Four decades ago my brother Paul and I hiked and camped throughout the Cascade Mountain Range of Oregon.  To celebrate our 58th and 56th birthdays, Paul suggested a four day, three night backpacking trip to revisit this area and to explore the memories it would stir.  I was all in.

St. Aquinas said “Expectation is the greater joy” and so it was.  We planned and prepared and talked about the trip for months.  We replaced worn out camping gear, packed and weighed and repacked and reweighed everything, and charted our course into and through the wilderness areas of Mt. Jefferson and the Three Sisters. 

Monday morning, July 12th, we flew to Portland, rented a car and drove to the trailhead into Marion Lake and the Eight Lakes Basin.  At 5:09 that afternoon we strapped on the packs and off we went into our own memories.  The first few miles were exactly as we remembered – towering Douglas Fir, lush fern banks, quiet streams, placid lakes, and majestic mountains.  After a few miles of reminiscing, things changed.  We entered an area devastated by fire a few years ago charring 140 square miles of once spectacular wilderness.  There was an eerie beauty but mostly the sad, helpless, remnant of a once proud, untouched forest.

Two days in the Eight Lakes Basin was enough.  The trails were covered with fallen trees and limbs.  The view of destruction never changed.  Plan B - instead of five days in that burned-over area, we returned to the car and drove to the Whitewater trailhead and started toward Jefferson Park on the northwest face of Mt. Jefferson.

Mountains have personalities.  Mt. Hood is regal and majestic.  The Three Sisters are friendly and inviting.  Broken Top is harsh and challenging.  But Jefferson is strong and confident.  As Jonathan was to David, Mt. Jefferson is to Mt. Hood. 

Having hiked about eight miles of hard trail earlier in the day we were not eager to strap thirty-five pounds on our backs and hike the 1.7 miles up Whitewater Trail that climbed about 1,500 feet.  Once on the trail we were eager to have the climb behind us and polished off that portion in 37 minutes. Not bad for tired old men.  We headed east hoping to connect with the Pacific Crest Trail system another 2.7 miles ahead.  We would then hike the final one mile into Jefferson Park with enough time to set-up camp and cook dinner.  2.3 miles down the trail, we came to Whitewater Creek only to discover the bridge washed out.  Daylight was burning.  We decided to camp where we were and ford the stream in the morning.

After breakfast we rolled up pants legs and entered the water that a few hours earlier had been snow.  Once across the stream we hiked up a snow bank and entered a patch of snow hoping to soon connect with the Pacific Crest Trail.  The patch lasted the next 4 hours.  All we had were a few glimpses of the trail, an occasional blaze mark hacked into a tree, and some Bigfoot-esk tracks made by people who might have been as lost as we were.

We finally arrived.  Mt. Jefferson loomed above.  Jefferson Park was totally snow bound. Drifts: eight feet tall.  Scout Lake: two-thirds covered with ice. Bays Lake: ninety percent ice. We explored three campsites on bare patches of ground overlooking Scout Lake, picked the best and set up the tent.  No fish survived the winter.  Freeze dried turkey tetrazzini was delicious.  The chocolate pudding required 1 and 7/8th cups of powdered milk not 7/8th - it was a little thick but very rich and chocolaty.

The next morning we hiked a mile or so across the snow to Russell Lake.  It was solid ice and snow.  We headed west hoping to get some pictures from a ridge overlooking the Park but the crusty snow was too hazardous to go far.  We decided to say goodbye to Jefferson Park.

We stuffed the sleeping bags, packed the tent, washed the dishes and loaded the packs.  Across the crunchy ice we headed.  It took only one hour to work our way down the same section that we had invested four hours navigating on our way up.  Whitewater Creek didn’t look quite so imposing having conquered it the day before.  The last four miles were all downhill and we sailed out of the mountains in time to have a piece of pie alamode at a nearby diner before setting up camp on the Santiam River.  We slept without benefit of the tent.  The sky was a blaze with celestial majesty.  17 monstrous Douglas Fir ringed our campsite.  Looking past them to the stars it appeared they were leaning inward peering back at us. 

