pedadidact

March 10 - Day 25
Bear Creek Campground > Marymere Falls > Forks & back
Hiked: 2 miles

Virgin opportunities beckon from all sides as mankind careens down muddied highways of decision, too steep to stop; life's trackless pavement seeming to exist as nothing but a sequence of off-ramps spilling into off-ramps, one after another. Every exit is an apparent round-about flowing into the same endless array of choices, so that a man feels himself perpetually curving back into the rush. Onward the race speeds, shifting and merging, frantic and bold, until arriving - often suddenly, for rarely is a sign posted, "Next Left" - at the final destination, that one end which is truly dead.



In the interval which constitutes the journey we pass numberless points of interest, occasions to deviate from one course and explore others. Signs held aloft advertise the peculiar virtues of each in symbols universally known. We are forced to heft the worth of our time and means. And though one had money to gain the whole world, yet there is not enough elastic in these carbon bodies to stretch over every experience available to the soul. Even the most pecuniarily robust baron exists on a tiny line of mortal credit, a capsule of borrowed time, and there is no telling when comes his calling to account. We must choose shrewdly. An exit to one pleasure may detour through unmapped griefs and take our course irretrievably off, forever barring the way to places we longed to see before ending this momentary tour, this brief mile of humanity. We are children with so many coins, choosing our sweets carefully, rejoicing in the tastes and enduring aches that attach.
Several times I had ridden past a saffron-lettered wooden sign notifying the turn-off for Storm King and Marymere Falls, first while skirting Crescent Lake's platinum rim to Sol Duc, and then on bus rides to and from Port Angeles. Renowned as the falls are, even free-wheelers are time-bound by other elemental bosses as sunset and rain storms, constraints which had thus far prevented my diverting back to see the area. Having gained so many miles and come to so sparse a wallet, every hope of Marymere seemed gone. However, those five blessed wind-bucks of the previous day had changed my fortunes. Morning was still rubbing the dawn haze from her eyes when she saw me at the shoulder with two dollars in hand for a day pass on the shuttle to Storm King.



“Where you headed now?” came a brusk voice as I stepped aboard the coach. On the forward bench was Mike, the gentleman whose seat I had shared several times on afternoon bussings from Port Angeles to Elwha. We laughed loudly at our unexpected reunion and I happily tossed my bag beside him. Spanning twenty-five minutes to my stop, we conversed about the region and Mike's youthful larks around the Ozette coast. Once again he strongly implored me to begin my proposed beach trek in his town, offering to show me about the Cape and even deliver me to the Shi Shi trail head. Supposing I left my bike and excess gear in Forks, and exited the coast at Rialto Beach to unite with trailer, et al, this plan seemed the most feasible; that is, assuming Mike was not a creepy fellow after all. A man who volunteers his spiritual intercourse with natural hot springs is hard to pin down for credibility. I agreed to call him midweek and confirm a Saturday arrival at the bus depot in Niah Bay.

For a balance of crisp solitude and fairly manageable weather, the months of February and March seem to be favorable in the Peninsula. Freedom from dense clouds of sight-seers is obviously due to the impracticality of traveling in the more rainy season. Every season in Washington is rainy to some extent, but this is not to be complained of. Gorgeous Esther and all the harem of pageant hopefuls could not have been better scented or more purified from twelve-months soaking and perfuming than these Olympics for their year-long cycle of freshening which the rain gives. She is worthy of a king and gives herself freely, void of Vashti's reluctance to parade a fair form before the adoring eyes of visitors who come to feast royally on the riches of her rare majesty. Ruddy boughs are voluptuously bared to the admirer, draped in weighty locks of carageen hair; rivulets curve in curious smiles to cascade pearl-white over rows of flawless, smooth stone teeth, and banked with passionate blushes of oxidized bark. She is ravishing and wild, the unrestrained paramour while at once dignified as a queen.



The singular ease I have thus far enjoyed perhaps owes to the year being what they call an El Nino, for I hear everywhere that the Evergreen State is enjoying an unusual streak of dryer weather. Facts be told, I have not yet endured an hour of straight hard rain and have been out for nearly a month. Precipitation usually lets off before dawn and resumes at light intervals throughout the night, seldom falling in sunlit hours. In this way, at least, nature is modest, preferring to turn down the blinds before bathing. Perhaps there dwells some Essene pleasure to be derived from washing in the dark? If I should survive to set foot in another tiled shower, I will have to follow her example and try it with the lights out.

A moist carpet of crimson chips and pellet gravel papered the way to the falls, rolling through an airy grove of trees. Erosion had exposed the roots of many to display shapes of inextricably knotted twine balls. Every ten yards became more lush than the last, dear ferns and carpet clover multiplying, and soil, where exposed, lying in dark bars of earthy chocolate. The trail was knowledgeable of the improvement and gained confidence proportionate to the distance, judging by the increased grade with which it stood taller and taller as I neared the point. My right knee also knew, and said so in pulses. Ascending a final ramp brought Marymere into full view; every voice but her own was suddenly silenced.





