“Echoes on the Silent Trail”
By: Brady Koenig, Lead Naturalist
In March 2020, the grounds were quiet compared with the constant coming and going of excited children and eager retreat guests. When we would have an occasional Sunday afternoon with no guests on site, the respite was so peaceful. But this time, it has extended beyond just a respite.
Three Mondays passed and no fleet of buses arrived to release a flood of excited 5th graders.
Three Thursday nights went by without the ruckus and shenanigans that accompany every campfire night at science camp.
Three Saturdays slipped past without sounds of impassioned worshipers exalting the same God long into the night—each group to the beat of their own drums.
The forest is quiet too. Orchids bloom in the redwood duff without fear of being plucked or trampled. The squirrel and the deer and the fox no longer avoid the areas of camp usually bustling with traffic. With no early-bird campers, the songbirds have no competition for the still morning air.
I went for a walk along the trails I would usually hike my classes. Usually, I walk these trails with a throng of chattering children following in my wake. Usually, with a few straggling behind the group; always two or three clinging to me like shadows asking new questions at every bend on the trail.
Now, I turn around and there is only the empty trail behind me. Yet, I can still hear their chatter as if echoing in the forest’s memory. The sounds of my students walking behind me—their questions, their exclamations, their complaints, their labored breathing, their anticipation, their fears—their echoes. Like peering through time and memory with the help of a photo. It is as if the forest has captured their memory for me and, in the beauty and rest of the silent trail, I hear.
I hear their echoes and they delight my heart. I remember their innocent curiosity, the laughter, the jokes, the oddities, the rare gems amid the heap of social awkwardness that is early middle-school. I remember their discoveries, the perspectives, the wonder. I remember their anxieties, the shortcomings and the overcomings.
I hear their echoes and they grieve my heart. I know that these echoes are not just the voices of my prior students. They are the same voices of those who I will never hear in this forest. They are the voices of the many hundreds who so looked forward to this spring—through all of their years of elementary school to this spring. They are the echoes of students who now may never hear the stories this forest has to tell with them.
I hear. I hear their echoes and they wrench my heart. In the stillness of the redwood forest, all I can hear is what was and what might have been. Yet, all I can say is, it is good.
All I wanted on this walk was to join the forest in its silent rest. To hear the patter of the spring rain settling in the fern thickets. To watch the banana slug patiently munch on a mushroom. To smell the rotting bay leafs in the dell. To listen to the tiny Pacific Wren effortlessly warble its ballad from the redwood suckers.
Yet, as I walk past the echoes on the silent trail, there is something complex and complicated about them. Walking around the empty camp, all I can do is hear and pray. It is beautiful.
Yes, it is good; my heart is warm with gratitude. Who am I that now, after three years of walking among these redwood trees, I have shared the trails with some thousands of young people. The number alone astounds me. But I was given a position over them, even if briefly, to lead them through God’s earthly courts. That humbles me. I am thankful for “the good times.”
Thank God that somehow through all of the mistakes, shortcomings, struggle, and anxiety of life and work as a Naturalist at Alliance Redwoods… it has still been good. Surely it is only by His grace that the Good News of the Kingdom still prevails.
So now, as seasons of the World change and I look back on what was and ahead at what might have been:
God, please help me to look back with peace, being assured that you were good.
God, please help me to look ahead with hope, being assured that you are still immutably, undeniably, undimmably good.