Is This the End? Hiking and Sailing!

Well, it seems Boston has caught up to me at last, or will soon. Farewell, mornings of leaky waders, cold spray, and fish on a line. Goodbye, days of lazy leisure, eating ice cream at the creemie stand, and book-devouring. Adieu, crimson sunsets, nights of milky-way clarity, and smell of left-over green hanging in the air. I'll be going home in a few days to pick up where I left off with school, youth ministry, and living in the city. As restful as Vermont has been, I have been looking forward to going back to the place that has once again become home. The first time, in 2004, I left kicking and screaming. This time, I can't wait to see what God will do back in the city.

The past few days have seen me struggling through false starts on several writing tasks I've had to work on. Lesson planning, while going, is taking longer to get into than I had hoped. There are youth-ministry tasks, like planning sermons for our summer youth retreat and youth-director search committee stuff, which are waiting for my full and undivided attention. That is not to say the time has been wasted-- it's just that I know what I'll need to spend more time on once I get back to Boston.


Besides writing, I got to take a sailing trip with Pastor Bob this week. The sky was a little overcast, but the wind was good. We sailed all day out to a bay in New York, sailing on a beam reach the whole way down. Once there, we took the dinghy out and did some bass fishing-- getting some strikes, but hooking none. After eating some dinner and reading, we went to sleep in the cabin. Not long after I had closed my eyes, I heard splashing in the bay. I tried to ignore it, but as the night wore on, the splashing became incessant-- up to 100 splashes per minute. Sometimes they sounded like swooshes on the water. At other times, it was like somebody was slapping the surface. I knew they were fish, but I started to wonder if Champ, the Loch-Ness Monster of Lake Champlain was behind the ruckus. Unable to sleep, I got up and left the cabin. That's when I saw it: all around me were huge ripples of bass or lake trout rising out of the lake, jumping and feeding on minnows in the night. It was amazing! Perhaps even more amazing was the fact that I threw several lures into the lake and caught not one single fish! Exasperated, I tried to go back to sleep, but sleep refused to come for very long. At 4AM, I got up, untied the dinghy, and rowed out to catch me some fish. Sadly, I caught but one 11 inch small mouth bass, and none of the monsters that were harassing me all night long. Still, we had pancake and fish fillets for breakfast that morning before going home. Shortly after breakfast, we hoisted anchor, raised sails, and set course for our bay in Vermont. It was a beautiful, sunny day, with just enough wind for us to make good time back home. In between taking the helm, I took a nap on the bow. And, no, we did not run into pirates.

Also, this past weekend, I got to hike Mt. Mansfield (Vermont's tallest mountain@ 5,000ft) with my friends Mike and Kristen. I must be getting better at this, because the last time I hiked this mountain it took two full days. This time, we did it in one afternoon with no food and a little bit of water!