Looking back...

Today we heard the reading about "My yoke is easy, My burden light". At mass on the last day of our Trek, the reading was about doubting Thomas as it was his feast day. Just as the doubting Thomas reading was relevant on our last day, I thought today's reading was relevant to reflection on my experience and I decided this is a good time to post sort of a wrap up reflection on the trip.

It was a good trip. I'm sure we weren't the only trek in the place where personalities didn't mesh perfectly. I would go back in a heartbeat, but I'd have to know up front that the goals of the group were more in line with the concept of "vacation" rather than that of "marathon". This brings me to the yoke quote. At the hunting lodge, Waite Phillips made a lamp fixture out of an old oxen yoke he found on the property. He did this because it looked like his brand. W was taken, so Waite used Bar U U which looks a lot like the oxen yoke.

I remember sitting there in the breezeway sitting on one of Waite's rodent proof lockers and looking up at it and thinking our trek was "unequally yoked". There were those of us who were frustrated that there wasn't enough "down time" and those who were frustrated that we weren't "doing everything". Neither was wrong except if they are unable to compromise.


I have another panorama shot to share. It is the evening sky New Mexico just before a big storm. I was struck by the number of colors and cloud variations. Apps like Photoshop, Gimp and Hugin (for stitching panoramas on OS X) really cannot bring out the splendor of the sky that evening but I gave it a try...

To me, seeing the sky was not unlike putting my hand in Jesus' side. It was so beautiful there was no question of "intelligent design" or other such hooey. It was authored by God.

When I first posted this blog, I literally typed pretty much what was jotted in my journal pad. Then later, at Michele's suggestion, I've edited some of the blog entries to draw less attention to some of the difficulties of the trek. In the end, I want to convey the beauty of Philmont and how much we all enjoyed it.

7/3 - Thursday

Over the Tooth. THAT WAS TOUGH. Shafers Peak was nice but the Tooth was a steep climb and then fogged in. After a serious brush with weather on Baldy only a few days ago, I got everyone off the Tooth as quickly as I could.

Finally the switchbacks going down into Philmont base camp seemed to go on for 600 miles. We saw a rattlesnake on the trail. Richard says it would be 8 feet if you picked it up. My son, Chris says it was more like 3 feet. From where I was it looked like more than 4 feet, possibly 6 feet. I pulled up a digital photo and couldn't tell because in my picture the snake was coiled to strike. OUCH!

Once the snake went off the trail, we proceeded down into base camp and turned in all our stuff and prepared to go home. (snake pic added 7/8)

At the end of the afternoon, we went into Cimarron, NM for Simple Simon's pizza. Pizza never tasted so good. Then there was ice cream then back to camp.

I went to Mass and Father Steve had a wonderful sermon. I spoke with Chaplain Joe about the length of the announcements and he tried to cut them a little shorter. Joe is a seminarian in the diocese of Lubbock Texas. I will keep his vocation in my prayers. After Mass, I walked by and shook hands with Rabbi Rock then went to evening camp fire. A short nap and we were loading onto the bus (at 2:30 am!) for the trip to the Denver airport.

Philmont removes all masks and all of us showed our faults on the trail. There are some in our crew I would go back with tomorrow. Others, I could only go with as a missionary and pretty much only if God handed me the order in writing. I remember praying several times on the trail Col 1:24 ... "Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake and in my flesh I am filling up what is lacking in the allictions of Christ on behalf of his body which is the church." To me this relates to offering up the sore feet, sore back and interpersonal trials.

My son has "Cry the Beloved Country" assigned for summer reading. I read it on the trip. What a wonderful book. Well written. It is a tragic subject, the disenfranchisement of Africans of their mineral, land, labor and basic human rights. But it is told in a way that has mercy to go around on all sides. The book filled the time in base camp and on the planes and busses. I hope my son enjoys it as much as I did. I remember all the beauty we saw at Philmont and there is one passages in particular that I found meaningful, poetic and beautiful...

