I vanished while exploring a remote Florida swamp a few days ago—or was it a few minutes ago?
It seemed to swallow my reality and identity as I plunged deeper and deeper into her boggy moistness. And this was no bad thing.
As the shadows grew longer and the trail fainter, I realized there was no hope of finding my way out, having been hiking since sunrise. With no overnight gear, my pulse quickened and my adrenaline raced. As any well-worn and seasoned hiker knows, when in doubt, sit down. I deposited my weary body on the ground which was covered with furry verdant moss. It was very soft. I then took some time to calm my senses, but the tangled cypress branches began to darken and show themselves in a more mysterious light.
I recalled the words of Thoreau, the patron saint of the swamp, “Yes, though you may think me perverse, if it were proposed to me to dwell in the neighborhood of the most beautiful garden that ever human contrived, or else of a Dismal Swamp, I should certainly decide for the swamp.” Why? Because “I derive more of my subsistence from the swamps…and the swamps are the wildest and richest gardens that we have. Such a depth of verdure into which you sink.”
Those words seemed to calm me, and I wearily lay back in the mossy and peaty softness, the past months weighing heavy, pressing me prostrate. I felt the edges of my body gently sink a bit into the cool soft moistness of the bog, pliant and trembling, as if I were slipping into the very womb of the swamp. A sacred transcendence seemed to engulf me.
As I gazed upward, sparkling diamond constellations appeared through the tangled cypress limbs and webs of spanish moss, as the long day slowly faded from view. The swamp slowly came alive with the steady hum of gnats and mosquitos amidst a cacophony of frog ribbets, gator croaks above which was the plaintive hooting of a distant owl. As the sounds crowded in, my senses heightened and I closed my eyes hoping to take away the wildness. The noise of the swamp seemed to drown out the song of shame from the choir of my past. I began to internalize the sounds. As anyone who enjoys music knows, while touch, smell and taste penetrate the interior of one’s being, hearing is a more powerful experience. I recalled my daughter covering her ears in scary movies to take her fear away.
Hearing is a deeply participatory experience. It engulfs. In what was now complete darkness, the swamp immersed me in a harmony of sounds. I should have been terrified and yet I was strangely at peace. The sounds were not that of dissonance but of euphony. I began to participate with the swamp. There was little sense of personal boundaries, and her communal nature overwhelmed me. She talked, I listened. But not in a linear fashion, it was more like a noisy din of “in-my-face” grace in three hundred and sixty degrees surround sound.
The smells made my head swirl. A decaying earthiness like the finest Cabernet, and floral scents of honeysuckle rivaling the finest Sauternes pervaded my being. I felt myself wafting deeper into an unfamiliar world with a numinous aroma that was intoxicating. Was I dying? Or was I just beginning to live?
The written morbidness of my Christian orthodoxy began to whisper from the past, “in the midst of life we are in death,” but the mysterium fascinans of the swamp began to respond “in the midst of death, Randy, you are in life.” As I continued to listen, it was like a slow sacred self-baptism, an exorcism of the demons of my past in this unlikely temple of the divine.
The bogs and quicksands of life had made me doubt a hard bottom, a foundation upon which to build my future. My dreams. Sinking deeper, I frantically hoped this swamp would indeed have a bottom. The pains and terrors overwhelming me, made me realize I had come, suddenly, face to face with some manifestation of the mysterium tremendum. In theological language, this fear, this mysterium tremendum, is due to the in-compatibility of man’s egotism and divine purity, between man’s self-aggravated separateness and the infinity of God.
Could this swamp be hell? Or could it be scaring the hell out of me?
I sensed a dreadful emptiness. Covered with clay and mud, I was cocooned by the swamp and no longer able to sense the rush of earthly power, the flush of religious success, or the crush of popularity.
Could it be a holy emptiness?
Or could it be what true freedom feels like?
Could it be the place where there is “nothing left to lose?” Where love has no strings attached?
I suddenly felt overwhelmed by a sense of complete trust, complete peace and complete joy.
There in the heart of the swamp, I stretched out my tired body and soul and let them rest. For how long, I do not know.
Far from being a hellish place of disease and malaise, I realized the swamp had instead offered me a glimpse of the numinous. A sacred place where I lost desire to ask questions about the past or to speculate about the future—replaced by a desire for oneness with the divine, without fear, without guilt or shame, without worries.
