his journeys, Lane encounters a God who loves him with abandon yet never abandons him, who speaks to him in the beauty and starkness of the wilderness and its inhabitants and who requires nothing more than his complete attention to the present moment.
CAROLINE GOODEN is an early childhood educator, teacher, spiritual seeker and avid hiker living in Berea, Kentucky.
