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This past weekend I took my family camping. The real kind with an actual tent and sleeping bags. My five-year-old had been asking all summer and we finally stole a long weekend when their daycare was closed on a Friday and the weather happened to give us a glorious reprieve from the August heat. The temperature never rose above eighty all weekend.

The first night was a Thursday and we were the only people in our entire loop. It was quiet and my girls could be as rambunctious as their hearts desired (for as long as their mother could tolerate). My husband joined us Friday night. It was a good weekend, but as is true of me every time I am with my children non-stop for several days, by Saturday afternoon I was desperate for a chance to be alone. So I decided to check out a hiking trail.

I’ve been to this campground several times before. It’s beside a lake, which is pretty, but it’s Nebraska countryside, so I have no illusions. I’ve lived in Nebraska for twenty-eight years and I find it has its own innate breathtaking beauty if you’re willing to look. There was a spot this summer between Lincoln and my parents’ home when the rolling hills were vivid green, the sun practically shimmering off the golden cornrows, the sky a vivid, story-book blue that slowly turned to blended shades of blood orange, mauve, and violet as the sun set. But despite this, I have no glorious expectations of hiking trails in Nebraska. I’m used to the majestic outcroppings of the Colorado Rockies or the softer mysterious layers of the Blue Ridge Mountains when I want to hike. Nebraska has no mountains. Mostly just prairie grass and cornfields. This is why every time I’d seen this sign for a hike at this campground on previous trips, I’d outright ignored it. Yeah right, I thought. That’ll be a joke. But this time I didn’t go for the view. I was just desperate to be alone.

The earliest parts of the hike confirmed my suspicions. I passed an archery range, a stack of haybales, then a junkyard. The path seemed to be no more than a mowed stretch of field. This wasn’t going to be much, but at least it would be quiet.

Then I began to question even that. A bit down the trail I passed a couple clumps of people walking dogs, a family with children, grandparents pausing to look at a plant with a grandchild, all while smoking cigarettes. It was hard not to be irked or disappointed, but I kept going.

Eventually the path narrowed to more of a mountain biking trail, a single foot-width track of dirt through the countryside. I didn’t pass another human being for over forty-five minutes. Yes please. What’s more, I was surprised at what I found hidden on this path through countryside I had mentally written off. Because it was meant for mountain bikes, the path wound up and down hillsides, switch backing through fields. I couldn’t predict where it would turn next, or where it was eventually headed. I walked through fields of shoulder-height growth, or places where the trees and bushes were just tall enough to bury me beneath their tallest growth, but short enough to leave the sky wide open above. I startled

canopy above, like a hidden wonderland of forest I never would’ve expected to find. The further I walked, the more my soul opened. Nearly an hour into my trek, the trail skirted along the side of the lake, and I lingered, watching the water through the trees where I stood somewhat hidden. Boats and jet-skis zoomed along the water in the distance, but I soaked up the hidden gem of space I had found and had a holy moment. Leaving the trail to go back to my campsite, the noisy clusters of campers and my three-year-old wetting her pants was jarring, like leaving one realm and entering another.

The whole walk felt like layers of a spiritual metaphor. I could make plenty of analogies about trails off the beaten path of the crowds, twists and turns, trust when you can’t tell where you’re going, being tempted to quit but then being so glad I didn’t for what I found near the end. Yet what stands out to me the most is the power of being present right where you are.

I had written off this trail. I made assumptions about it and wouldn’t have gone at all if I wasn’t a desperate HSP introvert searching for some quiet away from my children. But this hidden, unassuming trail offered me beauty and a spiritual encounter. Don’t get me wrong, I still love the mountains of Colorado. My bucket list vacation is to go hiking in the Swiss Alps. But I don’t live in those places. I live right here, in Nebraska. Yet this weekend showed Nebraska also has beautiful places to offer me, if I am willing to look for them and be open to what they might be.

How often do we go through our lives searching for things that are elsewhere?

We all live in a single location. How much of our time do we spend dreaming or lusting after traveling somewhere else? We all have relationships of some kind. How much time do we spend fantasizing or wishing for different ones? Or different jobs? Different schools? Different churches? Different eras in which to exist? (I’m not going to lie, sometimes I wish I didn’t have to live and parent in the age of social media and incessant technology. What happened to kids biking around the neighborhood unsupervised and neighbors sitting on porches in the evening?! I’m an old soul at heart. But I digress.) The point is that we all live in a current moment and location in time. What does that current moment have to offer you? What are you overlooking?

I’m by no means trying to whitewash the painful qualities of life. There are many hard things about the places where we stand. Many things to grieve. Many traumas to overcome. Sometimes choosing to make a change and stand in a different place is healthy and wise. So I’m not saying we stop asking questions about considering other options for our lives. But I am saying that there are small things to notice if we have eyes to see. There are hidden trails to explore; maybe even some that aren’t so hidden. Mine had a sign and an arrow by the roadside announcing itself. Hiking, this way. I just was too cynical to trust its worth.

So look around you today. What can you find to enjoy right where you’re at? It might just be savoring the warmth of a hot mug of coffee in your hands on a cloudy-overcast morning. It might be noticing the warmth of the earth against your bare feet as you stand in the grass with your children at a campground. It might be picking a ripe tomato from your garden. It might be the smile of a curly-hair child. It might be attuning to the sound of your breath and the rise and fall of it within your body as you close your eyes and just be for a moment. It might be the loving thing your spouse does for you that you actually take time to notice, when it’s more normal for you to focus on the ten things he didn’t do that you wanted him to read your mind about. It might be intentionally taking a walk to that spot of nature that you drive by every day on your way to work and never actually slow down long enough to experience. If you are grieving or feeling depressed, it might just be a sense of presence from a friend or the divine, a fleeting moment when you recognize you are not entirely alone in your pain. I’m just guessing because I’m not you. These are perhaps more my flavor of being present. You’ll have to search out your own, but I guarantee you have them—in some form or another—if you have the courage to look.

Don’t drive past the trailhead again. Hiking, this way.

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Shalom.