Soaking in salvation springs

In 1988, my wife, Victoria, and I hiked the entire Appalachian Trail in a single 2,135-mile hike. For six months, our main concern was for the real basics—food, shelter, and water. Most of the time, we easily met those needs for the essentials. We could get off the Trail every five to seven days to find a store and resupply with food. We carried a tent with us for shelter and sometimes stayed in the three-sided Trail shelters provided for hikers along the Appalachian Trail. Water, however, that most basic of necessities, proved to be the most difficult to manage.

There were times when we had far too much water. Once in Virginia, we were saturated with eight days in a row of heavy rains. Each day, we trudged through a downpour, sloshing down the Trail in wet boots. Further to the north, in New Jersey, New York and Connecticut, the rains stopped completely. Springs dried up, streams slowed to a trickle and many of the water sources we relied on were gone. Hiking 15 to 20 miles a day, our bodies were burning through water faster than we could find it along the Trail.

In Massachusetts, on a blazing hot day we hit a point where we simply could not go any further. Our canteens had only a tiny bit of warm water held in reserve. Our throats were dry. Our bodies craved water and there was no water to be found. In desperation, we got off the Trail on a western Massachusetts back road looking for water.

There were no houses in sight. After going around a bend in the road, we saw a house with a water spigot by the garage door. Water! Lots of water. We quickened our pace anxious to get water from the hose.

A sense of decorum kicked in as we dashed toward the house. Politely, we went to the door and knocked, almost hoping no one was home so that we could quickly get to the hose and drink our fill. A woman answered, looking a little puzzled to find sweaty, smelly backpackers on her doorstep. Her husband joined her at the door as Victoria and I explained our parched predicament.

Instantly, they escorted us into their kitchen where they plied us with cold lemonade from the refrigerator and warm cookies right out of the oven. They topped off our canteens with fresh water and added ice cubes to keep the water cold. Victoria and I felt that we were in the most luxurious oasis.

Of course, to Roy and Marilyn Wiley, the couple who extended the hospitality, it was just their kitchen. There was nothing special about what they offered. The tap water was always at the ready. The refrigerator almost always had lemonade or something else cold to drink inside. They didn’t even know the Appalachian Trail passed near their house.

The Wileys had no idea that water was in such short supply for hikers. Later, we heard that the hikers who came after us would find a sign where the Appalachian Trail crossed that western Massachusetts back road. The Wileys found the A.T. and put a sign up to let thirsty hikers know that they were welcome to come up to their house to get water.

Sixteen years have passed since a drought caused Victoria and me to go knocking on the Wiley’s door. I looked the couple up in The Appalachian Trail Thru-Hiker’s Companion. It’s a guide with the where-to-find info hikers need to make the more than 2,150 miles from Georgia to Maine. They were in the book. Hikers know Marilyn now as the “Cookie Lady.” The water spigot by the garage door is always available to hikers and the book notes that homemade cookies are often available too.

The Wileys phone number was there in the book, so I gave them a call. They still remember us, not by name actually. But they never forgot the couple that came up to their doorstep in need of water. Marilyn told me, “You enjoyed the cookies so much, that I tried to keep fresh cookies around for hikers.” Our need was so great and so easily met, the Wileys couldn’t help but help others. I thanked them and hung up, amazed by the ongoing hospitality of this couple.

Imagery drawn from water abounds in the Bible. In the first Psalm, a person who meditates on God’s teaching day and night is compared to a tree planted by streams of water. In Jeremiah, the Lord is a fountain of living water.

Jesus uses water in this metaphoric sense when he talks to a woman at the village well under a hot Palestinian sun. Jesus said, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.”

In a spiritual sense, we can be like the Wileys who needed some hot, dry hikers to appear on their doorstep to even appreciate what a gift they had in a water spigot out by the garage door. Those of us who are Christians enjoy the amazing gift of an ongoing relationship with God through his son Jesus. We get so soggy sloshing around in the springs of salvation that we can forget that we live in a desert country.

While Camden County is largely culturally Christian, we are surrounded everywhere we go by people who are lost and don’t even know it. They are thirsty for living water and identify that thirst for God as something else, chasing after other things to fill the void—work, relationships, alcohol, and drugs—anything but the one relationship that would satisfy the thirst.

The Holy Spirit is already out their breaking the dry, dusty soil, preparing the way. Most of us are not called to be evangelists in the sense of preaching the Gospel to get folks to convert to the faith. But all Christians are obligated by their baptism to share the water of life with others. All we have to do is be aware that we have something to offer. When you see someone grieving, hurting, lost, remember that they may not be tapped into the source of life. Handing out tracts will never turn people to faith the way an honest, ongoing relationship with a person of faith can.

It may not sound like much to offer to pray with someone, or to offer to be with him or her in their hurt. But to the person you reach out toward with God’s love, it could very well be the water of life drenching the dry, but fertile soil of their heart.

(The Rev. Frank Logue is pastor of King of Peace Episcopal Church in Kingsland.)

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