Casualty of Re-Entry

I might jump in as if today was a new starting point, without trying to backtrack and explain anything. But, I have to talk about our vacation, which is now something of a distant memory; we were on the back side of it, coming home a month ago. For many people, a month can contain worlds.

Climbing up, up to the heights of Rocky Mountain National Park is physically, but also symbolically rising above the mundane world. We were lowlanders in rare air that made us breathe differently and altered our minds as well. We were incapable of contemplating problems we left fettered to our real lives. From that elevated perspective, the lower levels of life seemed to be attached to chronology in super fast motion, while we were privileged to visit a plane where time is measured in eons, and alterations are ascribed to percentages of eons. Like, when they say a chasm was formed 600 million years ago (half an eon), or a volcano erupted 60,000 years ago and scattered lava rocks about, which still lay where they fell, as if it were a mere moment past.

Nothing about those mountains has changed save piles of rocks that slid down a precipice 100 years ago. The only changes are man made in the form of roads or trails or inobtrusive villages, and that onslaught has been at snail's pace. Don and his grandfather visited Colorado every summer to camp when he was a boy. His grandfather took hundreds of pictures of visitas, which we revisited and appear absolutely unchanged. We can prove it.

The mountains are vast, the valleys are vast, the ecosystem is vast and oblivious to man. I was rendered so small, so without power or ego, like I was in the presence of God and completely undone by His immensity. The words of scripture, "Who is man that thou art mindful of him?" played in my head over and over. The miracle of what I believe: that He is ever mindful of me almost overwhelmed me.

Our days were simple - everything at the lowest common denominator. Who was showering when, where would we eat, what road would we explore? The smallness of basic existence in that setting was completely satisfying. I was sure I could stay there, on that schedule, for the rest of my life and not feel hunger for more.

I thought, "I'm changed. I will divest myself of everything when I return home. I don't need anything but half of what I packed in my bags." And I meant it when I thought it. How then, now that I have been back only a month, have I so reverted? How is it that I do want? How is it that I so quickly picked up speed, and fell into many of the same old patterns that felt foreign at re-entry? How could I so easily re-affix filters, like social expectations and modern thinking, that I removed on the high places?

Did you ever see Continental Divide with John Belushi? That's me. Going through the "normal" motions, with a look of bewilderment on my face.