Morning comes early in the mountains. Breezeless trees guard slumbering peaks, glassy lakes reflect the world without a single ripple, and silence fills the spaces between the wildflowers and the granite rocks that have held their posts for a thousand mornings just like this. It’s a morning view far removed from rushed school days and tech-filled vacations.

OP elder David Winslow has brought generations of OP young adults to the Sierra Mountains in California for just such a view. He explained, “The motivating idea was to get young people out of their normal urban, entertainment-culture comfort zone into an environment where God’s two ‘books’ could speak without so much distraction: the special revelation of God’s word in morning and evening devotions and the general revelation of God’s creation all day and night.”

Fellowship on Foot

David and Susan Winslow started leading backpacking trips in 1980. The trips still continue, each made up of roughly fifteen young people from across the OPC, with the Winslows now acting as base camp from their home in Fountain Valley, California, while backpacking alumni Thomas Jennings and Eli Hirtzel lead the teams through the Sierras.

“Sometimes I do feel a connection to the Israelites when I’m in the wilderness,” said Jennings, who has been helping to lead the backpacking trips since 2015. “You pack everything up, the whole community. You’re a team, you’re really dependent on each other to play different roles.” Carrying one another’s burdens becomes literal: stronger team members help carry packs for weary hikers, food preparation and water collection often require multiple sets of hands, and it takes all eyes for the team to stay safe on the trail.

Cut off from cell service and social media, fellowship blossoms in these remote places. Jennings said that the feeling of kicking shoes off after a long hike and crawling into the shade of the campsite to chat with fellow hikers “goes back to the human element of getting to refresh together in the wilderness.”

Dana Schnitzel, a middle school teacher and softball coach, echoed these sentiments in context of a long-running outdoor tradition on the other side of the country. Schnitzel, who attends Calvary OPC in Glenside, Pennsylvania, spends her summers at the French Creek Bible Conference for the duration of the kid’s camp each year. A favorite feature of the camp for her is how much walking to and from activities is involved, she said.

“When you walk, you’re with people, and you have to be talking,” said Schnitzel. “So you’re forced to spend time and talk to people, and I think that’s why their friendships end up being so strong and frequently lifelong. You’re just doing nothing together.”

According to Winslow, being away from the world we are used to facilitates a sweet fellowship: the joy of company on a trail, in joint challenges or sufferings endured together, in shared stillness and quiet moments. Here we see “the power and majesty of God displayed in all that he has made, including his people, the crown of his creation.”

Jennings reflected on a question Winslow asked in one of the devotions during the 2014 hike: “We were talking about how beautiful it is out here and he said, ‘What is the most beautiful thing we’ll see out here?’ and someone gave the correct answer, which is ‘Us.’ We are created in the image of God.”

Grounded in the “Real”

It’s not, however, just the human connection that flourishes. Schnitzel said time outside also helps ground young adults in reality in an age where the cyberworld has a strong pull.

“Especially with kids getting into social media earlier and earlier, I think it’s important that kids have things that tether them to this world,” she said. “[Being outside] grounds us in this world that God created instead of the almost ethereal realities that we’ve created ourselves.”

Surveys from 2018 indicate that 90 percent of children use some form of social media (“Social Media and Teens,” The American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, March 2018) and that children ages ten to sixteen spend less than thirteen minutes a day in a rigorous outdoor activity (Child in the City website, January 2018).

Not everyone can go on a ten-day backpacking trip, or even a weeklong summer camp. Time constraints, family or work responsibilities, and physical limitations can prevent those seeking time outside from fully immersing in nature. But Schnitzel suggests that time outside can be customized to the season of life you are in––if a run is too aggressive, maybe take a walk. Those who are uncomfortable water rafting can canoe or fish. If you can’t hike through the forest, you can pull some weeds in the sunshine.

“A lot of times, the things that we do outside require energy output, but there’s something so refreshing about a good night’s sleep after a day outside, or a day of manual work that is so good for us,” said Schnitzel. “I think physical exertion is often a rest for our minds. There’s a certain soul-rest that you get from being outside and doing something.”

Working at an alternative school with trauma-informed practices, Schnitzel has seen firsthand how the outdoors and active play affect brain development and mental health.

“I take my kids out there every day for about five minutes during my social studies class because we will get more done in the remaining forty minutes of instructional time if we spend the first few minutes outside,” she said. “Active play is just so good for you––it’s how kids learn but it’s also intentionally restful for adults. A lot of times the things that are good for kids are good for adults, but we’ve just stopped doing them, like playing a game or running around.”

Schnitzel has a curated list of things found outdoors that are scientifically proven to improve mental health, like natural light, natural colors, and touching the ground with bare feet, but she also said sounds and smells can nurture peace in our agitated lives.

“I do think that spending time outside in those things that God created is rejuvenating for our souls in ways that other things just don’t hit. It’s almost like, when God created this world, it was very good,” she quipped.

What the Heavens Declare

Of course, after God declared his world “very good,” he rested. The Christian shouldn’t forego sabbath rest, even and perhaps especially in nature, Winslow said.

“A better word than ‘nature’ might be ‘creation’ because it always reminds us of the source of the creation we see around us,” said Winslow. “The creation we see around us is full of death and decay, the imprint of God’s curse after the fall. What we see and experience today in creation could be a foretaste of the new heavens and the new earth, but we need to be careful not to assume too much—or too little—continuity.” And someone is missing, Winslow continued: “the Lord of creation who came to earth in the incarnation, who died for us, who rose and ascended to heaven is not physically with us. But he will return. And he will gather his people to himself to be with them forever.”

With this great hope, refreshed with weekly Sabbath reminders of the coming King, Christians can take to the outdoors to drink in rest. In 1934, in a piece for Christianity Today, J. Gresham Machen wrote that his trophies from hiking the Alps were the memories of God’s power and beauty on grandiose display––memories which returned to him in moments of sorrow or despair.

What have I from my visits to the mountains, not only from those in the Alps, but also, for example, from that delightful twenty-four-mile walk which I took one day last summer in the White Mountains over the whole Twin Mountain range? The answer is that I have memories . . . in hours of darkness and discouragement I love to think of that sharp summit ridge of the Matterhorn piercing the blue or the majesty and the beauty of that world spread out at my feet when I stood on the summit of the Dent Blanche.

What a testament to the abounding grace of God that, while we await his coming, he sustains us in a world brimming with reminders of his power and goodness—with skies that pour forth speech and heavens that declare his glory. What a place to rest.    

The author is a member of Bonita Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Bonita, California. New Horizons, July 2022.