The beauty and wonder of the world
surrounds us at every turn if we are but willing to pause along our journey and
see with the eyes of our hearts. I have been keenly reminded of this truth
during these past few days. It is always there, waiting for us to stop and see
it.
I have been posted at the WWII
Memorial twice in the last week. As has oft been the case, I was blessed by the
opportunity to speak to veterans and to help make their visit more significant
and enjoyable. Two stories stand out as especially moving for me. The first
involves a man who landed in France shortly after D-day and served during the
remainder of the war as a tank commander, leading a squadron of Sherman tanks
through the hedgerows of France and forests of Germany. He spoke of the
awe-inspiring power of the German .88 and that we had nothing in the American
arsenal to match it, so we simply threw more and more sherman tanks into
the fray and ultimately the sheer numbers prevailed.
As then as I sat inside the
kiosk yesterday a man walked up to me and asked for a wheelchair. He had
brought his 91 year old father across the country to see the memorial, a dream
very literally coming true. I helped him with the chair, but then had
to leave them in order to go and give a talk. As I neared the
starting location for my talk I was approached by a teacher who asked me
if I could come and speak to their school group, which consisted of about 130
5th graders. So I brought the other visitors that were interested with me
and walked down into the center of the memorial where I miraculously held
the attention of these kids for more than 15 minutes as I painted a picture,
not only of the memorial, but of the significance of the war on the lives that
they were living today. As I spoke I told them that this was not simply a
chapter in their history book, but the story of real people, and then went on
to tell them that one of the men who had actually fought in the war was in the
memorial at that moment. As the group dispersed throughout the memorial I
became engaged in a series of conversations with several different
visitors, but about ten minutes later I was able to continue to walk around the
memorial where I discovered the men I had spoken to earlier, surrounded by
about 20 of these 5th graders, in rapt attention as the seated veteran spoke to
them of his experiences and showed them a card he carried with him denoting him
as a Pearl Harbor survivor.
It turns out that this man was
actually in the army air corps and had, indeed been present at Pearl Harbor on
Dec. 7, 1941, stationed at one of the airfields as they were bombed. He
went on to fly bombing missions of his own throughout the pacific as
the tail gunner of a B-17. He spoke of the fear of being surrounding by flak
and the hail of enemy bullets as he fired back with his
twin .50 cal machine guns, and of how he would bring his canteen with
him while on missions so that it would freeze and he would have a cold
drink of water when they got back to the ground.
His son saw me and came over to me
with tears in his eyes and told me that his father had never been thanked for
his service before and how meaningful and touching it was to have these
kids come up to him, thank him, and want to hear about what he had done. That
is why I love this job. I was blessed indeed to simply be present for such a
moment, much less to play some small part in helping to make it possible.
Last Saturday I donned a different
uniform, that of a Colonel in the Union Army as I spoke to visitors about the
ultimate triumph of the better angels of our nature over the hell of war as
Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain. I didn't have as many people interested in hearing
my whole formal program (about 35 minutes) as I was hoping, but I had no
problem finding people to talk to, who wanted to know more about Chamberlain,
about the war, or at least why there was some guy in a Civil War uniform on the
plaza of the Lincoln Memorial! For a first attempt at doing a living history
program, it went pretty well. I will be doing it again on May 22, this time
with my coat and boots, which just arrived in the mail, a bit too late for the
first program!
I took a special bike training class
on Wednesday which will now allow me to go on bike patrol around the park,
which is exactly what it sounds like, riding a bike around the park and talking
to visitors wherever you might find them. In order to take this class I had to
shift my days off to Monday and Tuesday at the last minute, which meant I had
time off when I wasn't expecting it. So I decided to take advantage of that and
drove to work on Sunday so that I could leave as soon as I was off to drive out
to Shenandoah National Park, where I spent all of Monday and Tuesday exploring
a small percentage of the 500 miles of trails winding through the blue ridge
mountains.
As I drove into the park along
skyline drive I came to an overlook just in time to stop and watch the sun
setting behind the mountains over the Shenandoah Valley and the river snaking
below me. I slept in my truck that night because it was quite cold and I didn't
get to a campgrounds until after 10:00. The next morning I climbed to the
top of Old Rag, which offered me inspiring views of the entire valley and
surrounding countryside of Virginia. It was indeed majestic. That night I
enjoyed a campfire while watching the sky fill with stars that I have not seen
since camping in Utah in November. I awoke (this time in the tent) Tuesday
morning to find an overcast and cloudy sky, which began to drop water upon me
as I was cooking breakfast. So after hurriedly breaking camp I had to make a
decision; should I get out of the rain and go back home before it got worse, or
go hiking anyway?
Being me it wasn't even really a
question, clearly I had to go exploring! So I hiked one loop of about 4.5 miles
that took me by two water falls including Dark Hollow Falls, which is the
iconic waterfall of the park. But it was not just the falls that were
impressive, all of the mountain streams are filled with one cascade after
another in a symphony of beauty and majestic sounds that inspires the soul. I
was entirely alone for nearly the entire time as most sensible people had
headed out of the mountains. That meant I got to really experience the forest
the way it actually is and not as a tourist attraction. It also meant I nearly
ran right into an owl who was sitting on a branch of a tree ahead of me on the
trail.
As I neared my truck once again the
skies opened up in force, dumping so much water and so many layers of fog
that I could not see anything at all from the overlook where I was parked
and my windshield was itself a river. Once again I could have left,
but there was another trail I really wanted to journey down so I decided
to hike anyway, despite the rain. I waited until it appeared to
be slackening and left my truck. About 30 seconds into the hike the rain
returned and did not leave again until I approached the outskirts of DC later
that night. So it was a rather wet trip, but the rain brought out a
different aspect in the forest that I might not otherwise have seen.
I lost the path at one
point when it crossed a river without denoting this fact to
unsuspecting hikers like myself. After about a 1/3 of a mile of bushwhacking,
rock climbing, and hanging onto the edge of slippery rock faces as I tried
to find the trail I finally went up as high as I could, discovered a decisive
lack of a path, so headed all the way back down to the river. As I
descended I noticed a lack of foliage in a particular area on the opposite side
of the river and became suspicious. So I crossed the river and climbed up the
opposite bank and confirmed these suspicions when I once again found
myself on the path, now with a much greater appreciation of the value of such
things whilst hiking in that type of terrain in the rain!
I saw at least 8 waterfalls on that
hike, or at least sort of saw them. By the end they were so shrouded in
mist that I could but make out the slightest hint of the falling water,
but it was still beautiful and inspiring. It was quite the hike to get up
the slippery rocks leading back out of the canyon that I had descended
into, but well worth the journey through the rain and the mist despite my
cold and exhausted body struggling to return to the safety of my truck as I
approached the final miles of the journey.
And then last night when I went to
the discussion group that I have become a part of I was greeted by a special
guest speaker, a gentleman by the name of Bob Goff, a name many of you
Loma-ites know well. He spoke to us of the importance of doing,
of taking action and simply doing. Don't sit and wait, don't think too long,
but do. He is a wonderful storyteller and he had some powerful stories to tell,
stories of changing the world we live in through the loving touch of
Jesus. And as I sat there last night, I was reminded once that the beauty
and wonder of the world surrounds us at every turn if we are but willing to
pause along our journey and see with the eyes of our hearts.
