Gray noise. White noise. It’s all the same.
It’s the noise that is always present when you step outside in the city, even at 4AM. The Interstate never sleeps. Semi trucks always running. Kid on a motorcycle revving it up on his way home from a party. Sirens wailing. Jet planes circling the city. Neighbor’s dog never stops barking.
It’s the noise you feel in your soul when the alarm rudely jolts you out of a sound sleep at 6AM. It follows you and picks up intensity as you back out of your driveway and pull onto the street, and within the first few minutes, you already have some jerk tailgating you, alwayson your back.
Like a clanging cymbal it continues as you step into the office and your boss is on you like a pit-bull on a cat, barking orders, demanding to know where that report is which was due yesterday. It stalks you even when you go to lunch and try to lose yourself over a burger in the park. The ever-present noise that reminds that your paycheck will never cover all of this month’s bills. Noise that is relentless as you drag yourself into the house at 6PM and turn on the news, only to hear all that’s wrong in the world.
And that damn dog next door will not stop barking.
The noise doesn’t stop until you slip back into sweet unconsciousness after your weary head finally hits the pillow, sometime after 11PM.
Tomorrow morning rises up to meet you, in your face, reminding you again that you need to make more money to pay your monthly obligations. The fence needs repairing. The furnace and air conditioner are twenty-eight years old and will die any day now, and where are you going to get the money for that? You forgot to take the trash out again this morning. Floss your teeth? Did you pay the gas bill that is past due?
The “Check Engine” light is still on.
It never ends.
Living under the weight of everyone else’s expectations can kill a man. Oh, not right away. But slowly, over time, like a cancer, over a period of years. It erodes your confidence. Wears you down. Takes its toll.
Lord, get me out of this town.
You and your best buddy planned this trip to the back country a year ago. And, like Bilbo Baggins in "The Hobbit" secretly, you mean not to return.
Saturday morning, up at 5AM, coffee on, gear loaded, including the fresh batch of size sixteen Elk Hair Caddis flies you stayed up tying till 2AM the night before.
You’re long past due to get out of here—to escape to a place not burdened by the grit and noise of the city, by ringing cell phones, work schedules, demanding bosses, or the constant pounding in your weary brain from the neighbor’s noisy mutt.
Your destination is a pure, quiet and peaceful place, uncluttered by the crush of interstate traffic, where road raging jerks are mercifully absent. Where there are no time clocks, or alarm clocks. Where jet planes fly so high the only evidence of their existence are squiggly vapor trails left at thirty three thousand feet, lit up a bright golden-orange by the morning sunrise. To a land virtually unchanged in a thousand years.
Where the pavement ends.
As you pick up your buddy at first light, grab a hot cup-o-Joe for the road, just point your vehicle due north-east of town. You need no map. You’ve been to this place many times over the years. Your internal compass is always set somewhere north of civilization. Let the car run where it wants to go.
To somewhere far from here.
As you begin to climb, leaving behind the subdivisions and neighborhoods, the last convenience store is finally in your rear-view mirror. There is some redneck in a big red four-wheel drive truck on your tail. But on this beautiful, clear, blue morning, it feels natural to pull over and just let him pass. Let him have the road for once. Don't let him get to you. There is no competition for space and position where you’re going. Just peace.
You enter the river canyon where the highway follows alongside, and just the sight of the blue-green, sparkling river begins to loosen your stiff neck and joints. Like the Tin Man who came back to life when he finally got some fresh oil, this first view of river, mountains and pine trees lets you know you are leaving the rat race behind.
It’s like fresh oil to your soul.
As the morning sun slowly warms the canyon, you roll down your window and that first sweet scent of Ponderosa pine fills your nostrils and senses. The traffic is sparse and the tension that has been clenching the base of your skull for the last six months begins to slowly loosen and unwind like a spring in an old fashioned, wind-up alarm clock.
It won’t be long now. You can almost smell the old dusty road that lies ahead.
You continue to climb.
