Pilgrimage West
Week Six
Kintla Lake campground is Glacier National Park's most remote frontcountry campground. The campground sits on Kintla Lake, edged up against a rushing stream that drains from the lake. It is located in the upper most northwest section of the park known as the North Fork, approximately 40 miles from the west entrance and the Canadian border. Due to its remote location, the campground is very rarely filled and quiet, offering tent campers a sense of solitude.
The drive was very slow and bumpy (the last 15 miles took an hour and 15 minutes), but the scenery / wildlife along the way was spectacular. It was a true delight to gaze out on golden meadows, teeming with dozens of prairie dogs sticking their heads up out of their holes, peering inquisitively around as they stretched themselves to their fullest height…
A large black bear, fresh from a swim in the rushing stream the windy road followed, darted right in front of the car – good thing I was only able to do 10 mph!
Two wolves came loping across an open expanse of prairie, stopped and gave us a stare, as if our kayaks on top of the car were a bizarre display, and then quickly disappeared from sight.
Daniel and I have been fortunate to paddle many miles together, but Kintla Lake provided quite an exotic alternative to our other paddling locales. Just a ribbon of a lake, scarcely as wide as the Neuse River, with pure frigid aqua-blue water fresh from the snow melt, hundreds of feet deep…rugged steep mountains rising up in the background, stitched with glaciers that have been shrinking for over a hundred years, our kind of place, no motorboats allowed! The first day was an incredible paddle, water glassy calm, slight breeze, perfect temperature…Day 2 was to be a dissimilar experience…
A Buddhist priest says that “the point of a pilgrimage is to improve yourself by enduring and overcoming difficulties”. Sounds like life to me...our second day on the water provided a bit of endurance / difficulty… We were about 5 or so miles into a paddle, headed for the upper end of Kintla Lake, when abruptly the weather turned (Montana shares at least one thing in common with NC), a following wind rapidly gaining strength, and began to gust to over 30 knots…the waves built and then started white capping… we came about and headed back into the wind, the chilly water now breaking across the bow, the wind threatening to blow the paddle out of my cold hands…laboriously we made our sluggish return to the campground…
On the lengthy paddle back, my memory bank kept replaying the only time I managed to get Janet to kayak with me – I miscalculated the distance badly, encouraging her to journey with me for 8 miles, I mistimed the tide so that we had to muck through the mud to get back, I paddled off almost out of sight as she struggled to keep up on the return leg – as I struggled to maintain a steady cadence and keep on keeping on, I kept thinking that perhaps our transgressions are returned to us, or at least to our children, as Daniel labored with me!
Janet had reflected in her whimsical way that she just wanted to stop, she was ready to quit, but there were miles of open water before her, and no option but to keep paddling!
That sounds a lot like pilgrimage – that sounds a lot like life. Adversity / challenges / difficulties / unexpected whatever pounces up and grabs you and threatens to drown you in a sea of conflicting emotions, you feel like the waves are breaking across the bow of life, your strength ebbs and you just want to quit…
But there’s only open water in front of you, and miles to go, and it seems the only option is to just keep on paddling, to keep on keeping on…
Oliver Staler writes in Japanese Pilgrimage… “of one thing I am certain – the transformation I yearn for is incomplete. I do not know whether I am any closer to enlightenment – but I know that the attempt is worth the effort.”
Our journey together, “the attempt”, is worth the effort.
May our journey soon bring us together once again, may our roads converge as we walk in the Spirit towards our full humanity, may God hold on to us and love us and never let us go, may we respond in inclusive love, thanks be to God…
