I have respiratory problems, and there were a number of forest fires in the region this summer. Last week, I could really taste the smoke in the air, and my breathing was more difficult than usual. So I was especially keen on getting out of town, when my dad called and asked if I would like to go salmon fishing. Now, I don't need an excuse like poor air quality to justify salmon fishing, but the timing was especially good. We loaded our gear into my dad's camper/van and headed out for a couple days on the Babine River. What a treat. There were thousands of salmon in the river...so thick, that they were practically swimming between our legs as we stood in the river. I actually reached into the water and touched a salmon with my bare hands. Needless to say the fishing was good, and we caught and released salmon all day long, and we kept our limit to take back home. As night began to fall, we found ourselves a nice campsite on the shore of Starvation Lake, where we cooked up a Sockeye Salmon feast. When we could eat no more, we crawled into our sleeping bags, my dad, slept on his "bunk" he built for himself in his van, and I tried to sleep in a narrow spot on the floor, but it was just too tight, and I just couldn't sleep. Dad fell right asleep, and started sawing logs in two part harmony. Now, my wife says I snore, but she might be making it up...I mean, I've never actually heard myself snore. Surely if I am the one doing the snoring, I would know it. My kids also tell me that I snore, and sometimes when I wake up in the morning, my throat feels a little raspy...so it could be possible that I've snored. It's just that I've never consciously experienced this snoring that everyone say's I do. I must have gone to sleep at some point, because my dad later also accused me of snoring....said I'd make a good lumber jack, cause I sure knew how to saw logs. I suppose if I could somehow have an out of body experience, and be able to see and hear myself snoring, then I might just believe it's true.
We had considered bringing a tent, but, being in grizzly country, the inside of the van sounded much more "comfortable." We had placed the cooler full of freshly caught salmon on the roof of the van, and we left a few logs on the fire outside to keep the bears away. As the fire began to die out, it started to smolder and smoke, and the temperature dropped, making the smoke linger low to the ground. The windows of the van were open ( remember, my dad, and the two part harmony "snoring" - requires access to fresh air!). The smoke( from the fire) was filling the van, and I was having trouble breathing. Seems the very thing I was trying to get away from - smoke - was the very problem I had created for myself once again. So, in the middle of the night, I got up, put out the fire, and as I looked up in the sky, I was amazed at the view. Aurora Borealis danced across a backdrop of a million stars. I had never seen the stars so vivid and radiant. We were at a higher elevation, and the atmosphere ( other than our smoldering campfire ) was crystal clear. The full moon, reflected off the lake. A distant loon let out a lonely call in the distance. Stars twinkled, a planet was clearly visible in the southeast, and then a meteor shower. Three shooting stars in row. Suddenly, my fear of bears disappeared, and I threw my sleeping bag up on the roof of the van. I slept up there with the fish...actually I spent most of the night awake, watching the stars up above.
My thoughts moved to spirituality. Why is it that we do that? This world is so big, so complex...we barely understand the quarks, particles and anti-particles that make up each molecule. There are millions and millions of molecules in a tiny piece of dirt under my fingernail. As I look up into the night sky, I see stars in our galaxy that are 4 to 400 light years away . If you know where to look, you can see the Andromeda galaxy, which is 2.5 million light years away. For all we know, the Andromeda galaxy could have been swallowed up in a giant black hole and "disappeared" yesterday, and we wouldn't know about it for at least 2.5 million years, because the light takes so long to get here. So why does our mind wander...to try to figure out a spiritual realm, or to attempt to understand a transcendent God who is beyond space and time, who exists before time, and knows all, is all powerful, and everywhere (whatever that means) at the same time? Surely there is much in the material world that I will never grasp, and yet I am drawn to discover, learn and dream about a spiritual existence that transcends the material world.
It makes logical sense to believe there is a God. There must be a first cause...someone to pull the trigger that started the "big bang". A moral "law giver" makes sense to me as well. Art, intuition, love, kindness, selflessness, altruism, self reflection, and the desire to "find God" all make sense if there is a God who has made us to have these traits. It also makes sense for me to accept that I probably snore. The evidence surely points in that direction. I also believe that there are stars, but that cool August night while I slept on the roof of my dad's van, next to the cooler full of salmon...I experienced the stars in a way I had never experienced before. I had escaped the smokey atmosphere of our city, made a slight altitude adjustment, and looked up. The stars have always been there...I just never noticed them the way I did that night. I know the stars are there, I've seen them dimly from home, read about them, heard other people talk about them, but that night, they were my stars, I saw them so close, I could reach up in the night sky, and grab them, like salmon swimming between my legs in the river. In reality, my short trip to the Babine brought me no closer to the stars than I am at any other place on earth. Those stars are light years away, so my small elevation adjustment as we drove up into the mountains, is nothing compared to the vast distance those stars are from the earth. It's just that some small particles of smoke had got in the way, distracting me from the reality that existed beyond the haze. Perhaps there is a God...and he knows I exist. Maybe he put the stars up in the sky, just so I would wonder, just so I could have that spiritual experience next to the salmon cooler. Fortunately, a grizzly did not join me up on the roof for my star gazing...but if one did, I suppose my belief in grizzly bears would also be more than academic...
