Remembering the Stars

Six years ago on this feast of the Assumption of Mary I and my fellow campers woke up to snow. The night before we went to sleep under the stars, for once without a tent, and when we woke in the middle of the night we dashed back to the tents, for it was raining. And in the morning we woke up to snow. For a short time our little world of the Wind River Mountains was clothed in pure white, though it was the middle of August.

Today the freshmen of Wyoming Catholic College are on their second week of the three-week wilderness course that marks the beginning of their college career. Perhaps it is snowing on them, as it often seems to do on the 15th of August. Six years ago I too was in my second week of the wilderness course. Now, of course, it is slightly different: while in my time we used the National Outdoor Leadership School (affectionately known as the No Official Lunch School by my group), today’s freshmen go out with the Solid Rock Outdoor Ministries. Yet I am sure it is the same. I am sure the freshmen are just getting used to heavy backpacks, sleeping on the ground, and other uncomfortable situations involved in camping, and I am sure they are looking up at the same stars and feeling the same awe and wonder that I felt at the grandeur of God’s creation.

“The world is charged with the grandeur of God,” wrote Gerard Manley Hopkins. When I went on my NOLS trip I was unaware of that poem, yet those were my sentiments as I trekked the wilderness of the Wind River Mountains in Wyoming. Very often my legs ached, and my feet felt like lead, and I was so tired all I wanted to do was lie down and sleep. But those moments of intense beauty and awe were worth it. The views were amazing. Very often when I stood at the crest of a mountain or climbed to the top of a peak I thought to myself, how to describe this to someone? How does one describe sheer beauty? Or when we lay around the campfire one evening in our sleeping bags and watched the stars – the beautiful, bright, clear, stars. Nothing to block our view. No lights, no noise but the little noises of nature and the crackle of the fire. It makes you feel very small, very insignificant; but also very fortunate. I’ll never forget that night around the campfire. We were in a little valley just over the Continental Divide, resting for a few days after making the long and arduous climb over Texas Pass, a mere 11,400 feet in elevation. It was a lovely spot. There was a lake, and grass, and the mountains sloped up all around us like the rim of a giant bowl. And we could see the stars in such glory as I had never seen before or have never seen since.

The other night I lay outside on the swing with my little brother and we watched the stars. The stars are not as bright here in Tehachapi as they were in Wyoming. There are too many lights and too many trees. But they are still beautiful. We lay on the swing and talked and counted shooting stars, and I was peacefully happy. I marveled that those were the same stars I was seeing in the little valley in the mountains six years ago. I have always loved stars, but since my NOLS trip I have loved them even more. There is a comfort in the stars. Though people live and die, though civilizations rise and fall, the stars are always there. They have been there for thousands of years, and will be there for thousands more. In a world that is constantly changing around us, the stars are a fixed point that never changes.

Though my NOLS trip was hard – I would hardly describe myself as an “outdoorsy” type – I am glad to this day that I did it. It gave me new confidence, taught me to be still and listen, and it made me fall in love with God’s world. Out in the wilderness there is no time aside from the natural rising and setting of the sun, and you can hear yourself think. When you pray you feel that God is right beside you, listening. It is a slow life, but it is by no means a boring life. In the bustle of daily life I often forget the quiet beauty of nature, the Holy Ghost brooding over the world. But even if I forget at times, all I have to do is look up to the stars on a pleasant evening, and it all comes back to me. The pain, the mosquito bites, the blisters and tired legs. The sheer exhaustion. But most of all the grandeur of God.