Higher and higher. Further and further away from the city. The weight is almost completely off your shoulders now. You stretch your back and settle into the comfort of your car seat. Your warm cup of coffee is a soothing old friend, not merely stimulant to give you an early morning buzz so you can win the rat race. It tastes better and smells better than it ever has.
And what a blessing to share your life stories with your best friend. You talk about all the big Cutthroat trout that are going to inhale your Elk Hair Caddis flies. You know just the spot. That first big hole is only a half mile from camp.
Not much farther now.
You’ve lost all sense of time. Clock watching is not allowed, not part of the drill, here where the pavement ends. You’re not on anyone’s schedule. You’ll get there when you get there.
Soon the stands of Lodgepole pine get thicker and you know the turn off to the River lies just ahead.
There it is! “Ranger Station; 28 Miles.”
And we gratefully make that final left turn onto the last stretch of paved road.
Won’t be long now.
I love this country. There are huge, lush meadows, lined with big green stands of lodge pole pine, with small, sparkling streams flowing throughout. Occasionally, if you’re lucky, you will see herds of elk, especially if you enter the meadows early enough in the day. And this morning was no exception. We counted at least thirty head of elk, just along the edge of the cover of the pine trees.
I never tire of coming to this place. It’s always just as special to me as the previous trip.
This was one of my Dad’s favorite places on earth. He felt free and alive here. The uncluttered serenity and purity of these meadows, where big six-point bull elk roam, and Chinook salmon and Cutthroat trout swim in the crystal clear creeks, were an integral part of the wilderness wanderer soul that God gave him. Whenever I think of Dad, the picture of these beautiful meadows, elk, and mountains always first come to mind.
As we wind along the road to our destination, all our conversation and focus lies on what’s ahead—not on what’s behind us.
And therein lies an extremely valuable life lesson. Most of us, in one way or another, are enslaved by our past. By our bad memories and experiences. Still carrying around that full set of Gucci luggage… bound, in chains, from someone else’s poor opinion of us.
Lord, help us to leave that whole set of baggage at the airport.
One of my favorite authors made the following profound observation:
We have crossed over... to where the pavement ends.
And there it was.
Our old family camp site. No other cars nearby. Someone left behind a small stack of six or seven pieces of split firewood. Far exceeding our expectations. We pulled in, parked the rig, took a deep breath, cracked open a couple of frosty brews and walked down to look at the river before we set up camp.
It was to be a time of refreshing.
The gin-clear waters of the river of no return looked pure. Unchanged for thousands of years. The same rocks have been in the same spot with crystal clear waters flowing over them continuously for millennia.
Author Norman Maclean, in “A River Runs Through It” gracefully said it this way:
It’s interesting how you can read a book and in some of the passages, it’s as if the author is writing your story along with his own. The above passage is one such instance. In ways I can’t fully explain, I am haunted by the crystal-clear waters of this river.
After my father passed, my mother decided to have a memorial stone cut from local quarry rock, bearing, along with his name, date of death and birth, the simple inscription: “Beloved.”
We, his sons, and a small gathering of those who knew him, carried my father’s one hundred and twenty pound memorial stone on our shoulders, lashed to two pieces of Lodgepole pine, several miles down the river trail, to a special spot at the confluence of one of my dad’s favorite creeks, where it empties into the main river. And it was there, that my mother scattered his ashes.
In some ways, that, to this day I still cannot understand, a big part of our family died there, that day we laid Dad to rest along his river.
The remaining part of our family died twelve years later, on the day we laid my Mother to rest at a cemetery here in town. Mom was always the ‘glue’ that held our family together after dad died.
And as a family… we’ve never been the same since her passing.
I’ve never been back to visit the place where we laid my father’s memorial stone. But part of me will always be there with him.
My friend and I walked back to camp, set up our gear, and built a nice fire. We unloaded the stash of firewood that we brought from home. Plenty to get us through the weekend. As my Dad taught me, I brought along a shovel and a big water jug to douse any sparks that might spread and become a potential forest fire hazard. Along with his trusty shovel, dad told me you never leave home without a roll of bailing wire and some duct tape. Thanks Dad.
