Last Day of Summer 2011

Last Thursday I spent almost two hours calming down a family from Kalamazoo.

I don't think I've officially disseminated this information to the This Blog and You audience: I am gradually phasing out my career as an ITS (AU's IT department) employee and am trying my hand at being a full-time student in the seminary. Now when I tell folks that they tend to ask one of a few painfully predictable questions and chief among them is "So do you want to be a pastor?" This is a perfectly reasonable question but the truth is that I'm not sure what I want to accomplish from this experience. So if anybody can think of a more palatable way to put that, I'd be much obliged.

Since this is the last day of summer, you may infer that classes begin tomorrow. That being the case, I wanted to have one last taste of summertime jocundity before the weighty arm of academic and professional responsibility intered me in its imminent embrace. So early Saturday morning, a buddy and I hauled it off to Sawyer's own Warren Dunes State Park for an impromptu camping trip.

So impromptu was the camping trip that we neglected to pack properly. From the very start we had intended to purchase our groceries once we got to Sawyer but upon arrival it dawned on us that we had neither a cooler nor cooking implements. Rejected and dejected, we retreated to the relative comfort of a nearby food court/truck stop. It was there that we got the idea to line our box of chicken with a shopping bag and fill it with ice. Pleased and proud of our makeshift cooler, we boldly marched into the local grocers only to recall that we still had no cooking implements. We settled on bratwurst and Tuscan pane, correctly assuming that a meal such as this could be prepared with nothing more than a sharpened stick. We also bought some of the most delicious novelty soda that I've ever had.

I thought sure Lake Michigan would be too cool for comfortable swimming but I was mistaken.

I courted death by climbing up sheer surface with sand gushing into my face. And when I say "sheer," I do not mean "steep." I mean perpendicular to the ground.

After a hard day of mucking about sand dunes, when you finally get back to your campsite the last thing you want to do is walk two miles to the tallest, steepest dune in the park with no light to guide you. Yet, at my encouragement, that is exactly what we did. I felt sure that the view of the stars would be majestic enough to warrant the long and physically taxing journey. Sure enough, the ascent was every bit as demanding as predicted but, when we reached the summit, we were over-awed at the spectacle.

We were both preparing to wax philosophical about the expanse of the universe when we overheard some muffled voices just to the south of us. We turned just in time to see a lighter ignite off in the darkness. Then, farther down the path, we saw another lighter ignite, and then another. Though we couldn't see very well in the blackness, it would seem that others had made a journey of similar rigor to get to the top of the dune and smoke. Obviously I have no idea what they were smoking but we did accidentally run across one couple that seemed very... relaxed. Our dirty hippie companions notwithstanding, the view on top of the dunes at night is a wonder to behold. Among other things, I'm pretty sure we saw the lights of Chicago out over the lake.

Jonny Wilkinson. You know what I mean?

I am not sure what this semester will turn out to be. I don't know what direction I may wind up taking academically or professionally. A fairly generic Christian expression that is used to convey well-wishes is "Go with God." Unexamined though it may be, that expression is my current hope for myself. I don't know where I'm going exactly, but I don't think that's a requisite for a good journey.

When it comes to building a campfire, I am a bigger fan of the cross-fire method than the tipi method.

I hope you all had a wonderful last day of summer.

-Ryan