“Good choice,” Craig said.
They passed through the narrow, stony patch and turned a bend where all of them stopped like a freeway of bumper-to-bumper vehicles.
“Buffalo?” Talitha asked. “Am I looking at a herd of buffalo?”
“They’re huge,” Nicole said. “They’re not going to stampede us, are they?”
“Don’t think so. Just keep to the trail,” Craig said. “They probably won’t bother us, if we don’t bother them.”
Katie’s water from both bottles was gone, but she really was ready for a cool sip. The air was as dry and hot as the trail, only now the unpleasant scent of livestock accompanied the swarming flies.
“How much farther do you think it will be?” Talitha asked. “I feel like we’ve already gone ten miles.”
“The trail is much more strenuous than last year,” Nicole agreed.
“Craig?” Talitha called out. Her voice roused one of the buffalo that snorted and raised its head to look at them.
Craig motioned for her to keep her voice down and keep walking, slow and steady.
Katie recalled a western movie in which cavalrymen put their ear to the ground to hear the thundering of hooves. They wouldn’t have to listen here to try to locate a herd. The buffalo were within plain sight and easy charging distance.
The team stayed close together and walked the next quarter of a mile without anyone talking. Katie noted that, in the presence of potential danger, the silence and closeness of their group brought a certain sense of security and protection.
Along with everyone else, Katie was glad when they stopped again for a rest. All she wished was that she hadn’t been so quick to guzzle her water supply early in the trek.
Jordan pulled out his bottle of water and took a drink. Katie watched him but tried to think about something other than water.
“You want some?” Jordan asked.
“Am I that obvious?”
“Go ahead.”
He handed her the bottle, and she took a couple of thimbles full. It was enough to settle the dust in her throat.
“I have gum, if you want some,” Jordan said.
Katie took him up on the offer and thanked him again. It was a considerate thing for Jordan to do, and she knew she would remember his kindness.
The last portion of the hike was the most tiring, but they had partial shade, and that made a tremendous difference. The Crown Hall group passed the waning team that had taken the lead earlier, and Craig and Jordan were the first two hikers to enter the campground. Katie and Nicole were right behind them, followed by the rest of the Crown Hall RAs.
Julia and some of the other staff, who had taken the vehicles into camp, were at work organizing the food at an outdoor grill area flanked by eight solid picnic tables. Two other leaders were putting up the last of a dozen large tents.
Removing her backpack, Katie offered to help Julia.
“Do you see the plastic water containers over there?” Julia asked. “When the others come into camp, could you direct them to fill up their water bottles from that container?”
Katie filled one of her empty bottles, took a long drink, and then positioned herself as the water monitor. She fell into the rhythm of the camping pace and stayed in the groove for the next few days.
True to the same organizational bent of the earlier RA training, the retreat ran on an efficient schedule that allowed for occasional adjustments, such as their first night around the campfire. The plan was for singing, sharing, and roasting marshmallows. Accomplishing those objectives was more complicated than it probably had seemed during the planning stages. The marshmallows were toasted, and a few songs sung, but the hikers were too wiped out to take turns telling their stories to the group.
Before some of the propped-up campers fell asleep on their friends’ shoulders, one of the leaders from Sophie Hall gave instructions for the morning. “We’re going to fast tomorrow until dinnertime. If any of you have medical reasons for not participating, let me know. We’ll wake everyone at six and maintain a discipline of silence until six in the evening. You’ll spend the day alone with God in whatever location suits you. Take your water with you along with your Bible and notebook. Spread out, but not too far from camp. Find your listening place and take advantage of the alone time with God. As the returning RAs will tell you, the year ahead will hold very few opportunities like this. I’ve asked Nicole to say a little about what she liked about this part of the retreat last year.”
Nicole stood. “I used the time last year to read through most of the Psalms and journal about the verses that stood out to me. During the year I would open my journal and discover that one of the verses I’d written down was exactly what I needed at that point during the semester. It was as if the Lord had prepared me at the retreat for the year by having me pick out just the right verses that I needed for the journey.”
Craig spoke up about how there was no right or wrong way to use the day. “Just be available,” he said. “This is time for you and the Lord. All you have to do is listen.”
18
Katie had mixed feelings about the agenda for the day. The thought of spending the day reading, writing, and listening didn’t appeal to her, especially on the heels of summer school. At the same time, she liked the idea of being alone with God and concentrating on him. She couldn’t think of a time in her life when she had dedicated a day to such concentration.
Katie was up before six o’clock because one of the girls stepped out of her tent, and the zipper sound combined with the early morning light on Katie’s face woke her. Still wearing the layers of clothes she had put on the day before at this time, Katie took her backpack with Bible, journal, and water bottle and stepped out of the tent. The day already was bright from the unblocked sunlight filling the eastern sky.
Julia was up and sitting at one of the picnic tables.
“Morning,” Katie called over to her.
Julia turned to Katie and quickly put her finger in front of her lips to silence the rabble-rouser.
Katie slapped her hand over her mouth. She was dying to whisper “sorry,” but that would only break the discipline of silence all over again.
