Iron Lake

It's officially summer, which means it's officially backpacking season. This past week, Jesse and I kicked off the year with a 10-mile trek to an alpine lake near the Sierra Crest. We spent two nights out, and brought Montana along for the first time.

I'm not much of a photographer - I generally just set the dial to "Auto," point at what I want, and snap: seat-of-the-pants all the way. (Come to think of it, I take the same approach to playing piano, writing, and an embarrassing number of other things.)

Consequently, for me, the best way to take a good picture is to take a lot of pictures. This approach works best with a digital camera, for obvious reasons. (I used disposable cameras for years before I realized how horrifically uneconomical they are. Of course I also took fewer pictures, which means I got fewer good ones.)

I'll throw a couple pictures in this post as teasers, but check out the slideshow for the real goods. Those are the winners out of 200-some shots.

We loaded up Wednesday morning and drove about an hour and a half up to the trailhead. From there, it's a rough-and-tumble downhill of several thousand feet into the San Joaquin River Gorge. Starting out, I felt some minor twinges of the knee pain I experienced last year, but it went away and didn't come back for the remainder of the trip, which I was thankful for. Out there, it doesn't matter what else you have going for you if your legs give out.

At the bottom, we broke for lunch, which consisted of trail mix, granola bars, and dried fruit. I tried something new this time and mixed a handful of Dark French Roast coffee beans into my trail mix. A bit hard-core, I'll admit, but quite good.

We had about 4300 ft. of climbing to do before we could break out the camp stove. We got out of the gorge in good time and found the junction for the lake, but had a little difficulty tracing the trail near the beginning because of a recent fire and a large amount of blowdown. Trails that show up as a nice dark line on a map can suddenly vanish without warning into the blown sand. It can be a real challenge, but it definitely makes you pay attention, and the drama of uncertainty breaks up the monotony of hiking nicely. It's always fun to break out the compass, furrow your brow, and act the adventurer.

The trail got better as we continued, and required less concentration. During our last hour in the forest, before we broke out into the alpine zone, Jesse, hiking in front, sighted two bears. I saw neither, and was disappointed. Seeing a bear in the backcountry is always a rush.

We reached the lake tired and found a campsite, not without some difficulty. This is the highest I've camped in the Sierras - or anywhere else for that matter - and smooth horizontal real estate was hard to come by. But we found some, and got the tents up and dinner on in short order.

One of the great ironies of backpacking is that you work and strain to your limits all day and all you get is a measly cup of instant soup. Sometimes you wonder who talked you into doing this for fun.

Yes, that's the moon - and no, it's not Photoshopped. What can I say: sometimes you just wind up in the right place at the right time.

The night was quiet and not unreasonably cold. In the morning we headed up to the top of the East ridge to see what we could see. We had planned to scale Iron Mountain, but it was fairly technical and would have been foolhardy to attempt with the dog.

We packed up camp, swatting mosquitoes, and started back down. We had originally planned to spend both nights at the lake, but since we weren't able to do the mountain, we elected to spread the return trip across two days and make for the campsite in the gorge.

One advantage to going this early in the season is being able to enjoy all the wildflowers in bloom. It's really quite amazing, especially when contrasted with the surrounding alpine terrain which is so craggy and austere.

On more "laid-back" trips like this one, I'll usually bring a book. I wanted a hardback, and one that wasn't too large, so I selected Greg Boyd's Letters From A Skeptic, which is a series of letters between him and his father which resulted in his father's conversion at the age of 73. I redd it in camp Thursday afternoon and it turned out to be exactly what I needed to read. Boyd's theology won't appeal to everyone (he's not exactly reformed) but I thoroughly enjoyed the book and would recommend it as a singularly accessible introduction to everyday apologetics.

After a leisurely afternoon, we took care of dinner and hung the rest of the food. In the morning, we broke camp and climbed back out of the gorge to the truck, lingering for a moment to enjoy the last vista.

"Would you fall to pieces? / Would you fall to pieces? / Would you fall to pieces? / In the high countries?"

- Sandra McCracken (Caedmon's Call)

Reasoning With Rabbits

I took very little formal logic in school, but it was enough to know that there's more to the subject than I'd guessed. I've since forgotten a lot of it, but for some reason, one bit has stuck with me: it's called the contrapositive.

When you take a logical statement and turn it inside-out, you have the contrapositive. There is, however, a specific way of doing this, in order to preserve the logical consistency.

When working with logic, sometimes it is helpful to use "nonsensical" sentences in order to be sure you're really thinking the thing through and not taking any shortcuts. That is what I am going to do to demonstrate how to derive the contrapositive.

