Trail Mix Sacrament and Sacred Side Canyons

A week ago, I lead a couple of friends through one of my favorite secret sacred side canyons in Utah. This backcountry canyon attracts precious few visitors throughout the year meaning that, when hiking, I have been the only human within a substantial radius of miles. So, for a few days, we dared escape the inescapable pandemic in this slice of sandstone-rimmed paradise. With monolithic red rock giants surveying us and only the canyon’s creaturely inhabitants for company, we considered ourselves socially distant.

Beginning with a steep climb through purple Moenkopi sandstone the trail precedes through the grey slopes of the Chinle hills. Lining the trail is the occasional prickly pear with spring blossom, the scattered sego lily, and the sweet-smelling sagebrush. Our packs sloshing lightly with a days-worth of water to keep us hydrated and snacks to keep us fueled. After a mile or so we are greeted by Wingate sandstone and granted official entrance into the canyon as red cliffs rise hundreds of feet around us.

It has been about 3-months since any of us last attended Church. For some, it has been a welcome sabbatical. After years of traditional Sunday worship, we may have found ourselves in a routine that unknowingly had sucked the spirit from our Sundays. After spending a season figuring out home-Church and getting to the bottom of small-scale worship, we may now be experiencing worship in ways we couldn’t previously imagine.

For others, this 3-month departure from regular Church activities has been the loss of spiritual communion. Especially in Utah, our wards and Church services function as an extended family community. While individual spiritual practice is incredibly necessary for growth, communal spiritual practice is irreplaceable. And this loss of this communal spiritual practice is in some small fashion, a kind of death.

I find myself experiencing both the refreshing perspective of a 3-month sabbatical from Church as well as the pain from the loss of a community. When Pandemic World took hold, I had been freshly transplanted to my new ward in Salt Lake. I had only just had enough time to learn some names and receive a calling, Elder’s Quorum teacher. As (mis)fortune would have it, I only taught once before the world screeched to a halt.

Having an individual spiritual practice has been second nature to me for many years, so when Church was canceled, I was less worried about when I would next renew my covenants as I was about when I would next feel like a member of a community. While the world has been drawn into community in new ways, I still can’t help but miss sitting bored in a sacrament meeting. Can’t believe those words came out of me.

“Wow.” My favorite sound when leading people on trails old to me but new to them. As we descend into this canyon, the cliff walls just keep getting taller. After a number of miles, the trail passes through burnt-orange Wingate and deep into paler Navajo and Kayenta sandstone. The pinyon pine and juniper have been replaced by cottonwood and the botanical cliff rose.

This particular canyon begins wide but narrows as you go. During storms, rainwater would pour in off the cliffs and flow through the wash. Evidence of which is written in foliage wrapped up around the base of grass stands and shrubs. Black streaks trail down red cliff faces, painting layer upon layer of midnight varnish. Green moss carpets the base of canyon walls striking a stunning contrast with the deep reds and oranges surrounding it. Giant pitted black basalt stones worn smooth by wind and water litter the wash telling a story of a volcanic past.

As each mile passes by, I reassure my friends that at any moment, we should happen upon the spring running beneath our feet. The cottonwood just keep getting bigger and older. Surely the small trickle of water is just around this bend in the canyon. Maybe the next one. We have plenty of water bottled on our backs, so dehydration is no worry. But there is just something about hearing the trickle of water that lifts the spirit and gladdens the heart.

I am no professional naturalist by any stretch, but I have the need to describe the world to those present while I hike. Being able to recognize this flower as sego lily from that flower, purple aster, is like increasing the eye’s ability to see detail in a swath of colors. Rather than having a landscape wash over you in a blur, knowing the peculiarities of the Earth around you increases your capacity to hold on and savor the communion of the Earth. So as we hike, I can’t help myself from calling out the cryptobiotic soil, canyon wren, bumblebee, desert varnish, and describing the interactions in the desert communal ecology.

I feel it is worth point out that I am no scientist. I’m barely a writer. It is no grand experience traversing the desert with me. You will see more than I can describe and I’ll say “I dunno” quite a bit. But, what I lack in ecological awareness, I make up for in loving affection. If you ever have the misfortune of entering Utah’s wilderness with me, you’ll see me become the 5-year old boy who wants to show you his new toy with wild amazement. Except instead of toy trucks, it’s the ancient riverbeds turned solid stone, the cross-hatched remains of million-year-old sand dunes etched into sandstone walls, or the smell of cliff rose in the spring.

In the Doctrine & Covenants we are told that the Light of Christ pervades throughout the immensity of space to saturate every planet and molecule of the Universe. I remember that anyone “who hath seen any or the least of these [algae soaked springs, prickly pear blossoms, ravens, lizards, cottonwood, juniper, sagebrush, sandstone monoliths] has seen God moving in his majesty and power.” Truly we live in a world soaked through with the Divine Presence. It’s as if you could squeeze a stone to feel the Light of Christ running over your fingers like living water.

In places such as this canyon, far and away from the human world that considers its exile from the natural world a badge of honor, I feel again my own creatureliness. I feel myself as a member of the larger Body of Christ that includes cottonwood and pinyon pine as well as my neighbor across the street.

Finally, with a drop through a handful of massive chockstones, we come upon the spring. While not gushing by any stretch of the imagination, its watery presence lifts our spirits after a 6-mile trek through the desert. Because the spring flows very gently across the washbasin, it stagnates, allowing sheets of algae to grow throughout. Over the next mile, the spring disappears below the sand, only to resurface clearer and with a defining trickle. It is here that we have decided upon. It is Sunday after all.

We find ourselves seats among the other congregants gathering for this sabbath observance—hoping to not take someone’s seat. A caterpillar shuffles in next to us as the ravens take up roost in the cottonwood overhead. Tadpoles find their place in the only hospitable pews in the depths of the running spring water. Cautiously they eye the ravens above. But for now, a peace is called.

A canyon breeze opens the meeting and we each grab handfuls of salty-sweet trail mix—our chosen representation of the Body of Christ. As well, we clean the nozzles to our pack water—the Blood of Christ—in preparation for our wild sacrament. The blessing on the bread trail mix is spoken and down the hatch it goes. With clumsy purpose, I drop some peanuts in the sand to share with the ants and birds that wish to join us. I recite the blessing on the water and take a few large gulps from my pack water. Refreshing and At-one-ing. Of course, I dribble a few drops to the sand. Once again participating in the give and take of communion.

I read some words I had penned in summers passed about God’s poetry written in every entropic action in the swirling of the cosmic spheres of Heaven and Earth. The canyon breeze rushes again between sandstone cliffs, urging us onward. Crickets and songbirds sing a closing hymn. And with that, our sabbath gathering is over. We bid farewell to our newly found neighbors as we make our way the remaining miles of the canyon.

As we hike, we feel the Light of Christ running through all things. It is in each of our footsteps written in blisters and blood as we hike through sand. It is in our lungs as we breathe canyon air and intoxicating botanical blooms. The Light runs through the trees and sandstone guiding us into further and deeper communion with the world around us. At-one-ment indeed. Staggering as if drunk on the Light of Christ, though really just on sore feet, we burst out of the canyon.

Crossing through the miniature confluence of spring water with the meager river it joins. We wash in the collective watery gathering of mountains and rainwater hundreds of miles away. Exhausted but refreshed and remade in more ways than one, we leave the trail and throw packs into the car we left at the end. From here we rejoin the human world as a different kind of sacrament of burgers and ice-cream await us. With achy legs, we drive home as the landscape is awash in the sunset of Divine Light.