Backpacking with the Saints: Wilderness Hiking as Spiritual Practice

by Belden C. Lane Narrated by Jim Denison

Overview

Carrying only basic camping equipment and a collection of the world's great spiritual writings, Belden C. Lane embarks on solitary spiritual treks through the Ozarks and across the American Southwest. For companions, he has only such teachers as Rumi, John of the Cross, Hildegard of Bingen, Dag Hammarskjöld, and Thomas Merton, and as he walks, he engages their writings with the natural wonders he encounters, demonstrating how being alone in the wild opens a rare view onto one's interior landscape, and how the saints' writings reveal the divine in nature.



The discipline of backpacking, Lane shows, is a metaphor for a spiritual journey. Just as the wilderness offered revelations to the early Desert Christians, backpacking hones crucial spiritual skills: paying attention, traveling light, practicing silence, and exercising wonder. Lane engages the practice not only with a wide range of spiritual writings, but with the fascination of other lovers of the backcountry, from John Muir and Ed Abbey to Bill Plotkin and Cheryl Strayed. In this intimate and down-to-earth narrative, backpacking is shown to be a spiritual practice that allows the discovery of God amidst the beauty and unexpected terrors of nature. Adoration, Lane suggests, is the most appropriate human response to what we cannot explain, but have nonetheless learned to love.

Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly

11/10/2014
Lane’s work blends genres, combining the literature of the outdoors with the formal literature of the spiritual as he reviews the work of the world’s prominent religious and spiritual writers and ties their insights to the features and experiences of exploring the natural world. A respected professor of theological studies at Saint Louis University and a frequent backpacker, Lane (The Solace of Fierce Landscapes) juxtaposes the academic with the personal, presenting brief historical summaries of thinkers like Rumi, Therese of Liseux, and Thich Nhat Hanh while using his own life experiences and backpacking trips to parallel certain spiritual insights from his reading. Lane’s prose is lush and descriptive, but occasionally self-indulgent as he encounters the difficulties of expressing the sublime and the spiritual in words. The book also starts slowly, overly laden in theory. Yet it eventually becomes more compelling as the author situates his useful introduction to the joys of backpacking and the work of the featured thinkers in his open and tender detailing of his life’s trajectory, creating pleasure for readers of all genres. (Dec.)

From the Publisher

"This is a wise and helpful book, probably best read by reconnoitering the terrain quickly,
then lingering over sections that seem inviting. The real point, though, is to engage in the contemplative practice that Lane models so well. If backpacking seems out of the question, adopting the practice of spending time in quiet contemplation of nature while reading the book offers a less intense alternative that can still offer rich rewards."—Interpretation: A Journal of Bible and Theology

"Belden C. Lane has written a lovely book that seamlessly brings together two rich genres: travel narrative and spiritual memoir. The notion of a spiritual journey, of course, is central to almost every religious tradition, but the author enlivens that tradition as he shares personal and heartfelt stories about his own peregrinations and muses on topics as varied as solitude, ecology, backpacking, beauty, and prayer; and on people as varied as St. Thérèse of Lisieux, Dag Hammarskjöld, John Muir, and Bruce Springsteen. A thoroughly delightful book." —James Martin, SJ, author of Jesus: A Pilgrimage

"If the earlier centuries of Christianity had been as honest, emotionally descriptive, and spiritually helpful as Belden Lane is here, we would have a very different notion of religion today. Such wisdom as this will literally 'save the soul' of many a spiritual seeker." —Fr. Richard Rohr, O.F.M., Founder, Center for Action and Contemplation, Albuquerque, New Mexico

"The only problem with this remarkable book is that it cannot be read rightly from a comfortable chair. As Lane and the rest of the saints in these pages insist, what the soul most needs is not found in safe places but in wild ones, where the dangers are as real as the courage they call forth. So find a high rock, a far hill, or a patch of desert that scares you a little and let this book persuade you that you are exactly where you need to be." —Barbara Brown Taylor, author of Learning to Walk in the Dark

"The carefully balanced writing about landscape, physical demands, spiritual awakening and literary companionship allows the reader to see, feel, and join in the meditation." —Booklist

"Lane's work blends genres, combining the literature of the outdoors with the formal literature of the spiritual as he reviews the work of the world's prominent religious and spiritual writers and ties their insights to the features and experiences of exploring the natural world." —Publishers Weekly

Product Details

BN ID:	2940173905581
Publisher:	Tantor Audio
Publication date:	07/31/2019
Edition description:	Unabridged

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