Leave No Pterodactyls

One of the mottos of Wilderness Trek is “Leave No Trace”. During orientation before our week of camping and mountain climbing, one of the guides was talking about this motto. She asked if we knew what LNT stood for and gave us the hint that it was not “Leave No Pterodactyls”. I guess she didn’t do so well on her tough spelling tests in the dinosaur unit at school as a kid.

Anyway, I had a lot of opportunities to think about that motto throughout the week. The idea is to make it seem as if no one had ever been on the trail that week. It’s not such an easy job. For a group of twenty people to go anyone unnoticed would be difficult, but especially when you are headed into an area where only animals live. There’s bound to be a trace, but we try.

As one of the men with us pointed out, our lives are supposed to be the opposite. The people we
encounter are supposed to feel God.

But it’s so easy to go unnoticed.

Just as it’s easy to pull up some grass and drop a candy wrapper on the mountain, it’s so simple to pass through the world without disturbing anything.

It’s easy to be quiet.

It’s easy to blend.

However, our volume has the same effect in both cases. The whole mountain of animals knew where we were simply by our laughing and singing (and groaning in pain). Yet, the world only notices less of

God the louder we shout.

It’s easy to be quiet.

It’s also easy to scream.

What’s hard is letting the world see you for all that you are.

What’s hard is being broken for the sake of the broken.

What’s hard is letting God leave a trace.

So the time has come for each of us to stop covering up the trail that He blazes. Let the rocks do the crying out. Our job is not to shout, but to come down off the mountain and let God’s love do the talking.