I can’t believe the first thing I did is talk! I hope no one else heard me. I better move away from camp as quickly as I can.
She bent over to lace up her shoes and then left the camp in search of her “listening spot,” as Craig had called it.
By midmorning the strong sun overhead was bearing down on Katie’s selected spot. She had set up camp on a smooth boulder where she could gaze at the ocean in the distance. The rock had been cold when she began her vigil four hours earlier. Now the stone felt hot enough to fry bacon, which was sounding pretty good at that point to Katie, as her stomach grumbled over missing breakfast.
She set out to find a new hangout spot and hopefully to forget about food. Following the trail back toward camp, Katie passed eight RAs, each sequestered in a corner of nature. Most of them were in partial shade, which she knew would be at a premium as the day ripened.
Katie wondered how this soul journey was going for the rest of them. Her first few hours felt unproductive. Not that she exactly knew what it was she was supposed to produce, but she hadn’t had any big spiritual breakthroughs or insightful revelations. The first hour or so she had spent thinking, praying, and studying the scenery. Then she stretched out on the warming rock and took a nap. Her nap was disrupted by a flock of brightly colored birds that seemed to be caught up in a group argument in the bushes below her.
In an effort to accomplish something, Katie wrote a few paragraphs in her journal, trying to express her feelings. Journaling wasn’t her area of expertise. Some of her friends, like Christy, were energized by writing out their thoughts and feelings. That’s why the letters Christy had written over the years to her future husband had been so important to her.
As Katie scouted around for a new listening spot, she fought a sense of failure. She didn’t know how to do the monas
tery gig out in the wilds. Talking to God wasn’t the problem; listening definitely was.
Wandering off the main path, Katie found a clump of bushes. She checked to make sure she was visible from the trail, which was one of the requirements for any location chosen. On close inspection, Katie found that the bramble grew up in an arched shape, leaving a natural cave inside the thicket that was large enough for her to crawl into and benefit from the lattice of sporadic shade.
With her backpack as a pillow, Katie curled up and dozed off into another nap. When she woke in her bramble cave, she was aware that someone was staring at her. She looked down at her feet and froze.
Inches from her shoes was a fox, crouched and unblinking. Their eyes met. As soon as Katie moved, the fox darted away, with its reddish orange coat blazing a trail away from her. She had never seen a fox before. She couldn’t remember being that close to untamed wildlife before either. Her heart was pounding.
Uncurling from her open cavern, Katie stood up and stretched, looking in all directions. She had no idea how long she had been asleep, but it felt good. The burst of adrenaline the fox had triggered brought her blood and her breath to the surface. She felt better than she had in a long time, rested and well exercised from the hike the day before.
Drinking the remainder of water in her first bottle, Katie stretched again and wondered what she should do now. She reached for her backpack and realized it weighed so much because of her Bible, which so far today had gone unopened.
Katie walked a little ways and thought that, even though the only word she had uttered all day was “morning” to Julia, she still was doing a lot of talking in her head. It would be good to listen to God. The only way she knew to do that was to read the Bible.
Finding a third hangout, a patch of cleared dirt under a eucalyptus, Katie sat down and leaned against the tree’s narrow trunk. With the pungent, green-spice scent of the tree floating around her, she opened her Bible and went looking for the Peculiar Treasure verse. That seemed a good place to start.
She found several snippets of verses she had underlined over the years. In an effort to listen to what God had to say instead of being the one doing all the talking, Katie listed the underlined verses in her journal the way Nicole had suggested. Within an hour or so, she found that all the phrases she had been drawn to were like pearls. The phrases were strung together on the page of her journal where they formed a beautiful “necklace.”
Katie noticed that hope formed a repetitious pattern in the verses. In each phrase she felt as if God was showing her his heart for her and reminding her of who he was. Having a fresh reminder of God and his love gave Katie hope.
Across the top of her journal page she wrote: “God loves me. He said so.” Then she read through the excerpts she had listed.
“I lavish my love on those who love me” (Exodus 20:6a).
“I have chosen you and will not throw you away” (Isaiah 41:9b).
“I have ransomed you. I have called you by name. You are mine” (Isaiah 43:1b).
“You are precious to me. You are honored, and I love you” (Isaiah 43:4b).
“I will be faithful to you and make you mine, and you will finally know me as Lord” (Hosea 2:20).
Katie knew each verse contained deeper truths than the phrases and snippets she had chosen reflected. She had been at Bible college long enough to know the hazards of taking part of a verse out of context. Yet the clarity of God’s heart for his creation was what Katie heard in the string of pearls as she read them. She was his daughter, his princess, his Peculiar Treasure. He held Katie in his heart. In the spicy silence under the eucalyptus tree, God was reminding Katie of who he was. She felt his truth go deep inside, almost as if he had whispered his promises into her ear.
Katie never had experienced this sort of affirmation from God before. But then, she couldn’t remember the last time she had shut up and sat long enough to listen.
Flipping her Bible’s pages back to Exodus 19, where she had seen one of the references to Peculiar Treasures, Katie noticed another verse across the page in Exodus 20. “Build altars in the places where I remind you who I am, and I will come and bless you there.”
