laughing because otherwise i’d be crying
wednesday and thursday of this past week classes were canceled due to a national strike of public transportation and other services. awesome, right? no school for six days!? unfortunately, things were a little iffy in terms of demonstrations and such, not to mention there was a distinct lack of buses. so there was no school, but i was also more or less confined to my immediate surroundings. and it was raining. hard.
cabin fever set in really quickly. skyping with a friend i mentioned how stir crazy i was becoming. not just those two days, but in general. she challenged me to go on an adventure a day. doing, tasting, seeing, or smelling something new everyday. it can be as small as trying out a new café, but always has to lead me to experience and understand this city and country and culture better. this generally happens on a daily basis regardless, but i like the intentionality of seeking out adventure.
thursday my adventure was going on a walk with mi papá and visiting two of the gorgeous churches on the nearby hill. friday i stepped it up a little.
when i was in elementary school my family packed up a large portion of our house into the van and set off on a three week tour of the western united states. one night we were eating dinner at our campsite in glacier national park when it started to rail. we hurriedly took shelter in our tent and settled in for the night. i apparently had drawn the short stick because i was placed on the downward sloping wall. now tents are usually pretty good at staying dry. unless you are snuggled up against the wall. at six in the morning i awoke to the laughter of my family. eight hours worth of heavy rain had seeped through the wall and i had been dozing in a puddle. dripping from head to toe. super not funny. but also a favorite family memory.
last night’s adventure came close to matching that wonderful experience. our second mountain sports excursion was a backpacking trip to a nearby national park. hike up friday evening, set up base camp, hike two hills saturday, and pack it home sunday. easy enough, right?
we get off the bus late afternoon friday, and gather in a circle for marching orders from the professors. the first thing addressed is the looming black clouds obscuring the tops of the mountains. “tomorrow there is a ninety percent chance of rain and electric storms. and at our current elevation, it snowed two weeks ago.” awesome. let’s climb a mountain.
as we ascend it gets increasingly dark, foggy, and windy. headlamps become necessary, and the switchbacks show no sign of ending anytime soon. but my smile gets wider and wider with each step. i love being outside. i love camping. and i love this group of people. my professor is whistling lady gaga behind me. doesn’t get much better. we reach our campsite around nine. it’s cold. really cold. the kind of cold wind that would mean snow if i was in colorado. molly, gaby and i clear fossilized cow poop out of a semi flat area and set up our tent. we make the best soup in the history of the world, tie the rain fly as taut as possible, and bundle away into our sleeping bags. ten minutes later it starts raining hard. and then the wind starts whistling. several times i’m legitimately concerned about losing the rain fly. or the entire tent for that matter. at around three we notice that we’re getting a little wet, and huddle into the middle of the tent as far from the walls as possible. i’ve learned my lesson. don’t mess with wet tent walls.
unfortunately, there’s not much you can do when your rain fly is weighed down by snow. yes folks, snow. at seven, the time at which we are supposed to get up for our morning summit, our professor walks tent to tent telling us to wait until eight because it’s too dark to see. and that due to the snow we’re going to have to reassess the trip. snow. wet, icy, cold snow. just in case i missed colorado. but we’re still smiling. laughing because otherwise we’d be crying.
we break down camp in record breaking speed. but descend at a much different pace. did i mention that the terrain we climbed the night before was a mixture of sand and dirt, disproportionately the former? well now it’s a river of mud. slippery slippery mud. our professor issues a warning that includes the word “death,” and we slowly begin to slog and side our way down. it begins to snow harder. thick wet globs of snow. and then out of nowhere the sun pops out and we are greeted by a rainbow arcing over rolling green hills. unbelievable. gorgeous. and if possible, my smile gets wider.
joy. that’s the life to which we’ve been called. joy that doesn’t depend on the amount of water gathering in our shoes or the number of hours we don’t sleep on the side of a snow covered hill. it’s easy to be happy when things are going well, but an entirely different story when things aren’t happening as expected or desired. my struggles here in chile are small in comparison to the very real problems so many people are enduring. but sometimes choosing joy is near impossible when i just can’t get my point across at the dinner table and i’m once again thumbing through a dictionary. and increasingly difficult my heart isn’t in the right place to fight for it.
huddled in my sleeping bag with my headlamp, i flipped through psalms, and stumbled across a verse i had underlined earlier this year. Satisfy us in the morning with your unfailing love, that we may sing for joy and be glad all our days. Psalm 90:14. so often i let my free time get gobbled up by nothingness and forget to make space for god. i look for satisfaction not in the gospel, not in the love of the Lord, but in the fleeting things of this world. no wonder joy often feels beyond my grasp. i’m searching for it in things that will never truly bring me life or happiness. but god offers a joy that cannot be diminished by language barriers or mud splattered up to my waist. a joy that is not defined by what this life offers, but by what was achieved in the death of his son. cabin fever and culture shock got nothing on me, god has equipped me to fight a winning battle for joy.
blissfully unaware of what the next 12 hours will hold
perfect camping weather
lil bit foggy
rise and shine
