I had the occasion recently to spend a week high up in the picturesque Adirondack Mountains of New York. Ostensibly going on a ski trip, but actually just inventing an excuse to leave the city behind and commune with nature and nature’s God, a few friends and I departed the hubbub and blackened snow of southwestern Connecticut for the unspoiled northland.
We stayed at a dude ranch where in the summer, every day of the week is filled with activities ranging from swimming, boating and fishing on the ranch’s pine-circled lake, to tennis, volleyball and horseback riding on its spacious grounds and trails.
But in the winter, while activities still abound, the desire in the sportsman’s belly is sometimes better slaked by the feast of the eyes. The earth all about, save for the well-shoveled pathways, is blanketed by snow, still as white as when it left the heavens. The horizon between the snow and the brilliant blue sky is punctuated only with the stately green of the fir trees and dotted by the wood-hewn guest cottages and main lodge.
Separated from the main highway by a three-mile dirt road that winds up into the mountains alongside a sparkling river below, the ranch is a fortress unto itself. Serviced only by the occasional delivery van, the outside world need never intrude unless one cares to take in the nightly news in the main lodge; the guest cabins are blissfully without television or telephones.
Across this splendid backdrop scurry dozens of little children — bundled up by their parents like so many miniature Michelin men — out to survey the scene and to enjoy the season as had so many before them when the world was newer. Unencumbered by dangerous city streets, snow plows or rigorous schedules, they burst forth into the whiteness.
Though the ranch staff, much like their parents at home, had prepared many activities to fill their days, the pastime that enchanted them most was careening sledlessly down a huge pile of snow that had been cleared from the stable area. Up and down they came and went, blithely ignoring the snowmobiles, ice-skates, skis and all the other accouterments arrayed nearby to please them.
The simple pleasure they displayed is akin to the innocent joy one observes on Christmas morning when small children, despite the numerous and elaborate toys they receive, will most likely end up exploring with wonder the boxes the toys came in. It is the splendid gift of children that they are able effortlessly to convert even the simplest sensation into enjoyment.
I had hoped that this combination of sensory delights and God’s great artistry might inspire similar joy in the adults on our trip, but sadly it seldom does. Part of the ranch’s allure are the all-you-can-eat meals and the nightly offerings of wine and cheese fests, hot-dog roasts and pizza parties — surely an opportunity for a return, at least temporarily, to the eat, drink and be merry days of happier simplicity.
As we sat in the main lodge over cocktails after dinner, looking out at the darkened snowscape lit like a fairyland by the silvery moon over the lake and the amber lights ringing the cabins, the real world intruded like the proverbial thief in the night. The gorgeous tableau was rent by a typical contemporary discussion of cholesterol-counting, vegetarianism, metabolism-altering prescriptions, workout regimens and other healthful modernisms that robbed the scene of its beauty and the food of its pleasure. The spell was broken.
In an effort to avoid any irksome physical activity on the trip, I had brought with me a few good books. And so the next day, in an attempt to realign my psyche with the sublime surroundings, I curled up on a couch by the window of my cabin with a thick biography of that “beneficent bomb,” G.K. Chesterton; a man who would most surely have joined in my discomfort of the prior evening.
Flying off the pages of Joseph Pearce’s Wisdom and Innocence came a torrent of humanity, a bulrush of a man who enjoyed his time on earth to the fullest, the sure proof that a life dedicated to God can mean rejoicing in His gifts, not only of spirituality and grace, but of loving His creatures and creation itself. From Chesterton’s pen came a deluge of poetry and prose; sometimes paradoxical, often political, but always infused with religious fervor.
A man whose wonder and love of nature — like that of the children on the snow hill — was regarded as naivety by cynics. He was branded as a hopeless romantic by his godless critics who forgot, as Pearce reminds us, “that it is the cynic and not the romantic who is without hope.” For he knew instinctively that the path to heaven requires a childlike faith in God that becomes corrupt in men who seek to outgrow it:
I was subconsciously certain then, as I am consciously certain now, that there was the white and solid road and the worthy beginning of the life of man; and that it is man who afterwards darkens it with dreams or goes astray from it in self-deception. It is only the grown man who lives a life of make-believe and pretending; and it is he who has his head in a cloud.
The life and works of a man like Chesterton, who, through modern machinations could probably have lived much longer than his 62 years, should serve as an example to those who would cater obsessively to the health of the body and ignore the ministrations of the soul. He was unarguably a brilliant man who truly humbled himself like a child before God and man alike, yet whose dazzling talents illuminated the world like a shaft of sunlight on the quiet mountains outside my window:
A man does not grow old without being bothered; but I have grown old without being bored…and this overwhelming conviction that there is one key which can unlock all doors brings back to me my first glimpse of the glorious gift of the senses; and the sensational experience of sensation.
In this day and age, we should all be so privileged as to observe life through the wise yet innocent eyes of a man like G.K. Chesterton. For although he could only see through a glass darkly, he, like the children on top of the snow hill, anticipated with joy the rest of the ride.
© Copyright 2006 Catholic Exchange
Lisa Fabrizio is weekly columnist or the American Spectator.