She thought of Craig’s comment the day before about the children of Israel carrying stones out of the Jordan River to build a monument. Twelve stones for the twelve tribes of Israel.
Then, because her heart felt so full and because she wanted to remember this moment, Katie scouted around for twelve small stones. She arranged them on top of each other as best she could, there under the eucalyptus tree.
Setting aside self-conscious feelings and reminding herself that no one but God was watching, she lifted her hands to heaven and prayed aloud with a solemn contentment filling her heart. “Father God, today in this place you reminded me of who you are. You reminded me that you took me out of a place of abandonment and delivered me from a desert of a childhood. You brought me into a place of hope, friendship, and love simply because you chose to lavish your love on me. I place these little stones here today because I want to remember who you are. And I don’t want to forget the truth you showed me today. The truth that . . .” Katie could barely finish speaking the final three words. “ . . . you love me.”
19
Sun-kissed from Catalina, Katie entered the Dove’s Nest on Saturday morning eager to surprise Rick. She sashayed up to the register, but the surprise, it seemed, was on her. Carley was behind the counter wearing a Dove’s Nest apron.
“Carley, when did you start working here again?”
“A few days ago. Rick was really great to let me come back and take your place.”
Carley’s choice of words, “take your place,” hit the mark to which they seemed to be aimed — in Katie’s spirit.
Andrea came out from the back and seemed happy to see Katie. “We heard a little about your retreat from some of the guys that came in last night,” she said. “It sounded like a great trip.”
“It was,” Katie responded.
Carley said, “I heard you guys didn’t get to shower the entire time. I don’t think I could have done it — all that hiking and no showers.”
“I loved it,” Katie said firmly.
“We heard that when you hiked out yesterday you and some others went swimming in the ocean with all your clothes on,” Carley said. “Is that true?”
Katie nodded.
“Good for you,” Andrea said.
“That was better than the alternative,” Katie said. She was one of the spontaneous leapers who had decided not to wait in line to use the changing room at the public beach. Barefoot, in her jeans and tank top, Katie had taken the plunge in the bay. Then, after a refreshing swim, she rinsed off under the outdoor shower. The line for the changing room was gone by that time, and she contentedly put on the crumpled but still clean clothes in the bottom of her garbage bags. The extra trash bag worked out great for her soaked jeans. The dip was one of her favorite parts of the trip.
“I still say I never could do a trip like that.” Carley’s airy voice rose an octave for emphasis. “It was like you guys had to go through boot camp.”
“So,” Katie said, looking at Andrea and trying to get back to the reason she was standing at the counter. “Could you go in the back and let Rick know I’m here?” She didn’t feel right going into the back area the way she had when she worked there.
“Rick isn’t here,” Carley answered.
“He’s not?”
“No, he’s with his brother,” Andrea said.
Katie tried not to appear surprised. “Oh, right. Okay.”
“Didn’t he tell you?” Carley asked.
“My phone has been off. I’ll catch him later.” Katie smiled at Andrea and turned quickly, eager to exit.
“Bye!” Carley called after her. “You’ll catch me later too. I’m in 204.”
Katie had no idea what that meant, but she didn’t want to stand there one more minute. She took off for the bookstore side of the building to find Chr
isty. If ever she needed her best friend, it was now.
Christy was assisting a customer when she spotted Katie. She gave Katie a wave and a smile.
While waiting for Christy, Katie calmed down. She tried to shake off the Carley encounter and think of something else. Out of the corner of her eye, Katie saw Christy motioning for her to come over to the register. She stepped up to the counter, and Christy said, “I heard you saw a fox.”
“Why does everyone know my life?”
“One of the guys from your group was in last night. I don’t remember his name. He was talking about the buffalo or bison or whatever they were, and then he said you saw a fox.”
“I did. It was pretty cool. We also saw either a sea lion or a dolphin on the ferry ride back. It was some sort of big, dark, swimming creature.”
Christy looked beyond Katie and said, “Excuse me just a minute.”
Katie stepped aside as Christy helped a woman who had come in to pick up a book she had ordered.
“It’s been really busy all morning,” Christy said as soon as the woman left. “How long will you be here? I can take my lunch break in about two hours.”
“I can’t wait that long. I have to get back. Nicole and I have a lot of planning to do for our hall, and I have a list of supplies to pick up at Bargain Barn. All our welcome packages and wall decorations have to be ready by Thursday. Our goal is to make Crown North the most desirable hall on campus. But, Chris, I really need to talk with you soon.”
“What’s your schedule tonight?” Christy asked. “Do you have time to come over around seven?”
“Maybe. I’m trying to figure out what Rick is doing. I don’t know what’s going on with him. I haven’t seen him in almost a week. I’m hoping he and I can connect tonight.”
“I thought Rick was with Josh in Arizona.”
“Arizona?”
“You didn’t know that, did you?”
Katie shook her head. “I’m way out of the loop on everything. I didn’t know Carley was hired back. I feel as if I’m stepping in as an alien from another planet. Nothing feels normal.”