My wife’s work as an Administrative Assistant for the Reformed Baptist Network requires her to attend the annual General Assembly. This year it was held in Riverside, California.
Aw, shucks!
Now, we couldn’t fly all the way to California and spend just the three days required for the conference, now, could we!?
Gratefully, due to the kind generosity of a sweet couple in our congregation, we were able to spend the week prior to the General Assembly in Palm Desert at a wonderful villa in quite lovely surroundings.
Our benefactor suggested it might be quite warm.
He wasn’t kidding!
Each day we were there, the temperatures soared above 100°—one day, the high temp was 111°; another day reached 114°!
To an unacclimated Midwesterner, you cannot do much outside in such heat! (To our surprise, though, road construction was happening in the resort where we stayed, and some clearly well-acclimated workers toiled through the heat laying asphalt. And they wore long-sleeved dark shirts, long pants, and hats! I’d a died!
Well, we had to do something to escape the heat besides sit in an air-conditioned villa all day! Not my cuppa tea.
So, one day we decided to drive to Huntington Beach where it was 25° cooler, rent a couple of bikes, and try to get in our “anniversary bike ride.” That’s our quest each year to ride a mile for every year we’ve been married, and do so on a one-day ride. We needed to cover 44 miles this year.
We’ve held off as long as we possibly could, but this year we opted for e-bikes, partly because we haven’t been on our bikes at all this year(!), and partly because, riding the path along the oceanfront, we were sure to encounter some pretty strong headwinds (which we did).
Despite the headwinds and really hard seats—really hard!—we logged a bit over 45 miles! By the time we finished in the late afternoon, the cool breeze off the ocean actually left us quite chilled. But we escaped the 110° in the desert!
A couple of days later, after our legs sufficiently recovered from the bike ride, we left the scorching desert heat and drove an hour to Idyllwild in the San Jacinto Wilderness—part of the San Bernardino National Forest.
Again, it was 20° cooler, and we were eager to log some hiking miles.
There are trails aplenty in the San Jacinto Wilderness, but one recommended by a couple of YouTubers is the 7-mile Devil’s Slide to Saddle Junction loop trail, which we settled on.
It promised to be a bit of a challenge.
In the first place, the trailhead is at around 6,200’. Remember, we live year-round at about 600’…so we started slightly oxygen-deprived! And the first three miles are all uphill—about 1,750’ of elevation gain.
We trudged all the way up.
But the uphill journey was not without its rewards!
Dead trees still standing formed stark, skeleton-like silhouettes against the bright blue sky.
Frequent openings along the way afforded picturesque vistas of nearby peaks and jutting rock formations.
Unique (to us) flora and fauna hugged the trail.
One section required finding the trail through thick grass, but the lush, vibrant green offered a welcome visual relief to the largely shades-of-brown environment of the parched southern California landscape.
A Bit of Reflection
While we were heading uphill, looking out frequently on several mountain peaks near and far, the opening sentence Psalm 121 came to mind. This psalm is one of several that were sung while on pilgrimage from one’s home somewhere in Israel to Jerusalem for religious holidays. Along the way, the pilgrim encountered numerous hills on the horizon. The journeying psalmist begins,
I will lift up my eyes unto the hills….
Doing so is exhilarating—rewarding, even, after a long upward climb. Intoxicating, it can be. I suggest “can” because we rarely seem to be able to let the vistas fully overwhelm us—either we have too much trail to cover before we reach the summit, or we want to finish the hike before it gets too late!
Nevertheless, lifting my eyes to the hills can be a visually and emotionally satisfying experience.
The psalmist’s follow-up question, though, wakens the vista-besotted soul to reality.
Where does my help come from? He asks.
Good question, indeed.
Behind his question as he gazed at the hilltops along the horizon lay the dominant religious practice of erecting altars on such heights. The thinking seems to be that such an elevated perch for offering sacrifices brought the longing soul closer to the gods, who perhaps would respond to the offering by granting needed help.
“Does my help come from the hills?” the pilgrim-psalmist muses to himself.
Alas, reality settles in. The hills, the mountains, may be beautiful, imposing, grand, seemingly timeless, and awe-inspiring. But no help is coming from the lofty mountain’s grandeur, notwithstanding a plethora of altars and gods thereon.
No, the pilgrim continues,
My help comes from the Lord, who made heaven and earth.
Ah, there’s the answer! The all-powerful Creator of all things—mountains included!—He can help by protecting, guarding, keeping, preserving the weary pilgrim as he journeys on his way. Even when the traveler reaches the end of the day in utter exhaustion and trails off to sleep, the Creator of the hills remains vigilant, constantly alert, watching over the slumbering soul who calmly trusts in Him.
What of the pilgrim who looks instead to the hills for help?
Well, I’m not quite sure why Devil’s Slide is so named; I suspect it has something to do with a propensity for destructive avalanches in the winter. Whatever the case, the name certainly elicits something undesirable.
A “slide” implies swift downward movement—and sliding down a mountainside can be deadly!
And when you attach “devil’s” to it, well, that’s just evil!
Yet, in the end, such is the eventual outcome of the pilgrim who’s counting on the hills to provide help. Rather than help, catastrophe!
No, “The Lord”—not the hills—“shall preserve you from all calamity; He shall preserve your soul. The Lord shall preserve your going out and your coming in from this time forth, and forevermore.” [Psalm 121:7-8 emphasis added].
Look to Him…far above the hills!
2
0
20
20
