Sixteen- and 18-year-old guys are tougher than they use to be.

I’ve been taking guys in this age range backpacking for about 10 years now. I have always been able to lead them up the toughest climb or at least stay back to encourage the slower ones along.

It didn’t work so well this past weekend with Gregory Hayes and Levi Walker on the tough route to Hobbs Cabin.

I first tackled this climb with my son about 15 years ago when he was 12. We struggled up the face of Coppinger Gulf together and made it to the top to enjoy a stay at Hobbs Cabin.

This past weekend, we started with an easy run around the South Rim in the rain. Perhaps it was my fault Greg and Levi got soaked overnight because I didn’t instruct them on how to properly tighten their rain fly. I learned that lesson by experience. Perhaps they will, too.

The following morning, we started down into the gorge on rain-slick rocks. My footing was worse than usual and I slipped on every rock. Perhaps I was favoring my bad knee more than I realized.

As we reached the bridge over Savage Creek, I talked the guys into a brief break, know that the next two miles were the toughest in the park. I slowly trudged off up the trail getting slower as I went. Eventually, Greg moved on ahead and Levi gratuitously hung back with me. Before we got to the dreaded final vertical climb to the top, Levi moved on ahead. As I got near the steep boulders on the top ledge, Levi had come back down to see how I was doing. Without hesitation, I willingly handed my pack over to him knowing I was relinquishing my man card. For it is written – Thou shalt shoulder thine own backpack every step of the journey.

Perhaps it is the bum knee. Perhaps it is the lack of cardio related to the bum knee. Perhaps it is the extra 25 pounds related to the lack of cardio. I don’t know what the problem is, but if these young Turks keep getting tougher, I’m going to have to hang up my backpack.

It was 35 years ago today.  I was a young soldier.  She was a sweet little blond girl with the coolest blue eyes.

We stood in front of an Army chaplain in a Quonset hut chapel in Yongsan, Seoul, South Korea, with a few friends gathered and said our vows.

It’s a long and involved story, but love stories always are.

She actually stuck with me all these years – for richer, for poorer; in sickness, in health – and all that other stuff that happens over 35 years.  I don’t think there was ever a time when we even thought about not going the distance.  That is a tribute to her patience and perseverance.

She coped with me being gone – from that first summer away at Fort Riley, to hundreds of weekends and annual training adventures to who-knows-where, to Egypt, Panama, Brazil, Belgium, Columbia, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and I have forgotten where else.

She put up with the late nights, long hours and never-quit-digging passion of a newspaper reporter.  She rocked along with the constant travel schedule of my LifeWay days.  She never waivered with the uncertainty of my venture into business ownership.

She held the family together.  She was the stabilizing influence even in times when I wasn’t really certain about how things were going to play out.

Now, in some ways, we are back as we were.  It’s just the two of us.  Our schedule is tremendously more flexible.  And, life is good.

It has been an interesting adventure.  There are things I’d probably change if I had a replay.  But, the commitment we made 35 years ago today – I wouldn’t change it for anything.  I’d do it all over again.  It may have been the smartest thing I ever did.

Emmylou Harris and I are singing the same song.  Those who know me, or have ever heard me sing, cringe at that image.

But, Emmylou Harris, Dave Matthews, Kathy Mattea, Big Kenny and a host of other country music headliners have organized a campaign to raise awareness about Mountain Removal coal mining – a topic I have commented on in previous blogs.

I realize that Mountain Removal coal mining may not be as significant as Darfur or other international crises.  Even so, entire communities in the Appalachians are being destroyed with this practice.

In short, this is what is happening: Coal companies actually remove mountaintops to get at coal veins.  The mountaintops are then dumped into the valleys creating a moonscape, destroying streams and wildlife habitat, and displacing communities that have existed for multiple generations.

More than 500 Appalachian peaks have been destroyed.  I don’t know how many peaks there are in the Appalachians but I do know God hasn’t make any new ones in the last few thousand years and there is really no expectation that he will replace these that have been destroyed by idiot coal companies.

Removing mountaintops to extract coal makes about as much sense as drilling for oil in the Alaskan wilderness.  Just check with the Gulf Coast to see how well that has gone for them lately.

It seems there are two ways to move a mountain.  On is the biblical method using the faith of a mustard seed.  I’m not aware of a documented case of that being put into practice.  The other is a coal company and a truckload of dynamite.  We can see that in northeast Tennessee, southwestern Virginia, West Virginia and eastern Kentucky.   It is not pretty or poetic.

Tennessee Sen. Lamar Alexander has weighed in opposing this devastating practice.  Tennessee’s lieutenant governor who is running for governor thinks Mountaintop Removal is an acceptable practice.

To learn more about what participating musicians are doing with this project, check out www.MusicSavesMountains.org.

Much to my wife’s dismay, I have long said that when I can’t limp from the parking lot into Wal-Mart that my son will take me out and shoot me.

For years I have chided those with knee injuries and joint problems, insisting that they just suck it up and move on.  That probably was never a good position to take considering that my wife has had multiple foot and knee surgeries.