Cry the beloved country, for the unborn child that is the inheritor of our fear. Let him not love the earth too deeply. Let him not laugh too gladly when the water runs through his fingers, nor stand too silent when the setting sun makes red the veld with fire. Let him not be too moved when the birds of his land are singing, nor give too much of his heart to a mountain or a valley. For fear will rob him of all if he gives too much.

Just as Africans had to have hope in oppression, on our trek we had to focus on the positive. Glass half full. Don't be distracted by bickering. Don't be distracted by the difficulties of hanging food in bear bags 50 feet off the ground. Don't be put off by having to use outdoor toilets frequently without walls. Don't be distracted by an endless onslaught of powdered food, heavy packs, mud, dust, sweat, sweltering desert sun by day, cold wind by night and sloped camp sites where you wake up in the fetal position in the bottom 1/3 of your tent. Look to the beauty around you from the flowering cacti to the deer to the mountain streams. Nicole tried to force us to do this back at Cottonwood. I see her point now that we rushed through fast enough to "see everything" but I can't help but wonder if some of our crew members "saw nothing" beyond the superficial. In the panorama below (added 7/7), Nicole is seated in the lower right. We are on the ridge looking down into Cottonwood. The tiny white triangle is our dining fly.







Jeff H will be receiving a new pack from Philmont. They will mail it to him. There was no discussion about how to prevent such a thing in the future, but it is not professional to discuss personnel actions with anybody but the guy involved (the driver). I bet there will be some consequences for him even if the staff didn't tell us about it.

I forgot to clean my memory card before coming here but I still managed to snap over 1,100 7MP shots. I have added pictures to this blog that show what can be seen when you look past the glass half empty to see the glass God filled up for us millions of years ago here in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains.

7/2 - Wednesday

Toured the hunting lodge today. Rode horses. Climbed Window Rock. What a magnificant view. Climbed to Ponderosa Park to camp. Tomorrow - out over the Tooth of Time then home.

Our horseback ride was delayed due to lightning. When we were able to set off, I was grateful to be riding rather than walking but I was also apprehensive about the upcoming climb to Ponderosa Park. The ride was a very pleasant walk and was more in keeping with the anachronistic pace of Philmont than the frenetic pace that some of the mentally or physically younger members of our trek would clearly prefer. We got back to Clark's fork and had to wait a long time to do branding. The propane tank was empty and the branding irons had to be heated over a wood fire using an old piece of cardboard to fan the fire and get it hot enough. This turned out to be a good thing as my wallet was not real leather and my boots were synthetic. A really hot branding iron would have been a calamity.


Bar PS is the Philmont brand and is used for cattle. Lazy S is the Boy Scout brand and is used for horses at Philmont. I also had my hat branded.

After branding, we cooked our dinner and prepared for our hike up many hundred feet to our dry camp site. This would mean we could avoid carrying the 5 to 7 liters of water required to cook dinner and clean up. It also would mean we could avoid setting up a dining fly when we planned to get up at 4am for our hike out over the tooth.

7/1/08 - Tuesday

I feel much better today. I won't take evening meds in the AM again. There are conflicting goals today: Make it to Cimarroncito early to climb, go slow, and leave late so the boys (including the adult boys) can shoot. The solution seems to be to redistribute the load so we can go faster. A couple of scouts offered to carry some load if I need it. A cool pleasant morning today with the promise of a better hike.

At Cimmaroncito. Much easier hike. A truck hit Jeff H's pack while we ate lunch at the Gulch. I'm lying down. The driver was kind of a jerk. Minutes later, the back country director came driving by and we told him. Hopefully Jeff will receive some compensation because his pack is bent.

I think my exhaustion yesterday was caused by taking evening meds in the morning or perhaps I had a cold. Perhaps it was lack of sleep on that sloped camp site. Whatever the case, I didn't give away any more weight but I am much stronger today.