When I hear “Mountain Time,” I no longer think of what time it is in the swath of land running north and south through Colorado and the Rocky Mountains of America.
Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Fort Worth, Texas
I think of how much longer it takes to travel through mountains than you imagine! “Mountain Time” is sloooow, and mountains are bewildering and hard to cross!
Alan and I just finished watching Lewis and Clark: The Journey of the Corps of Discovery, a wonderful 1997 documentary by Ken Burns tracing the painful trip to explore the Louisiana Purchase looking for a Northwest Passage across the continent two hundred years ago. The hardest part of their trip was crossing the Rocky Mountains, which they calculated as taking a matter of hours but really took many grueling days!
I’d say the same was true for us on our trip through the Southeast, only we had to cross the Great Smoky Mountains. Our GPS estimated it would take 3.5 hours from Grandfather Mountain to our campsite at Cades Cove in Great Smoky Mountains National Park.
I don’t know if our GPS was totally screwy, but it took us way in the hay out of our way east of the mountains instead of west to Asheville.
This, only after we’d lost our GPS for a significant amount of time while wandering our way through a Blue Ridge Parkway construction detour.
Did I mention that when you travel, always bring a physical copy of a map AND printed directions for how to get from Point A to Point B, so that when you lose your signal or the GPS fails you can still find your way out of the dark recesses of the endless valleys?
This has now become a cardinal rule of motor vehicle travel for us. The other tip is: Never turn off your phone’s GPS after it has programmed your course to your next destination.
It can continue to tell you where to drive as long as you keep the program up and running, but if you shut down the GPS for any reason, and you get out of internet range, it won’t retain the directions and can’t pull them up again.
We learned this the hard way, but since our trip through the Southeast, we have done so much better with hard copies of all directions and a strict never-turn-off-your-phone policy between cities!
So, what we expected to be a pleasant afternoon drive eventually turned into a grueling trial in the dark!
I will say in their defense, the Great Smoky Mountains are beautiful. They are also appropriately named. Cherokees considered the mountains sacred and named them “Shaconage,” meaning “Land of the Blue Smoke.” They often appear blue with hazy clouds lingering over them.
The clouds are fog created by VOCs (volatile organic compounds) which the millions of trees (especially pines) exhale.
The molecules in the vapors scatter blue light, creating a blue haze.
And, so it was that we left Grandfather Mountain and spent the next eight hours twisting and turning through the mountains. Had we not felt lost so much of the time, we might have enjoyed the journey more, but it’s hard to relax when you know where you want to go but have no confidence that you’re on the right road and fear you may never get there. Do you know what I mean?
Thankfully, we saw some signs along the way, not only (precious few) road signs helping us find our way across the mountains, but signs reminding us of the all-important journey we’re all on to heaven. We all want to go to heaven, right? But, do we know the right road to get there?
Jesus taught us that there is only one way to heaven: “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6; if you’re not sure what that means, please click on the “Coming to Christ” icon at the top of this page).
On the way to our campsite, we had to pass through Pigeon Forge, Tennessee first. I’d never heard of it before, but it’s obviously a very cleverly engineered tourist trap, complete with all sorts of fun distractions that made me think of all the spiritual traps we have to negotiate before making it safely to heaven . . . like family feuds. (“I don’t want to be a Christian, because my Christian relatives are C.R.A.Z.Y!”)
Like all the cultural glitz that tries to tell us how to live, where to go, and what to think.
Like the endless worlds of fantasy, food, and the magic quest for fun.
Like the wisdom of the world that says it can’t possibly fail to bring us safely to our destination. “There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way to death” (Proverbs 14:12, ESV).
On our trip, we kept saying, “Well, at least it’s not raining, and it’s not dark!” However, late in the day there was a thunderstorm, and it eventually got so dark we could hardly see where we were going. However, after the storm there was definitely some silver lining in the clouds.
It was like a hole opened up and I could almost see heaven shining through the clouds! See that black cloud by the opening in the middle? I pictured Alan and me riding on a canoe through the clouds into heaven!
How about you? The canoe changed to a winged creature carrying someone on his back, and I remembered Psalm 18:8-11, “Smoke went up from his nostrils, and devouring fire from his mouth; glowing coals flamed forth from him. He bowed the heavens and came down; thick darkness was under his feet. He rode on a cherub and flew; he came swiftly on the wings of the wind. He made darkness his covering, his canopy around him, thick clouds dark with water” (ESV).
As blackness settled over the earth, we arrived safely at our campsite . . . weary and extremely thankful! God also leads us onward on our pilgrim journey to heaven. How about you? The LORD is the God who saves. He is the God who came down from heaven in the person of Jesus Christ to rescue us when we were lost . . . and continues to show us the way through the storms and darkness until He leads us safely home to heaven. Have you made Him your God too?
“It was fitting to celebrate and be glad, for this your brother was dead, and is alive; he was lost, and is found” (Luke 15:32, ESV).
(All photos taken on our trip from Grandfather Mountain to Great Smoky Mountains National Park.)
Summer Setting 