Category Archives: Lessons from the Trail

Unless we’re hiking on dry pavement, I almost always have my eyes on the path right in front of me. Rocks, tree roots, steep slippery banks, and poison ivy are constant hazards. And I’m old…I could fracture a hip or something. But thank goodness for small distractions that draw my eyes up and away from the ground! An owl in flight, a purple sunset, bright green leaves against and even brighter blue sky are the sights that literally stop me in my tracks and take my breath away. (And, if I’m honest, sometimes I just need an excuse to take a break!) Looking down keeps me safe on the hike, but looking up makes the hike worthwhile.

I’m learning the balance: when to keep walking and when to look up. The clues are on the ground. Yesterday after almost a mile of looking down at dark brown frozen mud, I spotted some tiny yellow-orange bits, like little misplaced sea shells. Bittersweet. Time to stop and look up. And there it was, a big mess of tangled twisted vines loaded down with the red-orange berries wrapped in the yellowish husks. They’re even prettier with a fresh frosting of snow. What a gift! I would have missed it completely if I hadn’t seen the signs. What we see on the ground tells us about what’s overhead.

I often hike through my day to day routine without stopping to look up. Plodding forward, I just keep looking down at the trials and stresses until some emergency forces me to seek God’s help. But if I were to look more closely, I’d find He has been filling my path with signs of His handiwork that is right over my head. There is joy, comfort, kindness, and peace in the little delights and distractions of this journey. A kind word, a great song, the smell of fresh coffee, comfy slippers…sometimes these are carefully placed gifts to make you stop and breathe it all in. And those moments along the path make it all worthwhile.

Keep hiking, but don’t forget to stop and look up.

“Can’t we take the shortcut?” That was me whining. It was getting colder as the afternoon wore on. The trail was a slippery mix of mud, ice and dirty snow. There wasn’t much to see and my ears were cold. But Tom was ever bright and hopeful. “You can make it!” My mouth smiled but the rest of me didn’t. And so, on we went. The Long Way.

Not even 100 yards of ooze later, I stopped so fast that Tom ran into me. A bluebird was sitting on a frozen branch right in front of my face. It was so incredibly bright blue against the dull gray woods. Then Tom spotted another. It was chirping out a cheery little chuckle of a song not 10 feet away. Two more flew into view, then five or six more. It was so exciting I could hardly breathe. Ok, yes, it’s true. You were going to find out sooner or later: I’m a bird nerd. Be warned. Once you start down this path of identification, bird calls, and migration schedules, you’ll find you just can’t stop. Binoculars, birding books…the whole Avian enchilada. Remember Jane Hathaway from the Beverly Hillbillies? That’s me in five years. 

Tom too has succumbed and now shares my unnatural affinity for bird culture. But he looks more like Kenny Bostick from The Big Year. 

There are four things I’ve noticed about birdwatching which are listed below. Since birding is inherently geeky, I totally understand if you never read my blog again.

1.  Birding is just not that cool. If you think otherwise, you are wrong and suffer from acute denial. 

2.  It’s not just a chick thing (no pun intended). There are an equal number of men out there, and they really look like they want to be, if you know what I mean.

3.  Birdwatchers are predominantly white. We need to seek Justice here and get our Black and Latino friends involved.

4.  The 15-39 year old age group is not well represented in the birding world. Make what ever conclusions seem logical.

What is the most important legacy you can leave your children?  Most Christians would immediately say that building a strong Christian faith is the highest priority.  But if there were just one more value that you could instill in the hearts of your children, it should be the meaning and vision for marriage.

Remember when kids went to weddings?  No wonder young children, even those raised in the Church, lack a basic understanding of marriage.  By-gone church weddings have been replaced by today’s pricey adult affairs. The popular wedding site The Knot encourages brides to “stand strong” and “limit the guest list” and warns, “Don’t extend ‘ceremony only’ invitations to children.” Martha Stewart’s wedding etiquette agrees that inviting children is “not appropriate” at most weddings. (What? … really!?) When asked “who has been to a wedding?” very few elementary school children’s hands go up. The occasional “yes” will then reveal that it was “my mom’s” or “my dad’s” wedding. While marriage has become irrelevant to the post modern millennial generation, today’s Generation Alpha kids will be left completely adrift with no real understanding of the concept.

