So Many Miles Together

We pulled up to the trailhead past dark, and my headlights shone on a sign that read, "Day use only. No camping."

"Hmmm, that's strange," I announced to the other girls in my car. "I was sure that we camped here before, but maybe I was wrong. We will just have to keep looking."

We drove around for the next thirty minutes, only to no avail. By this time it was 8:30, way past dark, and none of us had eaten dinner yet. Our hot dogs and smores were still packed away, along with our tent, which I couldn't figure out where we were going to pitch for the night.

Slightly frustrated and embarrassed at the way our girls' camping trip was starting off, I decided to drive to the nearest town and ask for directions. However, all the stores...actually, the one and only store...was closed for the evening.

It was past dark. We were in an unfamiliar town in the middle of no-where-country-backwoods-Arkansas. And we were a vulnerable-looking bunch of six college girls. I admit that I my heart was pounding fast as we scanned the town for any signs of life.

Down the road, we spotted a house with the porch light on. As we approached, we noticed a sign out front that said "Ponca Bible Camp". Perfect! "Fellow Christian!" we exclaimed. "Surely they will be nice!" We climbed the steps, knocked on the door, and explained our sad predicament.

The kind lady invited us inside and asked where we were going. We explained that we were looking for Lost Valley. How ironic.

"Oh, Lost Valley! That campground flooded a while back, and they never rebuilt it," she said.

This just keeps getting better! I laughed to myself as I asked where the closest campground was. She directed us to our only option, Steel Creek, which was just fifteen minutes up the road. When we arrived, every last camp site was occupied. By this point, it was 9:30 and we still had not eaten dinner. The temperature was dropping fast and we were out of options. In desperation, we parked the car, approached a campsite, and asked a random family if we could pitch our tent in their campsite and cook our hot dogs in their fire pit, to which they kindly agreed to share.

As we roasted our hotdogs over our funny fire (which was made of the seven sticks that we were able to find in the dark), someone asked, "Who has a good campfire story?"

"I have one!" I announced. "Remember that time we were gonna go camping except we got lost in the dark and then found out our campground flooded so we asked some random country-folk for directions and ended up squatting on someone else's land?" We all burst into laughter. What could have been a disaster was really the joyful beginning to our funny, adventurous, spontaneous girls' camp out.

And that's just the beginning.

Our weekend was pretty much characterized by mishaps, which we quickly labeled "adventures". We got lost multiple times that weekend, and I officially overcame my fear of asking people for directions. We drove our old, beat-up cars up a steep, windy, gravel road praying that we would make it around the next turn alive and with four tires full of air. We squeezed six people in a four-man tent (which meant we all rolled over at the same time in the middle of the night). We backpacked several miles into the wilderness, made our campsite, and boiled our own water to drink. Just to name a few...

 But most of all, we spent uninterrupted quality time with each other through it all. We got lost together, star-gazed together, crawled into a dark cave together, hiked eight miles together, cooked meals together, and sat around fires together as we sang praise songs, prayed, and talked about the Lord. 

I will forever treasure those fire-side moments, those long conversations with faces glowing by the orange light of the fire. As we prayed together that night, I thanked God for my crazy friends who would come camping with me and let me drag them all over the hills of Arkansas. "We have walked so many miles together," I prayed and then added, "and I mean that in more ways than one."

Our adventure together this weekend was symbolic of how we live our lives together. Our walks with the Lord are breath-taking adventures that keep us always on our toes. The spiritual analogies from this weekend are endless:

We got lost, but gathered the courage to ask for help and found direction from some brothers and sisters in Christ.

We were forced to be flexible in many situations, but God provided for us each time.

Instead of getting angry, frustrated, or discouraged when things did not go as planned, we found joy and laughter.

We made a home together and built camp together in an unfamiliar place. We found out that some of us were good at tent-pithing, while others were better at fetching fire wood, starting fires, cooking dinner, or rigging up a contraption to hang our food from a tree (to keep critters away).

When the hiking got tough for one of our sisters, we carried her backpack for her and shared her burden so that we could finish the climb together.

And at the end of the trip, we enjoyed refreshing ice-cold drinks from Sonic.

We have a weekend that we will remember for the rest of our lives. Plus we have a good story to tell. What an adventure - this communion that we share with one another and the Lord.