Granny Gear

Every fiber in my body screamed out, “Stop!” I gasped, trying to breathe deeply, but at 13,000 feet there just wasn’t enough oxygen to satisfy. My pack felt like it weighed two hundred pounds. There was an uncomfortably cool breeze coming up-slope and my sweat was drying in place.

I forced myself to look up. The trail rose ahead of me and became even steeper. I had thought that I was getting near the pass, but then, I had thought that twice before on this long grind of a grade, only to crest a false summit and see the trail stretch on ahead, level for several hundred yards and then up the next incline.

I didn’t want to go on; I couldn’t go on, but I could not stop here, either. I didn’t want to get caught above the timberline by the daily thunderstorms that gathered over the peaks. Even now, I could see the clouds getting organized.

True confessions: I’m neither an athlete nor the son of an athlete.I thought to myself: "There are many backpackers in far superior condition and maybe they would not have even raised a sweat going over this pass.

But they’re not here, and I am, and I’ve got to carry this pack with what strength I’ve got, not what strength they’ve got, and I’ve got to get over this pass and down the other side and into the timber before the weather hits.

And frankly, its not real helpful to think of other guys who could do it better, because right now, I’m the guy that’s got to do it."

There was only one thing to do. Drop it into granny gear and keep moving, so that’s what I did. Granny gear has saved my bacon on more than one occasion.

Everybody’s got a granny gear, and sooner or later, everyone’s got to drop it into granny. Even the young bucks, the athletes. Let me tell you what it looks like.

 First of all, you’ve got to be in the right mood for granny gear. Granny gear is what’s left when you’re done, played out, when you’ve got nothing left but you must keep going. Re-read the first sentence of this essay. That’s when you’re in the right mood for it.

Second, you’ve got to know how to do it. It’s actually quite simple. When I drop ‘er into granny, my stride goes to less than the length of my boot. Depending on the incline, it might go as low as one-quarter the length of my boot. Don’t recall it ever getting any shorter than that.

You just put one foot down after another, making, maybe, six inches of progress with each step. And you just keep going, and you don’t stop. You don’t listen to your lungs, and you don’t listen to your legs, and most importantly you don’t listen to that voice inside your brain that’s begging you to stop. You just keep going.

Third, you’ve got to know where to look—and it’s not down. You don’t look at the trail (you’re moving slow enough where you don’t need to, unless you’ve gotten to a switchback and there’s a dropoff involved). You especially don’t look at the feet of the person ahead of you, if there is anyone ahead of you. Nothing saps your energy like that. Don’t look down.

No, you force yourself to remember why you’re here to begin with: because you are surrounded by the most glorious scenery on the face of God’s green earth, so you lift your weary head and like a thirsty man you drink in the beauty.

Granny gear. Thank God for granny gear. I’ve used it on many occasions, on many backpack trips, and it’s always gotten me to a place where I could legitimately stop and set up camp.

Did you realize, Christian, that not only do you have a spiritual granny gear, but you’ve also got occasions in which God is expecting you to use it? It’s for times when you must go on, and you can not stop, and every fiber in your spirit is saying, “please, can’t I just quit?”

Exactly why do you imagine that someone of the caliber of John Piper wrote a book entitled, “When I don’t desire God, how to fight for joy?” I expect it was because there are times when Dr. Piper finds himself having to . . . fight for joy. Or why do you think that he condensed it into a smaller book entitled, “When the darkness will not lift?” Maybe because he’s experienced that? You think?

Did you know that Charles Haddon Spurgeon, one of the greatest preachers of the last 300 years, wrestled with depression? Did you know that Martin Luther did, too? Did you know that the apostle Paul did, on at least one occasion (read 2 Corinthians 1-7 carefully, and be sure to at least check out 7:6 in the NASB).

Let me share with you a few parallels between backpacking with a granny gear, and walking in Christ.

Your path: Face it, your trail has got one too many, or ten too many, high passes. You’re going to wear out and want to quit. But you can’t quit, you must finish your course, and you can finish your course because He has equipped you to do so. In Philippians 1:6, Paul shares this confidence with us: “For I am confident of this very thing, that He who began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Christ Jesus.”

Your attitude: High altitudes and the decreased atmosphere can do funny things to your attitude. Something that starts out fun (maybe its even a vacation, maybe you even paid out big bucks to do it) becomes something you no longer feel like doing, no longer want to do. Life as a new believer in Christ can be exhilarating, but sooner or later you will find yourself wondering where the joy went. That’s when you face a fork in the path. You can either take the easy fork that leads back down into the pleasant meadow, or you stay the course, grind it out, and get over the summit. The problem with the easy fork is that when you wake up in the morning you’re still on the wrong side of the mountain.

