BACKPACKING WITH THE SAINTS

Over the last 25 years, there has been a huge revival in pilgrimages along with a rising popularity of seeing life through the metaphor of a journey - this includes journeys to other realms. The road to Compostela is much more crowded than it was as many people use this reflective time as an exploration of meaning and depth. In this delightful and instructive book, Belden Lane continues in the tradition of Thoreau and especially John Muir by combining philosophical and spiritual reflections with journeys into the wilderness. He is emeritus professor of theological studies, American religion and history spirituality at St Louis University.

His solitary spiritual treks with only basic camping equipment provide a framework of simplicity and mindful connection with nature, although often accompanied by his own account by a dram. At the beginning of the book are a number of striking quotations including Friedrich Nietzsche that all truly great thoughts are conceived by walking and Sigurd Olson that simplicity in all things is the secret of wilderness and one of its most valuable lessons. It is what we leave behind that is important. After an introductory part on the power of wilderness and the reading of dangerous texts, the author divides his pattern of wilderness spirituality into the four phases of a journey: departure from the world of restless activity on a quest; the need to adopt a discipline involving solitude, travelling light and practising mindfulness; a descent into darkness and despair, wrestling with fear and failure; and finally delight having endured the desert ordeal, so the traveller returns with new gifts. Each of these phases is divided into chapters vividly describing his adventures and text that he took with him. These include St Columba, St Therese of Lisieux, Thomas Traherne, Soren Kierkegaard, Dag Hammarskjold, Thich Nhat Hahn, St John of the Cross, Martin Luther, The Cloud of Unknowing, Rumi, Teilhard de Chardin, Gandhi and Thomas Merton - rich fare indeed.

As a university professor, these excursions provide a break from the mind and words, an opportunity to focus on the body and the demands of the trail. Taking a saint along with you is not necessarily a comfortable experience, but a reminder of the essential truths that we neglect at our peril. Pushing one's physical limits reveals new things about oneself and the discipline of going without, being alone and leaving no trace of one's presence. He also draws parallels with the Desert Fathers who also spent long periods in solitude. The narrative of the book weaves together evocative descriptions of his experiences with insights from his texts and biographical details of the authors and the challenges they faced. It turns out that many of the saints quoted read outside - St Cuthbert used to read the Psalms waist deep in the sea off Northumberland's coast. Being in Nature allows one to reflect the surrounding landscape and also enter an interior wilderness. Lane quotes the virtues of the desert father John Climacus, introducing what were for me the new concepts of haplotes or the simplicity of non-attachment, agrupnia, a watchfulness or vigilance about everything without and within, aphobia or a fearless resistance to threats, and finally anaesthesia in its true sense of thoughtless negligence, which is the opposite of attentiveness.

Thomas Traherne reminds Lane of the importance of wonder as he trekked on Good Friday with a splitting headache, helping him to identify with the Passion of Christ although feeling trapped in what he called a middle space, a void of liturgical eternity when Traherne is summoning him to reckless abandonment while he just feels himself full of yearning but chained to old and unfinished desires. Then Kierkegaard invites him to understand the four gifts of solitude: separating the individual from the crowd, the ability to nurture one's true self, access to the mystery found at the core of our being, and the way in which it connects us to the hidden community of the natural world. Dag Hammarskjold's life was intensely public and private at the same time, as was revealed in his book Markings after his probable assassination. He had an inner simplicity reflected in backpacking philosophy, travelling light in a spiritual sense.

Sometimes the going gets rough in terms of fear, failure and dying - here the author is accompanied in the dark night of the soul by St John of the Cross, Luther and the Cloud of Unknowing. He reflects on his failure to climb Mount Whitney, taking consolation in the fact that John Muir did not manage it on his first attempt either: 'failure points us back to the true measure of our worth, to something grounded in nothing that we do, but only in what we are.' An aspect of the overall context of the book is Lane's impending retirement and entry into a new kind of wilderness. As part of this he describes the life and death of his dog, a stray who turned out to be an important teacher as well as companion.

The last part brings us to Teilhard, Gandhi and Merton, to a deeper engagement with the world and injustice, linking spirituality with politics through soul force. Merton was one of the first Christians to engage seriously with Zen, remarking that in prayer we discover what we already have and experience what we already possess - and in the wilderness we are taken both outside ourselves and deeply into ourselves. What we thought was out there is in fact in here, but we still need to take the journey in order to discover this. We can go beyond contemplative reading (lectio divina) to what the author calls lectio terrestris, reading the book of nature while mindfully exercising all our senses. This remarkable book is an invitation to take both an inner and an outer journey into intensity and immensity at the same time.