Mountains and Meadows
By: Jason Amato
As the small private plane charged down the runway, I felt my heart beating out of my chest with excitement and anticipation. This upcoming trip would represent a number of first experiences for me. My first time flying co-pilot in the cockpit (I was warned not to pull any levers or push any colorful buttons), my first time to Montana and my first-ever spot and stalk with the bow for black bear! A few hours into our flight, we approached the majestic, snow-covered Rocky Mountains of Western Montana. At an elevation of over 30,000 ft. these mountains, though awe-inspiring, didn’t seem as big as I had envisioned them to be.
That afternoon, we set out for the first hunt of the trip. Our guide informed us that we would be driving through the mountains and hiking to lookout points to glass the meadows for grazing bears eager to put back on all the weight they had lost from the winter hibernation. Seemed simple enough to me. Spend a few hours scouting, find the bear I wanted and then go get my bear rug. Man was I in for a big dose of reality!
I’ll never forget reaching the summit of that first ridge top. It was the most breathtaking view I have ever witnessed other than the Great Rift Valley in Kenya. You could see for many miles and the horizon was filled with one mountain range after another. Trevor, our guide, instructed us that we would be hanging out there for awhile just glassing the distance meadows for any dark moving objects. From that distance, the key is to catch a glimpse of movement; otherwise it can be almost impossible to spot a bear from five miles away. It became evident to me very quickly that this wasn’t going to be as easy as I had originally thought. Sitting atop the ridge that afternoon, the mountains seemed a lot bigger than from the cockpit windshield earlier that morning. After a few hours of scouting without spotting a bear, some feelings of doubt began to creep in.
By day four, we had only seen two bears and I was beginning to view these mountains as too big and vast to ever be successful. That day, I found myself hiking back up to that same ridge we had scouted from on day one. As I sat there, it struck me that this landscape before me represented more than just mountains and meadows. It depicted the journey everyone of us experiences throughout the course of our lives. Mountains and meadows. Currently, all of us find ourselves on one of these two landscapes.
While the mountains of life are challenging and many times daunting, they also provide two key benefits to the individual that is faced with them. First, every mountain provides an opportunity for personal growth. If you hire a personal trainer to help you achieve more muscle mass, they would never tell you to go sit at the beach and relax. No, they would push your muscles to the limits by breaking them down so that they will grow back bigger and more defined. In life, God is our “personal trainer” if you will and the trials we face are the “weights” God uses to define and shape our character. Secondly, mountains provide us with spectacular views from the top that can’t be seen or experienced from the meadows. When you reach the top of that mountain in your life, there is an opportunity to reflect on all that you have overcome such as fear, doubt, insecurity, shame and disappointment. If you only lived in the meadows, how would you mature mentally or spiritually? How would you be stretched? How would you ever be able to answer the common questions in life such as: Do I have what it takes? Is God trustworthy? Is the peace that the Bible promises believers real? These questions truly can only be answered on the mountains.
Conversely, the meadows of life can be quite enjoyable but can also become detrimental if we stay too long. All of us need times in our life where we can just exhale. These seasons provide us rest, rejuvenation and readiness for the next mountain. It is in the meadows we fill up our tanks and thank God for all the blessings we are experiencing. The danger in meadows is when they become comfort zones. Comfort zones are comfortable and rightfully so! Most of us, including myself, aren’t very thrilled about stepping out of these comfort zones and step onto the mountains. Unfortunately, comfort leads to complacency, complacency leads to mediocrity and mediocrity leads to atrophy. Back to the fitness training analogy: it is always good to give your body enough rest in between workouts and even take a week off after training hard for a month or so. However, too much rest will cause your body to begin reverting back to its old state. When we refuse to attack the mountains in our life over time we will inevitably experience atrophy of the heart, soul and mind. So, enjoy the green grass and the sun on your face in every meadow while it last, but anticipate the next mountain!
Though coming extremely close on a beautiful cinnamon bear (exciting video to come on our website), my time ran out before being able to fill my tags. That’s the way it goes with bowhunting. Sometimes you come home with a trophy and most times you don’t. Either way, I never leave empty-handed. It is the overall adventure of the experience, the adrenaline of the hunt and the lessons learned along the way that fuel my passion. A picture with my trophy is the icing on the cake. This trip served as a great reminder that life is made up of many mountains and meadows. Where do you find yourself today? Are you grazing in the meadow, scaling the mountain or soaking in the view from the summit? Each landscape has its benefits and challenges. Enjoy the views while making the most of your mountains and meadows!