Not Today

I had lofty plans...

Labor Day Weekend, solo hiking, setting a fast pace, the solitude and peace of the woods, & it was a nice and cool weekend, 50's at night!

Scratch that.

I set out to hike the 17 mile Cheaha Falls Shelter Loop, starting at Adams Gap, Sunday and Monday. The trail is nice, one of the more highly spoken of portions of the Pinhoti in the foothills of the foothills of the Appalachian mountains! There is a nice shelter, two series of waterfalls, plus a little fall color is starting to show! To say the least, it was the perfect set up for an epic two days.

But all of that is for naught as I sit writing this post at my kitchen table while, I suppose, I would be lounging by a lightly roaring camp fire, and reading Philippians by fire/headlamp light, having just knocked out a backpacker meal!

I started out, attempting to set a 3 mph pace, when I was stopped dead in my tracks after an hour of hiking, with a haunting thought, "DID I PACK MY MEDICINE?" ... If you can imagine, I do not do many things without thinking of my transplanted lungs and what they require, this is especially true if I am "going off" so to speak, like into the woods! Note: These medicines keep me alive, one missed dose is vitally damaging and STUPID! So, the unhappy answer to questions echoing through my head was, "NO...?" But I wasn't sure, at least not until all of my backpack's contents were strewn along the trail as I looked briefly through everything. The medicine was no where to be found!

What do I do? ... I go home, back to Birmingham, an hour or so away. The immediate & only response is to cancel my trip and head home.

And I will confess, as one of my friends put it, there were a few choice words shared with the surrounding woods. But as the time went by and I managed to address my irritation with myself and the general sense of let down, I realized something...

God is good.

He is my Protector who continues to keep me safe (Ps 91:11). I had the even more haunting thought of, "What if I had made my 8 miles in to camp tonight? What if, only then, I realized I had not packed my meds?" ... The answer, I would've had to pack out at night and drive home. That would have been a much more loathsome hike out, than the single hour I had today, dring day light.

So I left after 2 or so miles, and I learned. In all things, God is good (Ps 84:11). Its not a new lesson, just a nice reminded. A mind and heart reorientation!

There were a few nice views!

This was taken from a corner in the trail, so you can see it meandering off to the left and right.