We begin with this logical statement, describing a make-believe world of red rabbits:

If it is red, then it is a bunny.

That is our starting point, and we must treat it as fact in order to logically manipulate it. To find the contrapositive of the statement, change both terms to a negative, and reverse the order. You should wind up with a statement which looks something like this:

If it is not a bunny, then it is not red.

But, but - what about the fire hydrants and stop signs and - and - ketchup? Sorry. Not a bunny, not red.

What's enjoyable about this particular logical maneuver is that if you get confused you can easily step back and think your way through it. All red things belong to the class of bunnies: check. All non-bunnies belong to the class of non-red things: check. But not all non-red things necessarily belong to the class of non-bunnies. This fact is not deducible from our original statement, which said only that the bunnies had monopolized the color red. We do not know if they similarly hijacked other colors. You could possibly have blue bunnies, for instance.

Tidy, isn't it?

Image courtesy of ericclaridge.com

The Future Of Christian Higher Education

There are a number of thorny problems that must be resolved if we are going to move forward in the area of Christian higher education. I'm going to highlight a few.

There is in the church today a kind of unspoken fear of "thinking too much" and a tendency to brand intellectualism as unspiritual. The roots of this uneasiness are for the most part honest, seeing it is quite true that intellectualism, in and of itself, is insufficient. ("The Christian faith's contention with rationalism is not that it has too much reason in it, but that it has very little else." - Os Guinness)

However, it is leapfrog logic to say that intellectualism is consequently bad. The fact that you are only partly dressed wearing only a shirt is no reason to not wear a shirt at all. We are called to love God with - among other things - our mind. As Augustine said, Christians ought to "think in believing, and believe in thinking." (See also James Sire and Harry Blamires on this subject.)

It follows that a primary task of any educational institution ought to be stimulating critical thinking in students. Historically, this has proven a difficult assignment, as Christianity very easily tends towards dogmatism and the concentration of "truth" among the reigning elite. While it is true that "the faculty members of an institution carry the intellectual freight," they must make a conscious effort to use their knowledge as an locomotive engine to pull the other students along, not as a juggernaut to run them over.

In Luke 16, Christ is teaching about handling money. Now we know that money is the source of much confusion and sin in the world - "the root of all sorts of evil," as Paul writes to Timothy - and it must be handled carefully. It is dangerous.

However, we must be clear about this one thing: just because something has the capacity - or even tendency - to be corrupted, it does not follow that it must be intrinsically bad. Consider erotic love, or technology, or wine. We could multiply examples ad infinitum - the point is that too often we trade a hot potato for no potato and wind up going hungry.

I include intellectualism in this category - along with money and everything else. It's quite useful - and quite dangerous. (Most useful things are dangerous: think about it. We are constantly tasked with finding this balance, in everything from knives to nuclear power.)

Towards the end of the passage, Christ makes a curious statement; commenting on the actions of the Unjust Steward, He says "the children of this world are in their generation wiser than the children of light."

The world is sinful. This is plain spiritual fact. For some reason, we Christians also seem to think of the world as stupid. This is not the case. The world is not stupid! On the contrary: if we are to take the verse above at face value, they tend to be smarter than we are.

What does this mean? Christ seems to be saying that in this area of money - (and similar areas, by extrapolation) - we can actually learn from the world. Not spiritual matters, mind you. Of course not. "The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned." - 1 Cor. 2:14 But perhaps, as the Israelites plundered the Egyptians and went to the Philistines to sharpen their weapons, we can derive practical benefit from a pagan culture.

This in turn gives us opportunity to engage the world as salt and light. Christianity has never been - at least not substantially - an isolationist religion. Christianity is the story of real people meeting real needs with real love. Even among the most contemplative monastic orders there is this unmistakable emphasis on doing good as a necessary aspect of being good.

Perhaps the greatest challenge facing Christian Higher Education is how to institutionalize the thing and keep it from shriveling up. I don't say that because I'm fatalistic, I say it because it's history. These things (institutions) have a life-expectancy, and it's not lengthy.

As Chesterton said, in Manalive: "It is the fashion to talk of institutions as cold and cramping things. The truth is that when people are in exceptionally high spirits, really wild with freedom and invention, they always must, and they always do, create institutions." He is right. But there is a subtle qualification that remains to be made: it is not that institutions are "cold and cramping things," but rather that they become "cold and cramping things." They age. They break down. They die. Sometimes, they betray themselves before they die.

