<< Back to Main Sermon Page

What I Did On My Summer Vacation

By Mark Byers

 

I was looking forward to my high school reunion for some time before I drove off a few days ago. (Not withstanding the observations of a couple of friends, who said that they can be depressing.) Now, I made a couple of decisions about this thing from the outset. First, I decided not to fly; instead, I drove my car. Why? Partly because I wanted time to think, and listen to music, and hear books on CD, while I drove. Expensive, I suppose, but returning to a key place in one’s past is too important to rush through. Second, I decided not to take the direct route suggested by my computer. Two reasons, really: Grand Canyon and Mesa Verde.

 

So I planned the trip as follows:

 

Day 1: Depart La Quinta. Drive to a town just south of Grand Canyon.

Day 2: Get up early and visit Grand Canyon. Not for a long time. I’d like to stay a few days and hike some day, of course, but this time, I just wanted to see something that I remember as indescribably beautiful, and that speaks to God’s majesty and abiding presence in Creation. When a person stands at the rim of the canyon, he or she is looking across and down through eons. Of course, living in a fast food world, I promptly jumped back into my car and sped off for Colorado, where I graduated from high school. One can only spend so much time contemplating these things. Apparently, for me that day, it was about half an hour. Here’s what God’s awesome work looks like through a cell phone camera:

 

 

Not too shabby, God. Thanks. I’ll try and hang out longer next time.

 

Day 2 ended with my arrival at the Colorado Rocky Mountain School, one evening before the beginning of the reunion. I thought it would be fun to have some time to walk the campus alone, before the other alumni gathered. I stayed in my old dormitory, downstairs from the room I lived in my senior year. Think Spartan: a single bed, wooden shelves. I looked in my old room. The pizza-shaped grease marks on the ceiling had been painted over. But it was substantially the same as back then. Even the odor of the dorm was familiar.

 

Day 3: I spent the morning relaxing, with my feet propped up, until people started arriving. The reunion was for all the students whose class graduated in the 80s, so there were quite a few of us, perhaps thirty or more all together! (I think my school had about 120 students in grades 10-12 when I was there.) We had dinner together, a bunch of us, in the Bar Fork, the building that contains the dining area as well as mail room, lounge, student store, etc. Weird, I tell you. I once went through the dishwashing machine in the kitchen of this place as a teenager, a much SKINNIER teenager. Of course, the water heating switch was off, so it wasn’t scalding.

 

Day 4: Morning. A hike near Mount Sopris, the immense mountain that looms above the school. I was hiking toward the back of the group, with another alumnus who graduated before I arrived on campus. He has two daughters, too. They’re older than mine, but very bright and charming girls. We took a wrong turn and lost the trail. Still, no harm done: we found the main trail and then walked back down the mountainside until we found where the cars were parked. Here I am, up in the mountains during the hike.

 

 

Again, it’s a cell phone picture, so not the greatest quality. Later in the day, many of the alumni went whitewater rafting on the river that runs through the campus and down the valley. The river was cold and swollen from snowmelt and recent rains, so it was more exciting than otherwise. For me, it seemed adventurous, because I’m unaccustomed to river rafting. Some of my old schoolmates, however, decided that it would be too much like “sitting in a chair,” and didn’t go along. But what a chair: we saw a bald eagle perched in a tree above the river, a couple of marmots on the banks, blue herons in their nests and flying just a few feet above us. We talked about our lives, what had gone on the last twenty or more years. And we remarked on the changes in the valley since we had gone to school there. People in our raft complained about the startling growth in the valley, and all the McMansions on the river banks that weren’t there even a few years ago. Carbondale has absolutely exploded since the 80s: it has TRIPLED in size, and now has 7,000 residents. (Yes, I smiled, too.)

 

There was more catching up, more swapping memories, during the evening. I was surprised, a little, by how many of my classmates are either unmarried or don’t have children. Maybe they just never wanted the sort of life, or maybe the opportunity never presented itself.

 

On Sunday, Day 5, we had breakfast, and then a few, a very few of us gathered at a little cluster of benches overlooking the river below, and we remembered classmates and former teachers who have died. There were quite a few. I was sad that there seemed to be only remembrance, and not resurrection, in our words. But not surprised, I guess. After so many years away, it’s hard to come together again and speak of faith, of hope, of God, but I wish that we could have. I stayed a little longer and prayed for all of them some more.

 

I left that afternoon and headed for Mesa Verde National Park, in southwestern Colorado. If you’re not familiar, Mesa Verde contains ruins from the Ancestral Puebloans. (Or “Anasazi”) The most famous of these are cliff dwellings, built in hollows along the side of the mesa itself. Here’s a picture of one.

 

 

Here’s the same cliff dwelling, from the canyon rim a few hundred yards away:

 

It’s hard even to see it, I know, but it’s right in the center, where the rock face curves in. The people who built this little community lived hundreds of years ago. This cliff-side pueblo is over seven hundred years old, and there are ruins over a thousand years old on the top of the mesa. Some of these places were pretty hard to get to back then: residents climbed in and out using carved hand and footholds, or even ropes. They still farmed on top of the mesa, even when they moved to the cliffs. There is much that is mysterious about the place. People built and developed culturally on the mesa for hundreds of years, culminating in these fantastic cliff dwellings, and then just left around 1300 A.D. And there I was, looking at this site, called Spruce Tree House. I have to tell you, I’ve wanted to visit Mesa Verde since I was a teenager. Some guys like cars; I like ruins.

 

There’s a kiva, a sunken structure thought to be sacred space, that has been reconstructed. It has a ladder leading down into it, just as it did seven hundred years ago. I climbed down inside. I could almost stand up. There were benches carved into the walls, a hearth area in the middle, a dirt floor. It felt almost haunted to me. Some teen-aged boys climbed down the ladder, and then yelled their assessment back up to companions above: “It’s just a hole in the ground! And dusty!”

 

I suppose that’s another way to describe it. I spent much of the rest of the day hiking and driving around, exploring. Because I like looking into the past and seeing beauty or wisdom or things that fascinate me. I’m sure this is what drew me to the reunion, and maybe even to Grand Canyon, too. And now I’ve come home to the present, to my wife, my children, and my church, and I have to say, as fascinating as the past can be, I am glad God has brought me to this point in my life.

<< Back to Main Sermon Page