The next morning we awoke to the second phase of our late-middle-age adventure.

A few weeks ago I was privileged to speak at a Pine Cove Family Camp.About 25 families from Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Colorado, Virginia and Tennessee met at Pine Cove Bluffs to enjoy the beauty of the majestic setting, relax, laugh, play, share life together and explore what God’s Word might say to them.

It was a good mix of families; some had attended for a decade or more while others were “newbies”.   Within a few days it felt like a family reunion.  Children enjoyed the freedom of roaming the grounds with new friends, mothers engaged in uninterrupted conversations and dads played with their children in the pool.

The staff made the week special with lots of enthusiasm, creativity and servants’ hearts.  The week was filled with skits and songs, games and activities, belly laughs and quiet conversations.

The breakfast trail ride was particularly enjoyable for Cay and me.  We signed up late for the ride and they didn’t have enough horses so we got to eat the cowboy breakfast and didn’t have to ride a horse!

Cay and I were encouraged at the intentional parenting of many of the families.  Choices about work, school, budgets, and yes, even vacations were all filtered through a godly, strategic grid. 

I spoke on the Parable of the Talents.  People came back all six sessions and they engaged in the discussions and interactions.  The people seemed to respond well and I was encouraged by several follow-up conversations outside of the sessions.

Camp isn’t just for kids.More and more families are investing in time together, time in creation, and time with God.

My brother Paul and I flew from Texas to Omaha, Nebraska and then drove to Canton, South Dakota where we spent a couple of days with our older brother Jim, his wife Ruth and our dad.  Early Thursday morning we drove dad back to Omaha and started our four day adventure to Portland, Oregon.

My father lived the first 87 years of his life in Portland before moving to Canton two years ago to live near my brother.  The move to SD made sense especially after my mother’s death six years ago. But 87 years in one place holds a boat load of memories and a dwindling treasure chest of relationships.

It was a tough travel day.  Heavy rain on the three-hour drive to Omaha, a two-hour weather delay, late arrival into Denver, missed connection to Portland, rebooked on a different airline, five-hour delay, mechanical problems, hour and a half delay, new plane and new gate, finally in the hotel in Portland at 11:00 that night.

We visited friends in the old neighborhood, former co-workers and relatives.  We drove past the childhood school, the life-long church, parks, hiking trails and the house where he lived for over 50 years.  Every meal was filled with stories, laughter and memories of the good old days. Every drive passed shops and houses guarding the recollections of friends who had worked and lived under their roofs.

Reflecting on the trip I was reminded of the power of relationships and places.  Dad was drawn back to the people he had worked with, worshipped with and raised his children with.  He also wanted to see schools, restaurants, church, parks and hiking trails where he and my mother had spent many happy days.

Camp is more than people and places but it is not less.  The power of community and the significance of the setting are tools God uses to reshape lives for his glory and purposes.  The impact will continue for at least 89 years.

Flat Stanley is the story of a schoolboy who is crushed by a falling chalk board.  Besides the obvious drawbacks, the benefit is that Stanley can now travel the world with friends and fly home in an envelope for the cost of a postage stamp.

At the request of our first grade friend Lillie, Cay and I took Flat Stanley to New Mexico where I was speaking at a family camp for Grace Church of Albuquerque, at Bonita Park near Ruidoso.  After an exciting airplane ride from Tyler to Roswell via Dallas, we took Flat Stanley with us to several exciting stops including a visit to the Smokey Bear National Park near Capitan, NM.

As a cub, Smokey Bear was rescued from a fire near Capitan in 1950 and has been encouraging fire safety for over sixty years.  The original Smokey died on November 9, 1976 and is buried in the Smokey Bear National Park.  But his message lives on.  What American school child doesn’t know, “Only You Can Prevent Forest Fires”?

While Flat Stanley visited the Smokey Bear National Park I wondered if anything I might say or do would echo beyond my allotted span.  It is good to remember that God’s Word never returns void.  And it is good to remember that relationships connected in Christ will last forever. And it is really good to remember that camp is a place where God’s Word and relationships intersect to impact lives forever.