If I can sum up the month of july into one word it would probably have to be adventure. This month, I went on two trips: the first to Natural Bridge, which included uphill hikes in the wilderness (keeping in mind of possible bear encounters), and the second to Gatlinburg/Pigeon Forge, which included tubing down a "lazy river" with some rapids and rocks, and doing an intense indoor ropes course!
I never really thought of myself as an adventurous guy. I always kid around saying stuff like, "my idea of adventure is trying lobster at Red Lobster." It wasn't until my mom said after my gburg trip, "You are the most adventurous in our family!" that I started to realize, you know what? Maybe I have gained a sense of adventure!
The craziest thing I did this month however was ironically not on any of these trips, but right here at home at a college worship night with some friends. It started out mild enough, and very awesome as we sang some songs, and just had a real deep, moving discussion. But then one of the guys, who is notorious for organizing these late night events called "adventure nights", decided that the group should go on one that night! With work in the morning, at first I declined, but then as he said we should be back at the house at 12:30am, I said "why not!"
The first rule of adventure night is that the destination was a secret. So we drove to this park over in Mt. Lookout in Cincinnati. We walked up this observatory, which was nice. I kept thinking about the park hours.. 10:00pm. It was now around midnight. While everyone else was looking at the views, or taking pictures, I was just hoping that the cops weren't going to swarm us and throw us in jail!
After a few moments up on the observatory, we descended back down, stopping at this trail in the woods. "You gotta be kidding me" I thought. Are we really going in there?
So we went on this trail. I think I said "I dunno about this" like twenty times throughout the course of our walk. If it wasn't for my keychain light (which I got at Natural Bridge), dimly lit cell phones, and a really bright camera flash, we would have only been guided by moonlight.
Then we went off course! I was so scared. Why did I agree to do this? I had to be up for work, and now I'm following these crazy guys in the woods. What if we get lost? What if, what if, what if. But I kept going along with them. We ended up at this old railroad. Okay, this is pretty cool. Now we can go back! I thought. But we kept going.
We walked until this railroad turned into a rail-bridge! Here we were walking on these wooden planks over this 50 ft drop. "Why did I do this!" I kept saying.
But in the end I did it. We walked back across the bridge, found the trail, and went safely home. Sure I went to bed at 3:00am. Sure I was tired the next day. But you know what? I learned something that night. I'm not even sure what I learned either. Maybe that there's no reason to be fearful when God is watching over us. Maybe that breaking out of routine and out of my shell results in a fun, and rewarding experience.
Will I do it again? For sure. I'm definitely not going to become an adrenaline junky, but I'm also not going to become the person who's most adventurous moment is trying lobster.