 The fork you face as a believer is whether you are going to chase pleasant feelings, or learn to walk by faith. A walk by faith is exactly that: nothing confirms that it’s the right way to go except the map itself (the Bible). You don’t feel like doing it, you desperately want to quit, but you don’t. Because you are walking by faith, not by sight (2 Co 5:7). Paul says this about that in 2 Corinthians 4:16-18 “Therefore we do not lose heart, but though our outer man is decaying, yet our inner man is being renewed day by day. For momentary, light affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory far beyond all comparison, while we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen; for the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal.”

Your altitude: It’s a truism in the Rockies that the higher you go the more beautiful the view. I’ll vouch for that: I’ve found nothing that competes with the grandeur of a vista at thirteen-five, or fourteen thousand. But getting there is a beast, and for me, it almost always requires granny gear at some point. Walking by faith is exhausting, daunting, discouraging. But I’ve heard that the view from the top makes it worth it all. Jesus, for the joy that was set before Him, endured the cross (Heb 12:2). If the earthly tent, which is our house, is torn down, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands (2 Co 5:1). Therefore, “forgetting what lies behind and reaching forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 3:13-14)

Your posture: if you look down, if you look at the feet of others, the walk becomes misery. But if you will raise your eyes, and drink in the view that brought you here in the first place, which is the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ (2 Co 4:6), you will gain new strength.

Your camp: when, exhausted, you are finally able to set up camp on the right side of the mountain, there’s no joy that compares with the knowledge that you have arrived, and that supper, and rest, is coming. I don’t need to draw the parallels here for you, now, do I? Just think of Paul’s victory cry in 2 Timothy 4:7-8 “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the course, I have kept the faith; in the future there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will award to me on that day; and not only to me, but also to all who have loved His appearing.”

Granny gear. There’s no shame in using it. Nuts, some of us live in it. We all come equipped with it, because the Designer has planned some trails that are going to be rather tough.

And in His love, He gave us granny gear: that ability, empowered by the Spirit of God, to keep moving when we’ve got nothing left, by putting one foot just a tiny bit ahead of the other, over and over again, until we crest that pass.

Don’t quit. Stay with it. In the strength of Christ, you can do it.

Remembering Dad

My dad died a little over a year ago. April 15th was his birthday; never had a problem remembering his birthday, it fell on tax day every year.

Dad and Lou and I made a habit of getting together once a year when dad started getting a little older. We wanted to have fun together, and add to our collection of shared experiences. Boy, do we have some good memories.

Well, true confessions. Dad had to get both his knees replaced. We blew 'em out in Colorado. Hadn't planned on it, but that's what happened. If you're gonna blow your knees out, do it in Colorado - no better place for it.

Anyway, it was the summer of 1990. I met Dad and Lou at Stapleton International Airport (it was still Stapleton back then) with all their backpack gear. We rented a car, drove to a little flea-bag motel in Glenwood Springs, planning to hit the trail the next day.

"What's that?" I said, pointing to a coffee pot sitting in Lou's stuff on the bed in the motel. We had all our gear out, loading up the packs. Dad never knew it, but Lou and I managed to keep most of the weight out of Dad's pack. After all, he was 67 years old; Lou and I were just a couple of young bucks.

"It's a coffee pot," Lou said, emphasizing it like, duh, can't you see?

"Yeah, and it's not goin'. Too much weight. I've got instant coffee," I replied. I considered myself the backpacking expert, which was a little preposterous, since Lou was the one who taught me how.

"It's goin'."

"No, it's not, Lou. Too much weight!" I insisted.

Lou looked up from his packing, fixed his eyes on mine, and said quietly, "If it doesn't go, I don't go. And not only that, this pound of coffee's going, too. I'm not drinking that stuff," he said, pointing at my little bag of instant. Well, Lou didn't say, 'stuff', he's got a different lexicon, but you got the picture.

I know my big brother. And I knew with that quiet, calm, comment he just made, this was a battle I wasn't going to win. Okay, Lou.

Since we're talking about coffee (how did we get on this subject?), let me say a word about the dive we stayed in that night. They offered continental breakfast. Yeah, right. It amounted to a banana and a cup of coffee, and the serving area was slightly smaller than a phone booth.

Wait, that's an anachronism, isn't it? If you're under thirty, you probably don't even know what a phone booth is. Hmm, what's a similar size? Okay: the serving area had about the same square footage as a porta-potty, and roughly the same appeal.

Anyway, I poured myself a cup of coffee in one of those little styrofoam cups, and when it was full, I could still see down to the bottom of the cup. Think water with a drop of brown food coloring.

We ate at MacDonalds.

So on to the trailhead in the Flattops Wilderness Area. We could not wait to hit the trail.