We popped open the cooler, and my friend who is quite the gourmet cook brought out Portobello mushrooms, cloves of garlic, onion, purple potatoes (which I had never seen before), and some garden-fresh ears of corn. After another frosty brew, we wrapped the mushrooms in tin foil with some olive oil, red wine, and a sprinkle of salt and pepper. The corn on the cob was oiled and also wrapped in foil. After carefully placing the foil-wrapped bundles on glowing orange coals in our camp fire, my buddy sautéed the purple potatoes with garlic and onion in the well-seasoned frying pan I had brought along. And soon we were enjoying a gourmet dinner and a glass of Merlot.
Rough duty.
After dinner, we unpacked our fly rods, rigged them up and tied on some of the Elk Hair Caddis flies I had made just for the occasion. After a while I sat back on some rocks and just enjoyed watching my friend paint pictures in the sky with his fly casting technique.
We didn’t catch many Cutthroat trout on this particular evening, but we were blessed with an early evening thunderstorm. The lightning cracked loudly just overhead, and the thunder rolled down the canyon like a runaway freight train that made the entire hillside shake. We ducked for cover underneath some huge rocks on the hillside until the storm passed. As the intense, golden sunlight slid underneath the iron gray storm clouds, the rain drops were divinely illuminated and looked like clear-white drops of liquid glass falling on our faces. Probably one of the most beautiful storms I have ever seen.
What a priceless gift.
The entire trip. The camaraderie and friendship with my buddy. The great food and campfire. The river, The storm. The sunset. God is truly revealed and glorified in His incredible, amazing creation.
Words cannot properly express.
The next morning after some yogurt and fruit, we made our way down the trail to the confluence of my father’s favorite creek. We did catch a few nice Cutthroat trout. And the only other people we ran into that entire day were two yayhoos who said, “Hey, have you been sore-mouthing our fish?”
We eventually made our way back, broke camp, and continued on our journey to our other favorite places along this incredible mountain range. There were more rivers to wade, and big trout to pursue.
We could not find any available camp sites that night, so we bushwhacked into the woods and drove way up a hillside and camped in a very ‘unauthorized’ spot where, trust me, no car had ever been before. It was one of the best campsites I have ever enjoyed. No cars within a mile or more. It was not legal, but that was many years ago when I was much younger and impetuous. And I’m glad we camped where we did. That night we experienced another amazing thunderstorm after dark.
Memorable times.
At my father’s memorial service that day in 1992, along the river of no return, my Mom read the following passage from the book of Isaiah:
Borne from a storm, rain and snow falls on mountains, soon melting, flowing down, mingled with tears, forms tiny rivulets and creeks. Creeks become streams, become rivers, become giants; all flowing together on their long journey, back to the ocean from where they began. Ocean water vaporizes, rising into the air to become storms, which fall anew on mountains as rain and snow, and the life cycle repeats itself.
The River of Life.
I am haunted by the waters where my Dad was laid to rest. In the place where part of our family died, where part of me died, I came to life.
We’re all on a journey. We each have a story that is being written, and has been written.
Victor Frankl, whose wife and family were murdered by the Nazis in one of the Holocaust death camps, and who endured indescribable suffering, later wrote:
“What is to give light, must endure burning.”
As I write this, it’s been twenty two years ago since we laid Dad to rest along his river. And in this difficult life, for me there has been much suffering... what Frankl calls burning.
As Maclean wrote, “The river was cut by the world's great flood and runs over rocks from the basement of time.”
The trials we go through, are, like a river that flows, a constant in our experience, which, painfully at times, etch out the story of our life. Rivers of living water, cutting canyons, deep, painful, and yet beautiful.
My story is still being written, and has already been written.
No one knows the day of their departure.
But I look forward, to that time, when I will see the fulfillment of my story, where I will be fully known, when I have reached my ultimate destination, where, along the banks of the River of Life, the rain falls softly on my face like illuminated drops of crystal-white, liquid glass. . .
