Desert Wayfinding

Newsletter 3: Jan 2024

My dear friends,

A blessed Ash Wednesday to you, and a happy St Valentine’s Day! How has 2024 been going? I’ve heard from some of you so far this year, but not all, and I would very much like to know how this first month or so of the year has gone for you. Mine has been quiet, yet exciting and fulfilling, and a great many other good things that have given me much to pray with and which I hope to share with participants in trip season, which is now less than a month away.

I began this year with some parting words to social media in my essay The Necessary Cessation of Content,

and continue to be humbled by the response it’s gotten from so many of you. I knew that I wasn’t the only one feeling spiritually oppressed by the Content regime, but to have so many of you tell me you feel the same and/or show your support in other ways has been very uplifting. We don’t have to live this way, weighed down by the shackles of the modern mediascape. You can just leave it behind. Many are doing so. I have, at least for now, and I honestly don’t miss it at all.

Wayfinding in the Superstition Mountains

Into the Wilderness

In the Content essay, I spoke of heading out into the desert for a time immediately following my exodus from social media. This remains a metaphorical desert as I continue through Exodus 90 with my brothers-in-fasting, but it was also a literal desert for a time. The Creatio team spent six days in the AZ backcountry last month on a training trip, sharpening our skills and testing our endurance over a week in the Superstition Mountains. The range is only a few dozen miles east of the sprawling Phoenix suburbs, but once you hike beyond the day trippers you are truly in the wilderness. It’s a tough and rugged area; arid throughout the year but prone to intense spurts of rain and hail in the winter and bitterly cold at night, as deserts often are. Water was a constant concern, though we were lucky to find unexpected puddles and pools along the way. Although the daytime temperature was mild, the sun was as relentless as I’d ever seen in January.

Miner’s Needle and a green desert after a day of rain.

Jayden, Mairéad, and I rotated roles, serving as leader of the day, co-leader, and participant throughout the trip. The head position came with the responsibility for route, pace, camp, and all other decisions of the day. We weren’t perfect, but we all did well, especially considering how often we had to alter our plans and cut our route short due to timing and other logistical concerns. Overall it was a welcome and necessary test of our backpacking skills, and the improved competency was worth sore hip bones and tired feet.

This week in the Superstitions began what I hope will become a fuller and more explicit living of this Substack’s name: Via Pulchritudinis. I have not always focused on what that means, but it’s becoming clearer to me and was central to our Sonoran journey. We were surrounded by stark, naked beauty the entire week. Hills, canyons, mountains, and cliffs carved by the hand of God Himself surrounded us the whole way through. We spent the night at two of the most amazing sites I have ever unrolled my sleeping bag, and even on the worst day, after hours of rain, I climbed to a view I could scarcely describe even if I tried. (taking no pictures, having left my camera and phone back at camp). No wonder the desert has transfixed and enamored mankind for thousands of years. It is truly a place of mystery and profound beauty.

Our first campsite, which sat on a cliff overlooking Weaver’s Needle.

Returning Home

The trip to the Superstitions was, above all, meant for honing practical skills. Of course, it was filled with much prayer and penance as well (for what else can a 60lb pack and a trudge through the rain be if not penance), but our focus was not on spiritual formation. That would have to wait until we got back to Denver.

In the weeks since, we’ve pivoted from technical outdoor skills to softer, mission-oriented skills. As most of you know, we missionary guides aren’t only there to keep participants alive while on trail, but to serve as spiritual leaders too. We give talks and lead prayer along the way in addition to keeping everyone from getting lost, handling potential medical scenarios, etc etc. These past few weeks have been spent diving deeper into our understanding of pilgrimage and workshopping talks to give along the road on trips. It’s been good, because as much as I think I understand the theology and philosophy of it, one needs to try and explain it to others to know that for sure. My talks have certainly not been perfect, but they are improving. I can’t wait to see what we three MGs can do once trip season starts. I’ll also be sharing a version of some of my talks here from time to time — whenever the Lord blesses me with a particularly good one.

The crew (with my pack standing in for me on the right), having just finished our six days in the desert.

What’s Next? Lent.

Lent starts today. 40 days of fasting and prayer in anticipation of Easter joy begins now, with Ash Wednesday. So repent my friends, repent. Renew your baptismal promises. Take up the cross once more and re-enter the fight if you have wavered, or if you never began. All good things lie on the other side of Lent, on the other side of Good Friday and Holy Saturday. The love, the reconciliation, the glory, and the freedom you have longed for comes with the Resurrection. But, to prepare, we must wrest control of our hearts, minds, and bodies from that which they are enslaved to. If we desire all good things, and we do, we must do the work of aligning our hearts with the good, with Him, with Christ.

We often hear a comforting refrain that Lent is not about suffering. That’s true, it’s not. At least, it’s not about suffering for suffering’s sake. Suffering is the road, not the destination. It’s the road by which we purify our hearts and learn to love better and better so that we might love our truest love, Jesus, with all that we are and all that we have. Like everything in the Christian life, Lent is relational. It’s patterned after Jesus’s time in the desert where He went to pray, fast, and prepare for His public ministry. Penance is not meant to make us miserable, it’s meant to help us become who we’re meant to be and do the work we’re meant to do. So I say to you, yes, you should give things up for Lent, not just take the more comfortable road of taking things up (which we are often lax with anyway). Make more time for prayer. Pray the rosary every day! Meditate on Our Lord’s life alongside Our Lady. But give up a legitimate pleasure too! Traditional Lenten fasting in some places meant no meat, dairy, fish, wine, and oil for the entire 40 days. Most of us aren’t ready for that (I’m not), but I assure you that you are capable of giving up TV, music, warm showers, shopping, snacks, or any number of other things with the intention of freeing yourself from attachments, purifying and intensifying your desires, and making more room in your life to love your God and neighbor better. Do NOT shortchange Lent. It exists for your benefit.

You are all in my prayers, always and faithfully, and especially these forty days. Please pray for me, and be intentional about your interior life. Pray, fast, receive the sacraments, return to Mass if you haven’t been, and learn to love well. Go to confession too. Most of us don’t go nearly often enough, and if you’re anything like me, you’re not saintly enough to skip it. This is an important season. Do not waste it.

We enter Lent as we enter all things: in the footsteps of our Savior.

I’ll be back soon with more updates, writing, and photos to share as trip season kicks into gear and my resolve inevitably wanes on Lenten disciplines. I look forward to your encouragement and hope I can offer the same. I’m also going to be better about checking in with you all, my friends, in the future. Freer though I may be from my phone and its trappings, I need not be free from keeping up with you and your lives. You are, even in my silence, very important to me.

in statu viae

-Ryan

I have never known silence like snow in the desert.