“I am off bear huntin’, hun,” I whispered into the dark at a rumpled hump of goose down.
“Where are you going?” asked a sleepy muffled voice from the rumpled hump.
“Same place as always; two miles south of the power line at 12 mile on the Maze Lake Forest Road.”
“When will you be home?”
“If I am not home by dark I been ‘et by a bar’ and deposited as a hot steamer on the side of the trail. Don’t come looking for me cause I’ll be in a better place.”
Linda chuckled from the rumpled hump, “And the congregation of bears prayed, ‘Lord, for what we are about to receive we are truly thankful.'”
Dawn was just starting to break as I fired up the old 4X4 and headed north towards the Maze Lake Road. By the time I was walking down the power line right-of-way the morning sun was having a go at warming the earth, which only a day or two before had shed the last vestiges of its white winter blanket. I always come to this place in the spring. I know it like the back of my hand. It is familiar to me. And yet there is always so much to discover.
I hadn’t gone more than a quarter-mile when there was a huge commotion from a meadow, the edge of which I was just beginning to creep along. An enormous sandhill crane laboured into the air with a noisy clatter of wings and rattle of voice. That was new. I had never surprised a sandhill crane before. They always see me and give voice to their discovery long before I have spotted them. I shielded my eyes with my Stetson hat as the crane’s seven-foot wingspan shuttled it into space. The sun glinted off the rusty red plumage on its pate and as it barely gained enough altitude to clear the tall firs at the edge of the meadow, I realized there was something else new in this experience. It was the first sandhill crane I had ever seen by itself in the spring. Since it was a huge mature specimen, and since cranes mate for life and not until fully mature at between two and seven years old, this one was most likely an old widow. Perhaps that was why I was able to surprise it. The thought somehow saddened me.
The melancholy mood didn’t last long. The air was sheared behind me and I wheeled towards the sound. I looked up to see a beautiful red-tailed hawk land on a treetop not 50 feet from me. My binoculars found him and he cocked his head as he observed me with natural vision that was much better than my eyes multiplied by 10. This was new too. I always combine bear hunting with bird watching and today the tables were obviously turned. This fellow was watching me intently. Red-tailed hawks have usually paid me little attention and soared and screamed as I watched them at a great distance through the binoculars. I sat on my haunches and gave this one my best pose.
The hawk soon became bored with me and left. I slowly inched down towards a mud wallow to look for tracks. There were bear, deer, moose, coyote, sandhill crane and the largest set of wolf tracks I had seen for years. This fellow was massive, or at least his feet were, and I caught myself looking over my shoulder into the dark fir forest just to the east of me. Wolves this size are new to this area, moving in from the north over the past couple of years. Chuckling at my nervousness whilst absentmindedly thumbing the safety on my rifle, I moved off down the trail.
I crested a rather steep hill and quickly drifted off its bald summit to the forest edge so as not to be silhouetted. My nose caught the faint odor of something foul. I turned into the wind and began to cautiously investigate the smell. I almost stepped on it.
I was shocked. There at my feet was a large cougar, dead for a week or more and yet still fully intact. This was surprising on two levels. First, I have never stumbled upon a dead cougar before, particularly one whose teeth and girth indicated that it was obviously in its prime when it died. There wasn’t even any evidence why it died. And second, though there were all kinds of scavengers in the area, ranging from black bears down to Canada jays, the only thing feeding on this fellow were maggots. Even in death the cougar seemed to have an aura of predator fear attached to it. This was all new too me, and rather odd.
The cougar kept me busy for at least a half hour, and finally I moved off to the south, discovering several new things in the remainder of my day. The most puzzling was on my return to the dead cougar about four hours later. While still about 400 yards away, a slight movement caught my eye. My binoculars came up and I discovered it to be a small mule deer, and then just to the left, three more. They were all feeding on the new shoots of grass within a dozen feet of the dead cougar. It was as though they had showed up to dance on the grave of their worst enemy. So much for predators retaining an aura of fear even in death, I thought. This new observation is still turning over in the back of my mind as I write. I have yet to figure it out.
As I drove home late that afternoon, I found myself smiling in such a contented way. It wasn’t just that the day was such a gift to me, as it surely was. It was that I began to reflect upon the reality that my faith walk was a lot like my ramble through forest and meadow. My faith is very much a familiar place to me. There is so much of it that I know like the back of my hand; certain repeated experiences, certain passages of scripture, certain theological ideas. But the familiarity, “the old old story” as the hymn puts it, is salted with the new. The more I walk in faith with Jesus, the more new things I discover about him, and about me, and about his Kingdom. There is something absolutely wonderful in this, in making completely new discoveries in the midst of the old. Some of the new is quickly processed and filed. Other parts leave me wondering and pondering for days. And some of the delightfully new I never figure out. And it seems to me, the key to discovering the new amidst the old is a willingness to be always observant, to be always teachable.
During last year’s celebration of Calvin’s 500th birthday, I read Randall C. Zachman’s recent tome. I was rather encouraged to discover how Reformed I am, for Zachman points out it was Calvin who insisted it was by God’s design that we should discover Him in meditating upon His natural creation and that each one of us, no matter what our position in the church, should always strive to remain completely teachable within the “school of Christ.” In keeping with Calvin’s thought, the axiom “reformed and always reforming” perhaps could be better stated as “learned and always learning.”