Dad needed a little help getting mounted up. He was no neophyte. He'd done a great deal of camping, including from horseback. But it took him a bit to get used to his pack.

This is my big brother. We were ready for a great trip. He was carrying the coffee pot. And the real coffee. And the sugar.

I had my little ziplock of Instant. Could have saved myself the weight. Never did use that instant coffee. Haven't since. Can't abide by the stuff.

Guess I learned a little bit more about backpacking from Lou: there's some weight that doesn't count--you just bring it. Amen, bro!

We weren't lost. You don't get lost walking up to Marvine Lakes from the trailhead. If you do, you'd better just stay home.

Reminds me of a little story. Was recruiting a group of fathers and sons for a backpack trip. Used to take folks on "backpacking Bible studies" in the Rockies. Anyway, I was giving the group my bona fides, and explaining my experience, how many hundreds of trail miles I had under my boots. Voice from the back of the room piped up, "shoulda been half that; he keeps getting lost!"

Thank you, Dave Linebaugh. Dave should know. Went on every trip I led. Dear brother in Christ. Great friend. Prone to saying embarrassing things about me, though.

Now, where was I? Oh, yeah. We weren't lost. Just having a little, ah, map discussion.

Here's dad. Want to guess what he's saying?

Wait  . . .  wait . . . are you ready for it?

"Chris, are we almost there yet?"

No, Dad, we've got some streams to cross, and a few miles to go. We wound up camping at a spot halfway to the lakes. Don't want to shoot our whole wad in one day.

Lou and I fixed supper while dad got some fishing in. Interesting role reversal. We told Dad what time to be back, and told him not to be late. We both remembered times camping in New Mexico in the late fifties early sixties when Dad was saying that to us.

Louie wound up having to go hunt him down. He was having too much fun fishing.

We had coffee that night. Real coffee. They were very kind, and shared it with me. You've not had a cup of coffee till you're sitting on a log at 8000 feet elevation, with coyotes crooning down the valley, the air at a snappy 45 degrees, surrounded by the Rocky Mountains and under a sky of diamonds in black velvet, moon rising over a ridge to the east. Oh, my.

Next day we mounted up and resumed our little stroll in the woods.

Have you ever forded a stream fed by snow melt? You've got to be real careful, because when you first step in it, after about a minute in the ice water it feels like someone's clobbering your shins with a club. You endure a few minutes where your legs feel ready to collapse.

Here's what I do. Take your pack off, and put your fording shoes on. Step in the stream and stay put until the pain is too much to bear. Step back out (and if you're smart, you've already picked some nice spot to sit down, because you will sit down, like it or not). Wait until the pain has subsided, then mount up and cross the stream. You'll be fine. If you don't do this, you could wind up going down mid-stream. Then you're going to be really cold. Not to mention wet.

Finally we arrive at the lower end of Marvine lakes. Dad is like a cat watching a bird through a screen window. He's even making some of the same noises. Just can't wait to get a line in the water. Well, brother Lou and I know Dad. If we cut him loose, there are gonna be trout for dinner.

You go fish, dad, we'll set up camp.

Sure enough. Dad comes back with a limit. He's happy. We're happy. What a special time this is! What a special memory!

When we first arrived there was a horse camp several hundred yards away, but they pulled out, and we had the lakes to ourselves. We've got a very cosy camp.

Dad snores. I mean, like, over the 100 decibel range. I was afraid he'd call a bunch of grizzlies right out of Montana.  Come to think of it, I wonder if that's why those horse-campers left? Maybe that's why we had the place to ourselves the rest of the week. Just too much racket at night. Probably spooked the horses.

I don't remember if we drew straws, or my very intelligent brother simply planned it this way. But dad was my tarp-mate. Strong coffee at night with a partner that snores is not a winning formula for a good night's sleep. Not sure if I did get any sleep. Probably by the third night or so, out of sheer exhaustion.

All too soon it was time to go. Okay, it wasn't too soon. We ran out of coffee. And none of us wanted to touch that instant stuff. By the last day or so we were reusing grounds over and over again. Our coffee was starting to look like the Flea-Bag Motel coffee. It was, therefore, time to go. Besides, Dad's got to leave some of these trout for someone else. Wouldn't be right if he caught 'em all.

So, we mount up, our sights on a shower, a massive steak, and a warm bed. And a good cup of coffee. Actually, those were our long term sights. Lou and Dad had hid a beer for themselves in the stream down at the trailhead by the car; I hid a can of pepsi. That's what our immediate thoughts were on. The steak would come later. Later, today, that is.

Was a year later or so that Dad's knees gave out. But he would not have traded that time for the whole wide world.

Love you, Dad. Love you, Lou. I'll never forget that trip. And they never let me forget that coffee!