Shade

I survived!

What a way to start this adventure - - on the hottest day of the year. I haven't heard what the temperature actually got up to (it was supposed to get into the 90s, with high humidity) but I now know how hot road walking can be! It is a totally different experience that walking any trail.

So I started out this morning from church . . . with a very wonderful gathering of some of my favorite people. I managed to walk about two blocks, and already had to stop and pay attention to my feet. I had hoped in this heat to wear my walking sandals, but they actually didn't hold up to the heat as well as my hiking shoes, with socks. And nothing really held up to the heat coming up from below all day - - the rest of me is in pretty good shape tonight, but my feet are still yelling at me, almost 4 hours after I stopped walking.

Besides being the hottest day of the year so far, it was also one of my longest planned mileage days for June as well. You just don't get anywhere from North Conway without putting in the miles. The sun was brutal, and the heat was absolutely oppressive. I admit that there were many moments when I wondered about my sanity, taking on such a walk on such a day.

I found myself walking from shade to shade, hating the distances that didn't provide any at all. The worst was a stretch that I hit at noon, and when I got to shade again a half hour later, I thought I was possibly done for the day. But I got something cold to drink, something to eat (although I won't go in depth into the story of watching my chicken salad sub slide down the shady hill I had found to sit on and end up in the dust and the gravel . . . totally unedible. Ah well. I was feeling too hot to eat anyway). I sat there for an hour and a half. By 2 pm the worst of the heat seemed to let up, and back I went, walking from shade to shade.

I found myself pausing at the edge of any shady area, dreading stepping out into the full brunt of the sun and the heat. Life became focused on being in the shade (and drinking my ever-warming water). Shade was my friend. Shade was my protector.

From Psalm 121 -
The Lord himself watches over you;
the Lord is your shade at your right hand,
So that the sun shall not strike you by day,
nor the moon by night.

That psalm played in my head. What an immense expression of faith - - from someone who lived in the Middle East. Someone who knew wilderness and brutal sun. The psalms express the heart of the psalmist, and this one knew the importance of shade. The necessity of shade. The life-preserving quality of shade. And then turned to that imagery to express something about God's care. That line has never hit me before, like it hit me today. I trudged from shade to shade, thanking God each time I made it back out of the direct sun (which beat both from above and from the asphalt below).

"The Lord is your shade .. ."

There's such deep, real faith in those words. May we all trust that God will be our shade, from all that seeks to wear us out, beat us down, sap our life.

Day 1: North Conway to Madison 13 miles
Many many thanks to Christian and Jane for hosting me tonight.