As a sexual abstinence educator for over 25 years, I’m convinced that if we are going to ask our kids to wait for marriage to have sex, then we’d darn well better show them that marriage is something worth waiting for.  God’s design, His purpose, and His very heartbeat is revealed in the sacred vows of marriage.  To understand a wedding is to glimpse into God’s love of His Bride, the Church.  The lifetime pledge of a husband to his wife sheds new light on the eternal covenant God makes with His people.  Without a vision for marriage, sex has no context, purity has no meaning, and we leave the next generation without the picture of God’s covenantal love.

Oh, yeah…today’s hike was fun.  I love being married to Tom Scheuring.

Perhaps the most practical place to hike (especially in winter!) is right out your front door.  Tom and I frequently take a quick walk around our little neighborhood and find that there is a comfort in the familiar day to day sights and sounds of Gibsonia (or, as our kids prefer, Gibsomnia).  I know we watch too much Sherlock but it’s amazing what you notice if you look.  If there are newspapers in the driveway and the Christmas decorations are still up, they’re probably on a cruise.  Old carpet on the curb means they got new flooring, a strange car means a son or daughter has moved back home, …oh, the drama!  And we love to conjure up nicknames for the people we see.  Stick Man, the Bag People (avid poop scoopers), Mustafa (an older Irish looking man who always walks 10 paces ahead of his wife), and the Hollywood Squares.  I shudder to think…do they have a nickname for us?  Probably Barbie and Ken.

We were out to dinner with some true Urban Hikers the other night.  They eagerly shared their passion for exploring the city on foot.  And Pittsburgh hiking is not for the faint of heart.  Even though the downtown area of Pittsburgh is truly a “walking city,” let’s face it, we’ve got a hill problem here.  In the one mile from Panther Hollow to the Peterson Event Center, you’ve got a nosebleed.  Undaunted, this couple shares an intimacy with the city they love.  They choose the road less travelled, walking the back streets and neighborhood routes.  While most of us are crawling along on the parkway, they embrace the people, the Churches, ethnic enclaves, corner markets, ruins of Pittsburgh’s past, cobblestone, trolley tracks, spectacular views, and hundreds of bridges.  We listened in while they hatched a cunning plan for their next 10 miler:  From North Oakland, across the HotMetalBridge, down the River Trail to Homestead, cross the bridge, up Brownshill, through Squirrel Hill to SchenleyPark and home again.  You could see how excited they were about the plan.  I’m exhausted just thinking about it.  “But will you stop to see the eagles?” says Tom.  On the River Trail between Hot Metal and Sandcastle, there is an eagles nest. Last Spring, Mr. and Mrs. Bald Eagle hatched the first chick to be born in Pittsburgh in 200 years.  We’ve visited often on foot and on bikes. It’s a relatively short walk 2-3 miles from the Hot Metal Bridge along the Monongahela River.   Bring your binoculars and plan on the Hofbrauhaus for dinner.

It’s strange that the same sparkly boughs of holly that decked my halls to fabricate a magical Christmas miracle have now become an annoying assortment of glitter infested clutter.  I had a terrific headache and was completely pooped from a stressful week.   I did not feel like hiking.  I did not feel like doing anything. And we really needed to take down all those Christmas decorations. 

Doesn’t it seem like we resist some things just when we need them most?  Tom (aka Mr. Wonderful) has some sort of hormone-detecting superpower.  He knows when I need to get out there.  We took a very short drive to one of our go-to trails near North Park.  Pittsburgh was having one of those global warming periods (they generally last anywhere from 7 to 10 hours) and it was a balmy 49 degrees.  After the sudden snow melt and 3 inches of rain, the trail/river was a royal sloppy mess but it felt good to have my boots in the mud and smell the earth again.  The stream that feeds the lake was too high to cross so we walked around it and took a steeper trail.   I was moving a bit slower than usual (slugs were passing me shaking their heads), but I kept moving.  We heard and then saw a pileated woodpecker.  (They are the big black and white ones with the bright red pointy heads…think Woody the Woodpecker if you are over 40.)  They are much easier to see when all the leaves are down.  A couple of deer stopped in the trail to look at us. (“Look dear, humans!”)  Tom rides his mountain bike here often so he knows which water pumps still work (the water that pumps up out of the ground is freezing cold—so refreshing!) and he knows where the nicer overlooks are.  An hour later, we walked back to the car.  Nothing remarkable…just a nice little break from the worries of the day and all the post Christmas blahs.  Sometimes that is all marriage is…just finding ways to say, “You are more important than my headache or my Christmas clutter, or anything else in this world.”