Crystalline spray encrusted the atmosphere with a fanciful opulence, but the jewel itself was in the falls. From a lofty perch eighty-feet up, a narrow stream, one arm-span across, leapt with blissful abandon over a granite lip. Spreading momentarily into a swan's tail of vapor, these innumerable links of liquid silver connected themselves into a tiered necklace of chains which hung luxuriantly down the sculpted breast of stone below. One could not resist a second look, nor was there guilt in it; the stain of lust cannot soil one's enjoyment of his rightful possession. Nature has been endowed to man by arrangement of our Heavenly Father, and its beauties ordained for a life-long matrimony of enjoyment and mutual respect. For this reason the agricultural arts are called husbandry.





Bonhoeffer and Luther were kind to accompany my meandering walk down the hill, though I confess Luther's conversation was more agreeable to my spirit; he is always robust and never hides his brawny form in a shadow of unclear language. Sitting on the dock of Crescent Lake, baking in the noon sun with pipe in hand and chocolate chips beside, I fancied what wonderful employment one might have in making audio recordings of Bondage of the Will, and other classic texts.


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An overshot on the bus to Forks enabled me to check the status of tax papers, which had gone through smoothly. More than this, however, I discovered a generous and entirely unexpected donation had been made to me by a home Bible fellowship lead by my father, though my mother said neither of them had stirred the group to this gift. Once again I was compelled to take pause and thank God for His undeserved mercies, granting tokens to the faith of a weak man.

While riding back to Bear Creek, and towards the closing of the night, I enjoyed the superlative privilege of discussing with an acquaintance the nature of Christian repentance. She wondered how one can have true faith and yet intentionally sin at times? Visiting the accounts of Peter's three-fold denial, the extended lapses of King David, and the willful failures of other saints, I explained that God's manner towards them throughout was one of corrective love. He dealt with His sons in faith as with headstrong children, carefully reprimanding and sometimes chastening with a rough rod but always for the restoration of upright character. Was it by righteous acts or some self-wrought sincerity that we have attained to everlasting life? No, says the Apostle, but,

“According to his mercy he saved us, by the washing of regeneration, and renewing of the Holy Ghost; which he shed on us abundantly through Jesus Christ our Savior; that being justified by his grace, we should be made heirs according to the hope of eternal life.”

What made Peter's repentance to differ from that of Judas', who we sometimes forget also felt a kind of remorse? Judas cried before certain priests his betrayal of innocent blood, but afterward hung himself in despair and unbelief. Was it for lack of native resolve? From what deep fount sprung the bitter tears of godly sorrow which Peter wept, when all that spilled from Judas were the bowels of an ineffectual confession? The difference lies not in man, but in the will of God. To Peter alone did Jesus say, “I have prayed for you, that your faith fail not,” while resigning Judas to “do quickly” his evil deed, knowing from the beginning he was a devil in disguise, a serpentine son of Satan ordained to that awful task and the perdition which surely followed.

A disciple of Christ may have reasons to question the sincerity of his original faith, but never to doubt the integrity of God's promise to preserve true believers to the final day. Christ prayed in the garden, “Father keep them,” and not only for the eleven which would remain, but “for them also which shall believe on Me through their word.” All that Christ prays He receives, for He petitions with perfect knowledge and pristine faith in the Father. He has prayed for His saints to endure. In whom should their faith then be, their Father in heaven, or their imagined ability to manufacture more faith? The natural industry of the human heart is ever and only based on worthless resources of self; its products shunned in the celestial port, too inferior to be received into the heavenly harbor. Any notion of faith which comes not as the unavailed echo of the Divine call is a clanging of graven religion which soon falls dull. It is of the earth, earthy, and with it shall be burned up.



The Christian, assailed as he is with trials and temptations, the feet of his conscience caked thick with foul crusts of worldliness, rests in the promise that he is otherwise washed and cleansed through the imputed obedience and punitive death of Christ in his place. He is comforted to believe the filth which sometimes mars his snow white skin is ever covered with sun-bright robes of Christ's righteousness. Remembrance of these truths, the doctrines of free grace and unmerited inheritance amongst the adopted sons of God, is the alone means by which the Holy Spirit communicates fresh willingness to obey the statutes of the kingdom of heaven. In this way faith in the gospel is not a license to sin, but the avenue of freedom from slavish, mercenary obedience leading to unspoiled joys of filial conformity to our brother, Jesus.

Gospel themes make comfortable bedding and give sounder sleep than any other. The Rock upon which the Christian rests is solid as Jacob's pillow, but so perfectly shaped that no other may support so naturally, nor lead one nightly into peace which passes all understanding. While I recline in faith, “He restoreth my soul,” and I am strengthened to endure the toils which lie ahead.