Way Down the Old Plank Road: History and Faith Under Our Feet

Footbridge on the path behind Faust Park. Photo by Steve Givens

I went for a short hike last weekend in the beautiful, hilly, wooded area behind St. Louis County’s Faust Park, located just off the busy, four-lane, suburban neighborhood-lined Olive Street Road. Less than a quarter-mile off the noisy road I slipped silently into the woods and back in time. Entering the canopy of ancient oaks and elms, I knew I could have been walking where Native Americans and pioneers tread hundreds of years ago.
The narrow, rough path through the woods is contemporary and no doubt made by park rangers and summer workers, but the land belongs to another time and to generations of walkers, workers, hunters and gatherers. As I completed the mile loop through the woods and emerged on the other side of the park and just a stone’s toss west of the traffic-filled road where I started, I came across a historic marker that brought me up short. It read:

Pioneer Path
Olive Street – Central Plank Road

This road was first a buffalo trace and a Native American Trail; then a widely used dirt road and a vital river-to-river connection for the early pioneers pressing westward. In 1851, first covered with oak planks to improve it and was called the Central Plank Road. [I’m not responsible for the bad sentence structure on the sign…]

And here’s the thought that came to my mind: How easy it is in our age of constant movement and information to forget that others have come before us. How simple to believe that the “here and now“ is the only reality that matters. We like to think of ourselves as independent  — as individuals who create our own trails and invent our own lives. And that’s true only up to a point. For the truth is that we begin our own journeys at starting points created by those who blazed trails before us. Whether those people were our own ancestors, the pioneers and missionaries who “pressed westward” or the Native people who have called the land their home for much, much longer, we walk on ground every day made sacred by generations of blood, sweat and tears.

The more we drive our cars and sit at computers and the less we walk and really look at the world around us, the more likely it is that we will forget this obvious fact. The slightly scary part of this whole worldview is the crucial role that every single one of our ancestors played in getting us to today. If not for their lives and loves, their good decisions and their bad, their moments of both courage and cowardice, we do not live and breathe. If my Irish or German ancestors had gotten off the boat and moved south instead of west, their world and the people they chose to love and continue the family line with are different — and I do not exist. It’s mind boggling and, yet, in the midst of it all I see not chance but God and a life of meaning and purpose.

We’re all here because we have been called to be. What we do with that one life is our vocation, our response to the call of God and the echo of generations of those on the road before us.

Lyle Lovett writes of this interconnection of generations in his song, “Family Reserve”:

William and Catherine Eickmeyer, one of the sets of my great-grandparents.

And there are more I remember
And more I could mention
Than words I could write in a song.
But I feel them watching
And I see them laughing
And I hear them singing along.

We’re all gonna be here forever
So Mama don’t you make such a stir
Just put down that camera
And come on and join up
The last of the family reserve.

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Standing Still and Learning to be Astonished

photo by Steve Givens

We are all waiting patiently, but spring has not fully sprung here in eastern Missouri. It has teased us a bit, has shown us a few sprouts and given us a handful of warm days, but it’s not quite ready to fully bloom. Or if it is, it’s keeping that secret to itself.

Yesterday, despite the gloom and the threat of rain, I decided to go for a walk, camera-in-hand, through a small conservation area just a mile or so from my house. It’s a beautifully simple piece of land dedicated to the state in the name of someone’s loved one (August G. Beckemeier) that occupies a virtually untouched 54 acres that lies between a busy north-south road and the bottom lands that edge the Missouri River as it cuts between St. Louis and St. Charles Counties. As I got out of my car in the parking lot and walked toward the footpath, I remembered well the last time I was there, late last fall, when most of the flowers had ceased blooming and the green was gone from the trees and grasses. Despite my spring-filled thoughts and hopes, it didn’t look that much different yesterday.  That thought, combined with the fact that the sun was hidden behind thick, menacing clouds, didn’t bode well for me as a photographer. Still, I trudged on, hopeful for moments of brightness and illumination, recalling the words of the wonderful Cape Cod poet, Mary Oliver:

photo by Steve Givens

Are my boots old? Is my coat torn?
Am I no longer young, and still not half perfect? Let me
keep my mind on what matters,
which is my work,

which is mostly standing still and learning to be
astonished.

