Its not the first time its happened. In fact, it typically occurs a couple times a week. But every time, it catches me off guard and sends me flying across my memory at a speed of approximately 4,603 per half second.
The path I use to cut across the St.Giles churchyard from Banbury Road to Woodstock Road, en route to Maison Blanc, is nestled against the Old Parsonage B&B. The aforementioned establishment has a fireplace, and they light it on cool days/mornings, that is on a nearly daily basis, as per English weather. When I take the churchyard path, passing through the shadow of the building, the smell of woodsmoke in the damp chilly air hits me out of the blue. That moment, that split second, sends me flying to a brisk dewy morning in the mountains of Nepal. My memory spins. Oxford rises around me and hems me in, but my senses fling me back upon my memories, and internally, Oxford fades from view...
... in a moment, I'm back in time. I'm somewhere in the memory of months of mornings. Sitting on cold dewy earth and trodden down grass. Socks better off than on, because they are damp... preparing to dry them by roasting them on sticks over the hearty little fire I'm nursing. My hair smelling of smoke from a week of morning- and evening- fires past, since the last time I washed it in a bucket. Inevitably, the mountains would come into view as the early fog lifted and my heart would broaden and lighten like the vista... but until then, kindling the fire... the journey was long and called for perseverance. The paths rose and fell, steep days, and dancing days... but turning back was never an option. We were in too deep. We always are, in life.
Woodsmoke and dewy, brisk mornings take me vividly back to my last journey into the villages of East Nepal. To the brothers and sisters of the village churches. To the passion of God for His people. To the wild and wooly backdrop against which it all played out. Such a special place in my heart- memories of beauty, vision, pressing challenges, and pressing on. Formative, precious, wild, and worth it all.
As quickly as I departed, I fly back into Oxford. 4,603 miles in reverse. Into another moment. Into a journey equally as wild, if in a wholly different way. Oxford materializes around me as the mountains evaporate in split second. I thank God for being warm, for having a coffee, for being dry... even as it begins to rain. I embark on another day of pressing in right where I am, where He's led me, and journeying on the rising and falling path that stretches ahead from wherever one stands in life.