—Where the Pavement Ends.
It never ends.
Living under the weight of everyone else’s expectations can kill a man. Oh, not right away. But slowly, over time, like a cancer, over a period of years. It erodes your confidence. Wears you down. Takes its toll.
Lord, get me out of this town.
You and your best buddy planned this trip to the back country a year ago. And, like Bilbo Baggins in "The Hobbit" secretly, you mean not to return.
Saturday morning, up at 5AM, coffee on, gear loaded, including the fresh batch of size sixteen Elk Hair Caddis flies you stayed up tying till 2AM the night before.
You’re long past due to get out of here—to escape to a place not burdened by the grit and noise of the city, by ringing cell phones, work schedules, demanding bosses, or the constant pounding in your weary brain from the neighbor’s noisy mutt.
Your destination is a pure, quiet and peaceful place, uncluttered by the crush of interstate traffic, where road raging jerks are mercifully absent. Where there are no time clocks, or alarm clocks. Where jet planes fly so high the only evidence of their existence are squiggly vapor trails left at thirty three thousand feet, lit up a bright golden-orange by the morning sunrise. To a land virtually unchanged in a thousand years.
Where the pavement ends.
As you pick up your buddy at first light, grab a hot cup-o-Joe for the road, just point your vehicle due north-east of town. You need no map. You’ve been to this place many times over the years. Your internal compass is always set somewhere north of civilization. Let the car run where it wants to go.
To somewhere far from here.
As you begin to climb, leaving behind the subdivisions and neighborhoods, the last convenience store is finally in your rear-view mirror. There is some redneck in a big red four-wheel drive truck on your tail. But on this beautiful, clear, blue morning, it feels natural to pull over and just let him pass. Let him have the road for once. Don't let him get to you. There is no competition for space and position where you’re going. Just peace.
You enter the river canyon where the highway follows alongside, and just the sight of the blue-green, sparkling river begins to loosen your stiff neck and joints. Like the Tin Man who came back to life when he finally got some fresh oil, this first view of river, mountains and pine trees lets you know you are leaving the rat race behind.
It’s like fresh oil to your soul.
As the morning sun slowly warms the canyon, you roll down your window and that first sweet scent of Ponderosa pine fills your nostrils and senses. The traffic is sparse and the tension that has been clenching the base of your skull for the last six months begins to slowly loosen and unwind like a spring in an old fashioned, wind-up alarm clock.
It won’t be long now. You can almost smell the old dusty road that lies ahead.
You continue to climb.
Higher and higher. Further and further away from the city. The weight is almost completely off your shoulders now. You stretch your back and settle into the comfort of your car seat. Your warm cup of coffee is a soothing old friend, not merely stimulant to give you an early morning buzz so you can win the rat race. It tastes better and smells better than it ever has.
And what a blessing to share your life stories with your best friend. You talk about all the big Cutthroat trout that are going to inhale your Elk Hair Caddis flies. You know just the spot. That first big hole is only a half mile from camp.
Not much farther now.
You’ve lost all sense of time. Clock watching is not allowed, not part of the drill, here where the pavement ends. You’re not on anyone’s schedule. You’ll get there when you get there.
Soon the stands of Lodgepole pine get thicker and you know the turn off to the River lies just ahead.
There it is! “Ranger Station; 28 Miles.”
And we gratefully make that final left turn onto the last stretch of paved road.
Won’t be long now.
I love this country. There are huge, lush meadows, lined with big green stands of lodge pole pine, with small, sparkling streams flowing throughout. Occasionally, if you’re lucky, you will see herds of elk, especially if you enter the meadows early enough in the day. And this morning was no exception. We counted at least thirty head of elk, just along the edge of the cover of the pine trees.
I never tire of coming to this place. It’s always just as special to me as the previous trip.