The older I get, the more I think that is exactly my work and my call — to stand still and learn to be astonished a little more often. For our lives and our work rushes by us and whirls around us at dizzying speeds, and when we don’t stop to pay attention and be mindful the world around us never comes fully into focus. We may see well enough to get through our daily work without hurting others and ourselves but, oh, we miss so much.

If winter and early spring teach us anything, it’s that there’s so much out there that can only be seen when the world is trimmed back a bit. We see things this time a year that we never noticed before because they were buried in the underbrush, like a long ago abandoned piece of farm machinery now turned a miraculous shade of orange by the magic of time, water and air. Or the exquisite dried husk of a once beautiful wild flower. Or immaculately white fungi growing on a log far off the beaten path. Or distant water-filled tractor tracks streaming like molten metal through a farm field. All these gifted moments were mine just because I took the time to stand still and be astonished.

All of this led me to yet another poet, this one long dead, that priest-poet of the Oxford Movement, Gerard Manley Hopkins. In his poem, “God’s Grandeur,” he writes:

photo by Steve GIvens

The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed.

And later in the poem…

And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs –
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

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Taking on the Black Hill of Death

Me, Jon and Jess, at the foot of Cerro Negro before the climb.

This past summer, I accompanied my parish youth group on a one-week mission trip to Nicaragua, where we helped build homes and a school near the northern city of Chinendega. But first, we were told that we were going to climb Cerro Negro, a 2,400-foot high volcano that had last erupted about a decade ago. When we arrived at the site, dubbed (jokingly, I hoped) the “black hill of death,” I stood in awe of the giant black formation. I wondered, and even doubted, if I could climb to the top along a narrow path among the jagged rocks and boulders and then make my way down the smooth slope of the other side of the hill that was covered with foot-deep volcanic gravel. I knew, of course, that I had an easy out. I could say that I just didn’t feel up to it and no one would question me. But I decided to go for it.

I thought it might be tough, but I wasn’t ready for just how tough it was. I stopped often along the way to catch my breath and gather the strength and will to go on. When I reached the top of the first winding and difficult path that led to another narrow path that shot straight along the crest of the volcano, my heart fell when I realized how much I had left to do. But I put one foot in front of the other, I put my head down and just walked, and with time I found myself standing at the highest point of the volcano.

My good buddy, Larry, takes a break on the way up Cerro Negro. Photo by Steve Givens

The pay off was great. The views were spectacular, and I got to share the accomplishment with the others in the group, including my son, Jon, and his girlfriend, Jess. We cheered on those who were still making their way up. We shared stories of the ascent and a simple meal of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. We took photos of each other rejoicing at our accomplishment. And then we headed down – a joyous descent, sliding and jumping through the loose volcanic gravel in minutes and making the multi-hour ascent a mere memory.

I learned a lot about myself that day. I learned I could do more than I thought I could. I learned the power of “one step at a time” and I remembered my high school coaches’ encouragement to get past a little bit of hurt by “walking it off.” But for me, this day was about much more than walking or physical strength.

I rediscovered an inner strength that I know comes from God. I reconnected with the idea that we are called to take care of our bodies because they are the temples of the Holy Spirit. I’m not going to become a marathon runner any time soon, but my experience on Cerro Negro, along with the intense physical labor of the rest of the week, awakened in me a need to both push myself a little physically (as my body with its disease will allow, of course) and, more importantly, to learn to call upon God as the source of my strength.

Me and Jon at the top of Cerro Negro

So when I just can’t do it, or when I am winded or fall, the greatest blessing is knowing that I have a God who sees me in my weakness, who knows me by name, and who picks me up and carries me the rest of the way. I am not ashamed of my weakness, for it is just an outward sign that there is still healing to be done inside me.

Looking "into" Cerro Negro.

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