It is not necessary that we abandon institutions altogether, but only that we recognize when they have served their purpose, become dead weight, and need to be heaved overboard. There comes a point when the burning ferment of the new wine is too much for the old wineskins. If we want to go on with God, we must make new ones.

Yet another danger is pursuing education to the point of distraction. It is a valuable tool for building the house, but it is not the house. Or, to borrow a well-worded metaphor from C. S. Lewis, "[Education] is a weapon; and a weapon is essentially a thing we lay aside as soon as we safely can." (- Christian Reflections: Christianity and Culture) A weapon may be indispensable for carrying out the battle, but it is not the end we are fighting for.

Seek first the kingdom. All these things will be added.

Image courtesy of uu.edu

A Timeless Trail

Everyone should have a few favorite places they go. We know "God is everywhere," but it sure seems He's certain places more than others - like He's in certain songs more than others.

This post is about one of my favorite places. If that interests you, read on. If not, sit tight, and I'll have another philosophical humdinger coming down the pipe before too long.

The Lewis Creek trail, located between Oakhurst and Fish Camp, parallels the East side of CA 41 for about 2-1/2 miles. (Technically, the trail is several miles longer; this is just the top portion, which happens to be the smoothest and most inviting.) The trail begins in a generously sized turnout, dances through the woods, and ends on the road leading to Sugar Pine Christian Camp.

This area - around 4000 feet - marks the convergence of two lovely ecological themes; the twisted oaks, sand, and bold sun of the lower elevations, and the pine breeze, benevolent shade, and "foresty-ness" of the higher. It is everything a forest trail ought to be, complete with unidentified scurrying rodents, plenty of old, weary logs, plenty of green stuff, and even a few quaint bridges to cross you over the trickling tributaries. It is the incarnation of the paradise portrayed in those glorious picture books you redd when you were 6 and untroubled about whether the squirrels really talk to the deer or not.

I will not go so far as to say the place is enchanted, but it is something more than merely idyllic. Or perhaps it is only that people tend to use idyllic too freely - for instance, when they simply ought to say nice.

Since I am afflicted with a certain cruel brand of masochism such that I am never truly enjoying myself unless I am in some kind of pain, I will generally run or bike the trail rather than simply walk it. Of course, this could also be due to the fact that I am generally alone, and for some reason it usually seems silly to walk alone.

Lately I have been taking the bike, sliding it into the not-too-ample bed of the Ranger and sharply turning the wheel just so, in order to close the tailgate. I wear a helmet, more to appear like I know what I'm doing than for anything else. (I'm a cautious, dainty rider, so I'm rarely in need of such desperate protection.)

The trail is "single-track," mountain-biker lingo meaning just wide enough for a blueberry pancake rolling on end. It may seem strange, but this very lack of spaciousness only adds to the magic and excitement of the place. Leafy branches lean out from the sides, not as hostile defenders attempting to impede your passage, but more like cheering fans lined up to give you high-fives. Every turn is abrupt and unknown. It's a mini-adventure every time.

Come by sometime and I'll show you around. Maybe we could even go for a walk.

Nightfall In The City

I'm lying on the cobbled sidewalk, arms behind my head, gazing at the early evening sky. I count only a half-dozen hardy stars able to outshine the irreverent luminescence of the city. The moon hangs in the west, slender and silent. There is a thin airy blue out over the Pacific, and I can imagine a young sailor taking the first watch, his hair highlighted with an ethereal glow, blown and tossed by the salty breeze. We are close to the splash and spray of the sea.

The street lights are just coming on, one by one. As the bulb slowly warms to the seduction of the electricity, it glows cherry red, like an airport beacon or the lamp next to the Buddha on the counter of a Chinese restaurant. Gradually the amperage has its way, and the red changes to a jaundiced yellow. The street settles in for the night.

It's a marvel, the city. Like the sea, it has its own lure, though hardly as rugged and primal. (Really, to speak of "the city" in this generic way is something of an injustice - every city has its own inner fire and distinct flavor. Here in San Jose, the lure seems to mostly be the sickly siren call of antiseptic sophistication.)

That I can use "antispectic" in the same sentence with "sickly" underscores one of the great problems of modern times - how to keep things clean without corroding them. Few question the positive benefits of scrubbing, but it seems we have scrubbed ourselves so hard that there is nothing left. In this, as in so many other things, the crying need is for poise and balance. We are very good at either ignoring or hyping the plight of the planet, but not very good at thinking sense about it.

This, friends, is the city: full of dreams, detergent, and dignity - an endless whirl of victory and defeat, anguish and ecstasy. Wherever you have a lot of people, you're bound to have a lot of everything else. The whirl is always there, like freeway traffic, always ready to welcome you back and absorb you once again into the writhing mass.

