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Today as I left work, I set my out-of-office reply, on nine different email accounts, to read “I will be out of the office until further notice with no access to email, telephone, radio, or Morse-code communications.” This message is posted once a year (when possible); and it is liberating.  My leave form, a formal legal contract between myself and the US Government, has my Leave Destination listed as a trailhead (and, no, I am not going to tell you which one).

By the time you read this, I will be in the middle of the Pecos National Wilderness sitting the hurricane deck of an Idaho mountain horse I have never seen, exploring God’s Creation as He meant it. In a tangible, first-hand, sight-smell-sound-spiritual, sort of way. 

For the next seven days, I will commune with nature, talk to Jesus, make memories, and continue a tradition as old as the stories of my family.

My Grandfather’s church was a mountain. Or a marsh. Or a meadow.  He was a scientist. A wildlife biologist and a conservationist.  He believed that religion got in the way of Creation and therefore refused to step inside a church, save for weddings and some funerals.  His cathedrals were alpine cirques in which Rocky Mountain Sheep and marmots caroused and played.  His altars were the snow-capped Wind River and Medicine Bow Mountain Ranges of his native Wyoming.  He sought God where God was; and somehow he understood that Jesus was his Salvation.

Thus he taught me, in his way, to respect the Creator, to understand our Dominion, and to conserve that which is granted us by Divine Proclamation. 

I have recognized, though, that I do need religion. Still, whenever life allows, I head to the high country.  God’s Country.  This year I had the fortune to draw an elk tag, along with my brother-in-law from Idaho, in the Pecos Wilderness.  Tomorrow, I meet Alan and his pack mules and we will go where the job cannot find me.  We will camp and explore and frolic (yes, I said frolic, as if I were a child; for that is how I will feel - giddy and liberated).

I will use this hunt as an excuse.  Not only a selfish excuse to leave our crazy world behind for a little bit, but also as a spiritual excuse to be closer to my Creator and my Savior.  When my church is the mountain, there are no emails; there are no phone calls; there are no interruptions; there are no excuses.

I must face my God as who I am, for I am stripped of the trappings of busy-ness and modernity.

I am humbled by those things greater than myself and I am forced to reflect on my shortcomings and my strengths.  Generally, the list of the former is significantly longer than the latter.

This is how my family has lived, worked, and worshipped for generations. I learned these things from my Granddad, an unlikely minister, as he had learned them from his. So it has been passed, commune with the Creator, from generation to generation.  And so, too, shall my children learn of His wonder, within His Splendor.

They will, with God’s Grace, learn the power of walking away in order to walk toward a personal relationship that I can only tell them about but they must experience.

I awake to the sound of my dad stirring in the pitch black night and within a few moments the light of the old Coleman lantern begins to fill the tent with a soft glow. The year is 1971 and my dad, brother and I are awakening to opening morning of deer season in southeastern New Mexico’s Guadalupe Mountains.

It was the first of many hunting trips that have drawn me nearer to God, through the celebration and wonder of His creation.

Since that experience, hunting adventures have taken me to many of New Mexico and Southern Colorado’s most treasured landscapes. From the rocky and cactus filled country of the Bootheel, to the cool, conifer and aspen covered mountains of Northern New Mexico and Colorado.

My dad, who was a farmer most of his life, understood the connection to the natural world as much as anyone I have ever known. That connection was passed along to my brother and me. The past twenty years, while people we know have taken trips to Disneyland or other faraway places, my wife and I have taken our two sons to explore New Mexico’s great outdoors. Much of this time spent hunting New Mexico’s wildest landscapes in search of wild game.

Today only around 5% of our country’s population participates in hunting, making my family a minority in an increasingly urban society. The naiveté of my way of life has led to many questions about why I hunt.

Although I often try to explain about the meat hunting provides my family, the memories we make in the field, and the breathtaking landscapes we get to visit, further reflection reveals it is much more than that.

Psalms 19:1 and Roman’s 1:20 speak to the majesty of God’s creation and describe the two ways He reveals Himself to us. One is the special revelation which is God revealing himself through scripture and through Christ, The second way is the General Revelation that God is revealing Himself to all mankind through His creation.

When I read these passages I recognize why I feel drawn to the outdoors and hunting. In the great outdoors I most profoundly feel the awesomeness of God through His creation. Sitting in a duck blind as a hint of pink pierces the eastern horizon, traversing rugged mountain landscapes in search of a mule deer buck, or listening to the sound of a bugling bull on an otherwise completely silent morning. Walking the quiet of a desert with family in search of Gambel’s quail or waiting near a farmer’s field for dove to pass overhead. Each an example of the remarkable access we have to our Creator through the General Revelation.

God reveals His most intimate characteristics through His creation; characteristics of might, intelligence, and order.

His creation is a testimony to His existence. And it is creation that allows me to feel a closer connection to Him. This connection cannot be obtained in society’s urban settings; God does not say He will reveal himself through man-made institutions or structures, in sports, work or other aspects of our culture’s prominent values.

He does say He will reveal himself through His creation and that is ultimately why hunting in wild places has given me so much pleasure. There can be no greater connection to the natural world, than in search of wild game. And it is through this connection, that I am most aware of His presence as He uses the most majestic aspects of His creation to greet me.

“For since the creation of the world, God’s invisible qualities–his eternal power and divine nature–have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.” Romans 1:20

Hunting waterfowl isn’t the first thing that comes to mind about living in New Mexico. After all, ducks need water, and this state happens to be one of the driest in the country.

Waterways and duck marshes are definitely in short supply in the Land of Enchantment. However, they do exist. 

There is an amazing contrast between the desert and the water-filled marshes in which ducks make their home.

On many a cold, dark morning, my sons and I have traversed sandy, desert ravines by the light headlamps to makeshift blinds on the edge of oases. Decoy bags, shotguns and, at times, a RoboDuck, are all part of the luggage we carry down through the desert, making our way to the water.

As we find the water and set the decoys, a hint of pink makes its way into the eastern horizon, while ducks are darting from one end of the marsh to the other. 

It is a beautiful sight in perhaps one of the most unusual places.

As we settle-in just off the decoy set, we begin to load our shotguns and prepare for legal shooting time. 

This ritual has been part of the Young household for close to 25 years now. Although, I didn’t have an opportunity to duck hunt while growing up in southeastern New Mexico, it has become part of our family’s winter ritual. Eventually, after a number of years of hunting with my dad and brother, my two sons became part of the mix. It is during these years that the experiences became even more precious and more intimate.

Through the years, my sons and I have limited-out on numerous occasions, giving more life to an already growing passion. Brilliant red sunrises, hundreds of brightly colored waterfowl darting across the morning sky, the sound of shotgun fire piercing the early morning silence are all part of the experience in the desert. 

Waterfowl passion. Creation passion.

All in a state so dry you could literally walk a hundred miles and never find a drop of water. Yet, incredibly, in the middle of this desert, there is living water that provides for thousands of migrating waterfowl.

As I ponder the contrast between this water-dependent sport and our dry desert state, it is easy to see the implications for our own lives. As water fowlers, we would never experience the thrill of hunting without the water that provides for the ducks. And as human beings, we would never experience the peace that exists in knowing and having a relationship with our Lord Jesus Christ. 

As we wander at times aimlessly through our own deserts, there He is, providing the living water we need to thrive if we will only accept it. 

“Jesus answered, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give them, will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life. - John 4:13-14