BOY SCOUT LOGIC AND DEHYDRATIONThis is about the real-life drama on the mountain. I'll call it Taylor's mountain. Taylor Pettit is my grandson (thus named because our son, dead of cancer at 31, was going to leave no Taylor surnames for a legacy). Gary Taylor is an old guy who, for reasons not well comprehended, loves being "old" while thinking he's still in his 17th year. Taylor at 12.5 years was dutifully hanging in there to check off his big "man-challenge" during his year of ritual passage.
We were thirsty on Taylor's mountain. I mean deadly thirsty. Well, Matt, the father and soninlaw and a therapist-survivalist just says just "thirsty." I was picturing crosses on mountainside graves out of Bristlecone Pine branches. We were, in point of fact, "officially" dehydrated. Hey, it was an eleven-hour hike down 2000 feet, up 3000 feet TWICE and along four miles of "road". And did I say we had 55 pound packs? Taylor's was 28 pounds. It was MORE than the permissible one-third of his body weight. The path leading to the springs on the map had been washed away by--you guessed it--water; a flood weeks earlier. We missed it leading to 1000 more VERY vertical feet trying to figure out how a government map and a GPS signal could be so wrong.
As the sun found it's way to the horizon, we shared our last sips to ease the pain of "utter enparchment," my own semi-medical term for our not-YET-panicked state of really, really dry cottonmouth thirst (like the third hour of high school football practice when the coach wouldn't drink until we'd done our laps!).
The night was spent without water for tea, for oatmeal breakfast, or for dinner's dehydrated refried beans. WE felt like those powdery beans. But, we did have the steak we brought. Not as a reward, but as the only food besides two shared apples that didn't need water.
MOUNTAIN METAPHORE: Steak But No WaterThe lesson of the day approaches. It's about BOY SCOUT LOGIC.
To keep this reasonably short I bid you go to my blog, www.gendads.com , for the telling details and the lessons along side the trail. For now I can report that BOY SCOUT LOGIC got us water, almost magically, on the apparentlyh dry hillside. The lessons we each across three generations, learned were physcally real like never before. It made this experience an object lesson of spiritual thirst. More subtle, far more lasting if not fed by living water.
And did I tell you that was my birthday? Seventy. Who'da thought a nalgene of water was the most wonderful of gifts? It was the gift of life.
Now for the lesson. Surprise! It's a spiritual metaphor.
Many (or is that "most" ?) are thirsty. They drink what seems plenty, but it is not enough. And they are fat. It's an illusion. Fat is not healthy. We know we're "fat" by the standards of the other six billion souls struggling on the planet. We don't feel thirsty. That's referring to a church on every corner and three Bibles per household and the complete freedom to pray. Or not.
There are people around you whose are not really thirsty, nothing that another swig from a plastic bottle or a TV sermon wouldn't seem to satisfy. They sit in pews, too. Then there are those who are REALLY thirsty. Lost the trail marker. Map is not clear to them. Someone took away the signs. Or didn't live them. Know anyone like that? Usually not in a pew. Some in bars, some on the Internet, a few are desperate for the Spring of Life and gather at the Source. Does it remind you of a Samaritan woman at the well? Someone gave her more than a camel pack of water.