Love it or leave it, the whirl will continue without you. I suppose that's part of the charm.

Image courtesy of mccullagh.org

Writing As Language

Most skills in life have two dimensions: the elemental and the extemporaneous. Both are important in their own way.

There are precise, proven methods for carving a pineapple, and if you want to be successful, you would do well to listen to the hard-won wisdom of the veteran pineapple-carvers who have preceded you. This is the elemental dimension.

As you move beyond the fundamentals and become comfortable with the juicy interaction of knife and fruit, something deeper begins to happen. You may start making minor adjustments to your technique in order to better use the pineapple on the board. You may begin to use a broader array of knives for different parts of the task. With time, you may develop an entirely new and vigorous approach to the whole problem. This is the extemporaneous dimension.

It is often necessary to begin with rudiments and rehearsals in order to achieve mastery. The problem these days is that it becomes more about being faithful to the rudiments than about achieving mastery. It may sound strange, but the whole aim of our education - in anything - ought to be to learn how to break the rules.

Rudimentary writing is important, but it is important only as something to rise above. In time, the writer's desk should resemble more and more an artist's easel, and less and less a gumdrop factory. The ultimate goal is not accurate sentences, but rather accurate meaning.

(Good creative writing is rigorous, of course, but it does not grind and clank like the profane machinery of Isengard. It may be by turns gracefully organic, like Lothlorien, splendidly hearty, like The Shire, or imposingly dignified, like Minas Tirith, but it is always authentic - like Middle-Earth.)

Just as good speakers must first be good and observant listeners, so good writers must first be good and observant readers. By observe I do not mean anatomize. I enjoy the techniques that good writers employ, but I do not dissect these techniques grammatically. It is more a process of absorption than an autopsy. I want the rhythm and style of the writers I admire to be not a garage of trinkets and tools that gather dust on shelves, but rather a dynamic pattern imprinted on my subconscious and ringing in my ears.

Writing is a language. Like any language, it may be learned by rigor and rote, but it is learned best and most fluidly by immersion and interaction. In the world of written communication, we ought to picture ourselves as toddler's learning to talk, not detectives trying to break the code.

If I could, I would eliminate all but the most basic grammar from our curricula, and replace it with a steady reading schedule that inspires and equips the writer to bravely lay his fingers on those little nubs at 'F' and 'J' and begin to turn his valuable but disorganized thoughts into an orderly arrangement of useful communication. Grammar is mostly memorization, and has little to do with the actual acrobatics of interesting writing. Knowing what you want to say is vastly more important than knowing your prepositional phrases and transitive verbs.

Spelling should also be discontinued, for mostly the same reasons. Here again, being on familiar terms with the craft is infinitely more valuable than memorization. Readers are better spellers, simply because they have seen so many words go by.

The other thing we must do is regain an appreciation for good literature as such. Good writing may often be found accompanying bad theology, or even no theology. I immensely enjoy reading such heathen authors as Mark Twain or E. B. White, simply because of their deftness with words and wonderful understated style. On the same line, whatever opinion you happen to hold about Tolkien's Christianity or un-Christianity, the stark fact stands that his work was genius, on literary grounds alone.

I leave you with the smug and irrefutable creed of writers everywhere: In the beginning was the word.

Image courtesy of www2.nau.edu

Three Is Company

On November 22, 1963, three men passed out of the realm of mortal existence and into the uncharted foothills of eternity. (Don't you wish I could just say they died?) Anyway, their names were C. S. Lewis, John F. Kennedy, and Aldous Huxley: quite an unusual triumvirate. Being generally disposed towards discourse, and finding themselves together in no particular place with nothing in particular to do, they struck up a conversation, which turned out to be quite extraordinary.

Fortunately for us, someone was eavesdropping.

If I wasn't a more sensible man, I would be inclined to believe that Peter Kreeft has a time machine with a metaphysical overdrive. Suffice to say that his powers of imagination are singularly robust and realistic. Between Heaven & Hell is a brilliantly constructed dialogue, and at certain turns quite funny. At a frugal 115 pages, it is easy to digest but also hearty and full of bite and backbone.

The main theme is the spiritual identity of Christ, and the three protagonists each approach the theme from different angles. (Warning: spoilers ahead!) Kennedy thinks in terms of pseudo-spiritual humanism. Huxley espouses an agreeable but mushy pantheism that smells like curry. Lewis argues Christian orthodoxy, and wins handily.

Books that manage to be truly engaging and truly sharpening at the same time are rare. This is one of them.

Image courtesy of a2.vox.com