Fresh Air

This weekend I had the chance to get away and do a little bit of light backpacking with some BCM guys. We left Friday afternoon and drove about an hour to a place where we could get on the Appalachian Trail. We hiked up to a shelter along the trail, spent the night there, then hiked the rest of the way up to McAfee's Knob in the morning. There is a beautiful view of the mountains and valleys from up there, so we took it in for a while, then hiked back down and made it back to Blacksburg in time to shower, brush our teeth, and watch the VT/UNC football game.

The trip wore me out - I'm getting old enough where sleeping in a tent without any good camping gear isn't easy for me, and we did a good amount of hiking up the mountain. It was enough that I pretty much crashed the rest of the day Saturday. It was a very refreshing time for me despite that. I'm not a huge outdoors kind of guy - I can't remember the last time I camped prior to this - but I really enjoyed getting away from everything, having a bit of solitude, and getting to hang out with the other guys. One of my favorite parts of the trip was getting to sit around the fire and talk about what God is doing in our lives and pray for each other Friday night.

Saturday morning, I woke up before most of the others, and I took the chance to be by myself for a while and reflect on the past month. I thought and prayed about what were the best and worst parts of the month, how I had seen God work, and in what ways I had failed or felt distant from God. There's something about being alone in the woods that enables those kind of meditation and prayer times to be so much more powerful than they would be in my living room.







Me sitting on the knob and looking out on the beautiful view.














Our group at the top, except Phil who was taking the picture.