Quality Time in the Backcountry

My children's birthdays are seven days apart. At the end of August our family marks the occasions with balloons, cake, and fun. This year our celebrations differed from the norm. My daughter's birthday arrived while her brother was away at camp. Two days later we loaded up our car and drove her to university, the start of her third year. The next day our son returned from camp and before celebrating his special day, the two of us headed to the back-country of Algonquin park to spend a few days paddling, portaging, and camping. 

Our interior Algonquin adventure happened to be the longest time we've been alone together without digital distractions. It also happened to be one of my most meaningful father-son experiences. Other than thunder, lightning, and rain on our first night, our trip was relatively obstacle free. We navigated our way across lakes and along trails with relative ease. Finding our campsites was also a breeze, including one that made it into my "top five all time back-country sites" list. 

We spent a lot of time setting up, cooking, planning, and paddling. We also made time for swimming and conversations about school, friends, faith, and the afterlife. I felt more relaxed and rested than I have in months. It's amazing what being outside, disconnected from news, cell reception, and concerns of life did for our souls. I'm so grateful to God for those few days away with one of my favourite people.   

Mumford's Clock

Lewis Mumford had a keen eye for observing. In his book Technics and Civilization he describes how the invention of the clock created "an independent world of mathematically measurable sequences". The world that was created by the ticking timepiece has become our home, unless you happen to be back county camping. Away from schedules and organized meetups you can enter back into the world where the natural rhythms of creation are rediscovered. It seems crazy to think human reliance on those natural rhythms has been interrupted by something as simple as the clock.

Mumford writes:

The clock, moreover, is a piece of power-machinery whose "product" is seconds and minutes: by its essential nature it dissociation time from human events and helped create the belief in an independent world of mathematically measurable sequences: the special world of science. There is relatively little foundation for this belief in common human experience: throughout the year the days are of uneven duration, and not merely does the relation between day and night steadily change, but a slight journey from East to West alters astronomical time by a certain number of minutes. In terms of the human organism itself, mechanical time is even more foreign: while human life has regularities of its own, the beat of the pulse, the breathing of the lungs, these change from hour to hour with mood and action, and in the longer span of days, time is measured not by the calendar but by the events that occupy it. (Mumford, Technics and Civilization, 15).

Understanding time through the lens of the clock is different than time in the absence of seconds and minutes. Without the clock time becomes less bound, less structured, and more alive. What about God? I wonder how much of our concept of God been shaped by the clock? I think that question could take some time...