As I slowly opened my eyes and raised to peer upward over the now high edges of the walls of my “grave,” I glimpsed through the swirling mist, what I thought was the faint permanent rose hues of a new day.
Thoughts?
22 responses to “How A Night Lost In The Swamp Scared The Hell Out Of Me”
That’s really a blessing to take in those words and thoughs on that piece of Florida swampland… I thought the guy who sold it to me was laughing all the way to the bank… “Hey, guy, did you read Randy Elrod’s blog? Now who’s laughing mister?” Me, that’s who… but, then again, maybe I’m laughing because I’m “swamp-crazy”. #swampcrazy
John, I hereby join you in your “swamp-craziness.” :)
You had me at “boggy moistness”….
Ah, yes….
Wow. I felt like I was there.
This reminds me of the last part of these words from Thomas Merton:
“God utters me like a word containing a partial thought of Himself. A word will never be able to comprehend the voice that utters it. But if I am true to the concept that God utters in me, if I am true to the thought in Him I was meant to embody, I shall be full of His actuality, and find Him everywhere and find myself nowhere. I shall be lost in Him.”
Wow! I love Merton. Thanks, Chris. I’m so thankful we were able to meet, if only briefly, while I was so busy. You are a gift from God.
Likewise, my brother!
Great post! Now the key is finding a way to carry that swamp and all its emotions and lessons with you, back into “civilization”.
So true, Lisa. So true.
So true. Thanks, Lisa!
I sleep alone “fly fishing” in the high points of Grizzly and Wolf country “NE Yellowstone”.
Fear must be replaced with trust in order to survive nights and stay the journey. Each morning you are reminded that all things are perishable, as you find tracks around your sleeping area. Surviving every days journeys is truly a gift in a million ways, and for so many reasons we’ll never fully understand. You had no snake metaphors. ha! Only an artist could resist the temptation and write that, without slipping the snake into the swamp.. PS. I was waiting for Truffled Foi Gras to follow the Sauterne.
Yum. Who are you??? Truffled foi gras??? Oh. My.
Great post, Randy, is it literal or figurative? (meaning, did you really get lost and spend the night in the swamp?). Thanks for the wiki links — this South GA boy needed them for most of those words!
Thanks, Fred. From one Georgia boy to another! The post was figurative (somewhat), and you are the first to make that observation. I really was in the swamp and I really did have the insights…I may not have been lost…or then again… ;)
This reminds me of what I always learned from being in the woods, and often, getting lost …. stop, and then try to look back and see the last place where you KNOW you weren’t lost.
I remember tracking deep into the woods hunting, knowing how hard it is to find your way out after dark. My dad would have me hang tin foil (or better, toilet paper, since it dissolves) on branches every so far so I could spot it w/ my flashlight.
When I’d get lost, I’d just go back to the last place I “hung” the reflector.
A lot of truth there in life. We will lose our way … and sometimes we just have to back track to where we last hung our reflectors!
Peace!
Yes, indeed! Thanks, Fred. Love the hunting story and better—its analogy for life.
Randy, The deep woods seem to have always been one of God’s favorite places for revealing Himself to me. After loosing my husband to a heart attack recently I’ve planned to hike a part of the Appliachian trail this spring in hopes of a one on one with Him. I also hope I don’t have to experience being lost to achieve it. Though I’m glad to learn you made it out alive, I can’t help but wonder just how you did that as being lost and not found is a huge fear for me.
Just be careful on the AT alone. The worst animals there are the human ones. I lost a great female friend there to a psycho. Thanks for joining the conversation.
Wow! I was actually just thinking about you the other day and this is why. My girlfriend blessed me with an affirmation that reminded me of you, “you embrace your humanness in such a way that you rise above it.” Sometimes I think we dissociate from ourselves as men in our attempts at religion. I know I mostly live this way. And then the decaying world and/or our rotting outer man immerses our consciousness and brings us back to life. Brings us back to our Savior, fully God and fully man, our 2nd Adam, our visceral example of drinking in this world, a creation longing for our revealing as Sons and Daughters.
Thanks for the reminder, I just transported from this Monday meeting all together. Ha!
What happens to a swamp when death is no more, when life is no longer propped up on death? Eden? Would Thoreau leave his “wild garden” for a richer and wilder Divine Garden?
Wow!! Matt, I need to put your words in my pipe and smoke them for a while. Thanks…I’ll come back…
Sounds devine. My most heart felt conversations with God are in such places.
Thanks, Vince. It was a very good thing. They are sacred places of God’s creation.