Horn Lake is my favorite place in the entire world. It is three hours to the west from the nearest village of Williams Lake. It forms the headwater of the west branch of the Homathko River or Mosley Creek on the very western edge of the dry interior Chilcotin Plateau. It is 80 kilometres from the Pacific Ocean where the Homathko empties into the deep fiord of Butte Inlet whose entrance is just north of Desolation Sound and guarded by Quadra and Cortez Islands. Once thought to be the best option for a rail-linked seaport with the rest of Canada, the Chilcotin-Homathko-Butte Inlet alternative lost out to the much longer and more difficult route through the Fraser Canyon and the much lesser natural harbour of Vancouver in Canada's most famous political scandal called the C.P.R. The results were that the rough gravel road now ends just beyond Horn Lake and access to Butte Inlet is still by water or ancient Indian trail.
Almost every year for the past 16 years of our lives in the Cariboo-Chilcotin we have managed to spend at least a couple of weeks beached at Horn Lake. This past summer was no exception. When we arrived at the rough campsite we couldn't get the boat off of the top of the pickup fast enough. We couldn't wait to idle out to Horn Lake's centre and soak in the panoramic view. Two most impressive peaks, Whitesaddle and Razorback, seem to thrust themselves right out of the lake to an elevation of 3,000 metres. One of British Columbia's highest peaks, Mt. Waddington, towers just around the corner to an elevation of 4,016 metres. Just to the southwest is the Homathko Ice-field, so huge that it generates its own weather patterns.
If the mountain beauty is not enough to capture us, the abundant wildlife certainly is. Mule deer and moose frequently wander down to take a cool drink from the waters of Horn Lake. Both black and grizzly bears frequent its shores. Cougars and lynx slink around and mountain goats peer down from on high. Townsend chipmunks and red squirrels are always waiting to entertain us with their antics and scolding. This year our focus was on the bird life. There was a constant seesaw going on between a golden eye female duck with a brood of five tiny chocolate-headed replicas and all the avian predators that try to make a living around the lake. I am not sure how many times we saw seagull or raven or big horned owl swoop down on the lake to take lunch at the golden eye restaurant and it still amazes me how efficient golden eye was as a mother. That all five of her brood survived our time at the lake was nothing short of miraculous. A bald eagle kept us entertained nervously caring for her recently fledged brood and then pulled out all the stops one evening as she attempted to feed her brood right off the fishing line of an irate Yankee. The poor guy was yelling and waving his hat with one hand as he was trying to land his rather large trout with the other. If ever a guy badly needed another set of arms, he was it.
One day last summer I took the boat out by myself and motored to the north end of the lake to where we almost bought a piece of property at a provincial auction a few years back. We were not successful and I have regretted that ever since. I stopped the boat in the bay where the property was, stared at the mountains and the lake, wept and pondered what might have been.
The isolation, the massive mountains, the clear mountain lake, the crystal cold creeks and the abundant fur, fin and feathered friends make myself, Linda and all of our children feel like we have come home when we arrive at Horn Lake. All year long when we are away from it we feel a total body, mind and soul pull towards the place. But as wonderful as it is, as much of a favorite place that it is, with all the ways that it nurtures us, with all the constant pull that it has on us, Horn Lake must be nothing compared to the home that Christ has prepared for us.
I don't know how often I have heard Jesus' words, "In My Father's house are many mansions; if it were not so, I would have told you," but every time I do I feel the most compelling, mind alluring, heart rendering, spirit thirsting, magnetic pull. It places a tug on my whole being that far outstrips the pull of Horn Lake. As I feel that pull, the Master's allure, I think of the perfection and majesty of Horn Lake and I think to myself, "Dave you ain't seen nothing yet!" And when Jesus continues, "I go to prepare a place for you…" I can see in my mind's eye that place with Him, all laid out in preparation, just waiting for me, biblical mountains, scriptural crystal waters, Word of God trees of life. It is a place of peace, of hope, of divine forgiving love. And by faith as I see it in my mind's eye I am persuaded with the Apostle: "No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love him." And with hope I hear the Apostle, "I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed to us." And touched, by the forgiving love of the Master's nail-scarred hands, His words reverberate deep within me: "Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise." And somehow all of this is drawing me towards my real homeland, making me feel extremely secure as I go about my living and eventually my dying.
A long-time and very precious minister friend, very old and near his time of passing, once confessed to me that he did not believe in heaven any longer. After much thought, a lifetime of it you might say, he had arrived at the theological conclusion that we lived and we died and we awaited resurrection. I suppose that this is one way of theologically looking at things. But I confess I am not very theological, I tend to be much more simple in my thinking and literal in my looking through the lens of Scripture. I will throw in with the likes of Abraham and Sarah who the writer of the book of Hebrews says "all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off were assured of them, embraced them and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth. For those who say such things declare plainly that they seek a homeland. And truly if they had called to mind that country from which they had come out, they would have had opportunity to return. But now they desire a better, that is, a heavenly country. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for He has prepared a city for them."