I have prided myself in my ability to keep running and backpacking along with guys fully a third my age.  But, it may be time to take me out and shoot me.

Today, I go to the orthopedic dude to see how bad it is.  It started innocently enough.  My knee started aching a bit while getting back into spring running.  I laid off for a week getting ready for a backpacking trip.  On Wednesday before planning to leave Thursday morning for a 27-mile hike, my knee started killing me.  I limped around the office to the point where I reluctantly called off my backpacking plans.  You don’t know how damaging that was to my pride.

No matter how much pain relief drugs I threw at it, I just had Kodachrome dreams but no pain relief.  I finally had to admit that it was a problem and schedule the visit to the orthopedic guy.

Perhaps it is not as bad as I am prepared for, but this can only signal the beginning of the end.  Maybe I can still backpack.  Running may have to be reevaluated.  My love for food is definitely going to have to be moderated.  Dang, getting old is a pain.  Admitting it is just plain humiliating.

With our air conditioning, water on tap and countless other conveniences we don’t even think about, it is difficult for us to understand springs of water in a dry and thirsty land.

In hot, dry, and dusty Ghana, springs of water are the lifeline of existence.

As we headed to the outer regions of the village one day, we moved on beyond the village to an area where the terrain fell away to what we soon discovered was a riverbed.  The river was a cool welcome relieve from the hot sun.  The area suddenly came alive with birds, butterflies, small creatures and lush green grass.

We wandered along the river until we came to a mango grove.  Unlike the occasional mango tree that provided a brief respite from the heat, this was a sudden haven from the sweltering sun.

Suddenly, the temperature dropped seemingly 20 degrees or more.  The air felt comfortable rather than hot and scorching.  Birds were everywhere.   We hung around in the grove for a while as Greg climbed one tree and then another.

Eventually, we left the oasis and headed back out into the harsh sun.  It seemed even more harsh after experiencing the blessing of the trees.

In our life, we need to find the occasional oasis.  We need to get out of the harsh sun of life and soak in the cool streams of living water and grace.  Have you been there lately?

We shy away from discussion of spiritual warfare in the United States, but Ghana is perhaps on the front line of spiritual warfare in a way we don’t want to acknowledge.

People in Ghana are torn between Christianity, spirit worship with the many African Traditional Religions and Muslim influence.  It is not uncommon for a Christian family to have some involvement in spirit worship.

It was my sister who made the very clear connection to spiritual warfare when my blog was hacked with some pretty ugly stuff while I was in Africa.  After I returned, I made a joking comment that the evil spirits had been exorcized from my blog.  The demons that possessed my blog infected my wife’s PC making it impossible for us to communicate by email.  And, the battery in my Mac crapped out due to my stupidity of leaving it on and unattended for nine days.

At about the time my blog was invaded by evil spirits at the hand of a clever hacker, I was dealing with a woman clearly on the battleground of the spiritual world.  It seemed clear to me that she was dealing with spiritual warfare.  She was a member of the church in Zaremtenga and was experiencing significant personal problems.  I asked her if spirit worship was going on in her house.  When she said it was, I offered an explanation of God’s requirement for undivided worship.  I encouraged her to remove the idols and altars from her house.

We encountered similar situations throughout the village.  It was not uncommon to enter a house and see an altar covered with fresh chicken feathers or a fresh goat skull hanging from the doorpost.

The spirit worship in the East Mamprusi region is obvious and easy to identify.  Our idol worship is not a blatant.  But, it is real.  We suffer much because of our idol worship.  Are their fresh chicken feathers on the altar at your door today?  How about a goat skull?  Probably not, but there are things that are just as repulsive.

It is somewhat interesting that we had Internet access in the village despite the generally primitive conditions.

Electricity just arrived in Zaremtenga and Namassam a few months ago.  Many other villages still do not have electricity.  Water is hauled by women and girls with 10-gallon buckets balanced on their head coming from boreholes throughout the village – most of which were provided by USAID, OPEC, Rotary International and other organizations.

Mud huts remain the almost exclusive construction method.  Most have thatch roofs although some now have rolled tin roofing.

Malaria remains a major problem and along with nutrition issues creates a high mortality rate especially among infants.

Living conditions are harsh and existence is meager.  But, pretty much throughout the East Mamprusi region, 3.5G network was available.  I could check headlines from my local newspaper, respond to emails from clients, and keep track of most things just as if I was sitting at my desk in Clarksville.

Most people see this as a question of priorities for the Ghanaian people.  I don’t know.  I don’t have enough information to make value judgments about decisions that led to providing Internet but not running water.

I do know that we make enough bad priority decisions on our own that we can’t cast aspersions at others’ decisions.

Either on a personal or national level, we probably make decisions that don’t make any more sense than developing 3.5G Internet before running water.

How about you?  Do your priorities make sense?

Almost 20 years ago in Desert Storm I learned that we really don’t need as much stuff as we think we do.  Living out of a duffle bag for six months showed me that it was possible to live minimally.