This was one of my Dad’s favorite places on earth. He felt free and alive here. The uncluttered serenity and purity of these meadows, where big six-point bull elk roam, and Chinook salmon and Cutthroat trout swim in the crystal clear creeks, were an integral part of the wilderness wanderer soul that God gave him. Whenever I think of Dad, the picture of these beautiful meadows, elk, and mountains always first come to mind.
As we wind along the road to our destination, all our conversation and focus lies on what’s ahead—not on what’s behind us.
And therein lies an extremely valuable life lesson. Most of us, in one way or another, are enslaved by our past. By our bad memories and experiences. Still carrying around that full set of Gucci luggage… bound, in chains, from someone else’s poor opinion of us.
Lord, help us to leave that whole set of baggage at the airport.
One of my favorite authors made the following profound observation:
“Spirit-led people cease defining themselves by their reflection in the thousand mirrors of others' expectations.”As we come over the last hill that descends down the road that leads to our campsite, the last memory of the noise of the city has vanished from sight. And the paved road has long ceased and become gravel road.
We have crossed over... to where the pavement ends.
And there it was.
Our old family camp site. No other cars nearby. Someone left behind a small stack of six or seven pieces of split firewood. Far exceeding our expectations. We pulled in, parked the rig, took a deep breath, cracked open a couple of frosty brews and walked down to look at the river before we set up camp.
It was to be a time of refreshing.
The gin-clear waters of the river of no return looked pure. Unchanged for thousands of years. The same rocks have been in the same spot with crystal clear waters flowing over them continuously for millennia.
Author Norman Maclean, in “A River Runs Through It” gracefully said it this way:
“Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it. The river was cut by the world's great flood and runs over rocks from the basement of time. On some of the rocks are timeless raindrops. Under the rocks are the words, and some of the words are theirs. —I am haunted by waters.”In the same year my father passed away, I read the book and saw the movie, “A River Runs Through It.”
It’s interesting how you can read a book and in some of the passages, it’s as if the author is writing your story along with his own. The above passage is one such instance. In ways I can’t fully explain, I am haunted by the crystal-clear waters of this river.
After my father passed, my mother decided to have a memorial stone cut from local quarry rock, bearing, along with his name, date of death and birth, the simple inscription: “Beloved.”
We, his sons, and a small gathering of those who knew him, carried my father’s one hundred and twenty pound memorial stone on our shoulders, lashed to two pieces of Lodgepole pine, several miles down the river trail, to a special spot at the confluence of one of my dad’s favorite creeks, where it empties into the main river. And it was there, that my mother scattered his ashes.
In some ways, that, to this day I still cannot understand, a big part of our family died there, that day we laid Dad to rest along his river.
The remaining part of our family died twelve years later, on the day we laid my Mother to rest at a cemetery here in town. Mom was always the ‘glue’ that held our family together after dad died.
And as a family… we’ve never been the same since her passing.
I’ve never been back to visit the place where we laid my father’s memorial stone. But part of me will always be there with him.
My friend and I walked back to camp, set up our gear, and built a nice fire. We unloaded the stash of firewood that we brought from home. Plenty to get us through the weekend. As my Dad taught me, I brought along a shovel and a big water jug to douse any sparks that might spread and become a potential forest fire hazard. Along with his trusty shovel, dad told me you never leave home without a roll of bailing wire and some duct tape. Thanks Dad.
We popped open the cooler, and my friend who is quite the gourmet cook brought out Portobello mushrooms, cloves of garlic, onion, purple potatoes (which I had never seen before), and some garden-fresh ears of corn. After another frosty brew, we wrapped the mushrooms in tin foil with some olive oil, red wine, and a sprinkle of salt and pepper. The corn on the cob was oiled and also wrapped in foil. After carefully placing the foil-wrapped bundles on glowing orange coals in our camp fire, my buddy sautéed the purple potatoes with garlic and onion in the well-seasoned frying pan I had brought along. And soon we were enjoying a gourmet dinner and a glass of Merlot.
Rough duty.