When I went to Africa two years ago, I was struck by the contrast of how much stuff we thought we needed to have to survive compared with what the villagers had for daily existence.  Again, it should have been a lesson in materialism.

Going back to Africa, I encouraged our village group to backpack and keep stuff to a minimum.  We did a fairly good job.  Even so, as the four of us began to settle into the mud hut room where we were going to spend the next several days, our backpacks exploded to fill the room with stuff.

For our brief stay, we seemed to have more stuff in our room than our hosts had, and they were living there.  Knowing that we were Americans who needed stuff, our hosts had managed to acquire a small refrigerator on loan from the hospital to place in our room.  That wouldn’t have been possible on our visit two years ago because the village didn’t have electricity then.

Visits to villages in the East Mamprusi region of Ghana continue to show me how excessive our lifestyles are.  But still, I continue to collect more stuff that I really don’t need.

The villagers even showed us up on taking care of the stuff we do have.  Our interpreter wore a pair of French leather shoes that I would never consider in the dusty terrain.  The first morning, his shows were cleaned and polished.  At the end of the day, they were dusty and abused.  Each morning, he appeared with the same pair of shoes with not a hint of dust and a fresh layer of polish.  Nothing I had was even clean by the second day.

Do we really need all the stuff we have?  What is all the stuff we have doing for us?  What is it doing to us?  Perhaps we’d be a lot better off with less stuff.  Maybe we’d polish up the stuff we had more if we had less of it.

This is only an observation.  It is not a commitment on my part to get rid of stuff.  I’m still an actively contributing member of the American economic machine.

While in the village of Zaremtenga in the East Mamprusi Region of Ghana, our interpreter took us to a house that was starkly different from all the others.  He identified it as the former chief’s house.

The house was built with rocks and mortar as a contrast to the mud huts throughout the village.  While a few mud huts had tin roofs instead of thatch roofs, this house had tin roofs with well-defined hip rooflines.

As we entered the courtyard, our interpreter pointed out a grave crypt that was not uncommon for village courtyards but this one was significantly larger and included an uncharacteristic headstone.  The headstone indicated two bodies in the crypt.  One was an earlier village chief who, according to the marker, was a veteran of World War II.  The second was his son who, again according to the marker, was the first literate chief of the village and serve as chief for 43 years.

Our interpreter took us on through the house complex pointing out the obvious rundown condition.  He showed us the rows of rooms were the chief’s 17 wives had lived and pointed out that he had 62 children.  He explained that after the chief died several years ago, his sons were unable to maintain the house.  Sons eventually moved away and took their mothers to care for them elsewhere.

One elderly man and his family lived in the ruins of the house and was a descendent of the former chief.  Even though no one was able to maintain the house or contribute to its repairs and upkeep, the village had committed to keeping the house intact as a tribute to the chief.

Almost as a side note, our interpreter explained that the former chief had established the court system and jail in the nearby regional center of Nelarigu.

There were two chiefs in succession from the family but apparently a third generation was unable to assume the mantle.  Political dynasties, small and large, all end – some sooner, others later.

After the chief died, the family that included his 17 wives was unable to maintain cohesion or have the financial means to maintain the house so they scattered.

The judicial system that the chief established was his lasting legacy.  It represents a significant change in the tribal rule that still is prominent in the region.

Many of the things we work hard to maintain will not be sustained when we are gone.  What lasting legacy are you cultivating now?

I encountered the stark reality of our prejudiced value judgments while in Zaremtenga, in the East Mamprusi region of Ghana.

We were going there to share the gospel.  I’ll admit I’m no theological giant or biblical scholar.  But, surely I’d be the biblical authority in a small village of mud house dwellers where education has been formalized for not too many years.

Our interpreter was a member of the family we were staying with.  We learned later that he really didn’t live in the village but was staying there for a few months with his family.

He was a great guy with a winsome personality.  He English skills were more than adequate.  He knew the people in the village.  He was well acquainted with the Baptist church in the village.

As we walked to a nearby village one day, we had plenty of time to talk.  Discussion of various denominations that had established works in the area led to questions about the differences in denominations.  Our interpreter suggested that we spend time after lunch doing a doctrinal study.  Sitting under a tree after lunch rather than walking in the 100-degree heat with the sun bearing down sounded like a pretty good plan.

He chose first to enter into a discussion on salvation.  It became clear I wasn’t the biblical scholar in the group.  This dude who had grown up in a small village with no running water, no electricity and, when he was growing up, no formal education system, knew his Bible stuff.

He launched into an amazing discussion of salvation.  He presented perhaps the clearest presentation of the gospel I have ever heard.  What was even more amazing about it was that his did it with very little reference to the New Testament.  He started in Genesis, landed in Isaiah and dug into Ezekiel.  By the time he was done, the birth, death and resurrection of Christ as atonement for sin was clearly a logical development of God’s plan from the beginning.

As a sat under the tree, I was blessed with his presentation, I enjoyed the light breeze, and I was humbled for my arrogance.  We often make pretty bad value judgments about people based on prejudices.  Who are you misjudging?