After dinner, we unpacked our fly rods, rigged them up and tied on some of the Elk Hair Caddis flies I had made just for the occasion. After a while I sat back on some rocks and just enjoyed watching my friend paint pictures in the sky with his fly casting technique.
We didn’t catch many Cutthroat trout on this particular evening, but we were blessed with an early evening thunderstorm. The lightning cracked loudly just overhead, and the thunder rolled down the canyon like a runaway freight train that made the entire hillside shake. We ducked for cover underneath some huge rocks on the hillside until the storm passed. As the intense, golden sunlight slid underneath the iron gray storm clouds, the rain drops were divinely illuminated and looked like clear-white drops of liquid glass falling on our faces. Probably one of the most beautiful storms I have ever seen.
What a priceless gift.
The entire trip. The camaraderie and friendship with my buddy. The great food and campfire. The river, The storm. The sunset. God is truly revealed and glorified in His incredible, amazing creation.
Words cannot properly express.
The next morning after some yogurt and fruit, we made our way down the trail to the confluence of my father’s favorite creek. We did catch a few nice Cutthroat trout. And the only other people we ran into that entire day were two yayhoos who said, “Hey, have you been sore-mouthing our fish?”
We eventually made our way back, broke camp, and continued on our journey to our other favorite places along this incredible mountain range. There were more rivers to wade, and big trout to pursue.
We could not find any available camp sites that night, so we bushwhacked into the woods and drove way up a hillside and camped in a very ‘unauthorized’ spot where, trust me, no car had ever been before. It was one of the best campsites I have ever enjoyed. No cars within a mile or more. It was not legal, but that was many years ago when I was much younger and impetuous. And I’m glad we camped where we did. That night we experienced another amazing thunderstorm after dark.
Memorable times.
At my father’s memorial service that day in 1992, along the river of no return, my Mom read the following passage from the book of Isaiah:
“For My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways My ways,” says the Lord. “For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways, and My thoughts than your thoughts. “For as the rain comes down, and the snow from heaven, and do not return there, but water the earth, and make it bring forth and bud, that it may give seed to the Sower, and bread to the eater, so shall My word be that goes forth from My mouth; it shall not return to Me void, but it shall accomplish what I please, and it shall prosper in the thing for which I sent it.“For you shall go out with joy, and be led out with peace; the mountains and the hills shall break forth into singing before you, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands. Instead of the thorn shall come up the cypress tree, and instead of the brier shall come up the myrtle tree; and it shall be to the Lord for a name, for an everlasting sign that shall not be cut off.”Life is cyclical.
Borne from a storm, rain and snow falls on mountains, soon melting, flowing down, mingled with tears, forms tiny rivulets and creeks. Creeks become streams, become rivers, become giants; all flowing together on their long journey, back to the ocean from where they began. Ocean water vaporizes, rising into the air to become storms, which fall anew on mountains as rain and snow, and the life cycle repeats itself.
The River of Life.
I am haunted by the waters where my Dad was laid to rest. In the place where part of our family died, where part of me died, I came to life.
We’re all on a journey. We each have a story that is being written, and has been written.
Victor Frankl, whose wife and family were murdered by the Nazis in one of the Holocaust death camps, and who endured indescribable suffering, later wrote:
“What is to give light, must endure burning.”
As I write this, it’s been twenty two years ago since we laid Dad to rest along his river. And in this difficult life, for me there has been much suffering... what Frankl calls burning.
As Maclean wrote, “The river was cut by the world's great flood and runs over rocks from the basement of time.”
The trials we go through, are, like a river that flows, a constant in our experience, which, painfully at times, etch out the story of our life. Rivers of living water, cutting canyons, deep, painful, and yet beautiful.
My story is still being written, and has already been written.
No one knows the day of their departure.
But I look forward, to that time, when I will see the fulfillment of my story, where I will be fully known, when I have reached my ultimate destination, where, along the banks of the River of Life, the rain falls softly on my face like illuminated drops of crystal-white, liquid glass. . .
—Where the Pavement Ends.
