Tend To Your Grove

No. 85: December 11, 2021

Dear Friends,

I have finally returned from my unplanned leave of absence! I apologize for not letting you know that I wouldn’t get a newsletter out last week; when I realized that I couldn’t get it done I thought about writing to tell you, but that would be the very definition of “cluttering” your inbox, which I promised not to do! Anyway, after a week-plus road trip to the west coast, my wife and I arrived home safely yesterday to find that our children are alive-but-feral and the house thankfully hasn’t burned down.

The trip served a dual purpose. First, we attended the Annual Symposium for the Center For Cultural Leadership. This is always a blessed time of catching up with old friends and meeting new ones. Second, Tara and I decided to make a trip of it to celebrate our 22nd wedding anniversary. So we spent a couple of days in Napa Valley after the event.

Speaking of road trips, that reminds me of a classic old Square Inch. I still stand by everything I wrote in this essay. If you’re a recent subscriber to this newsletter, I recommend clicking on that link and reading it. There is something profound and unique about the American Road Trip.

The symposium was wonderful, as usual. Andrew Sandlin spoke about the importance of a “Creational” worldview—that too often Christians reduce the Christian message to some set of narrow concerns (e.g., personal piety, individual salvation) rather than what it really is: an all-encompassing, “the heavens and the earth” kind of thing, which is what the very first verse of the Bible says. I don’t know who needs to hear this, but God is in the Universe business. Jeff Ventrella gave a fascinating talk on legal issues, particularly the recent Supreme Court case Dobbs v. Jackson Health which presents the Court with an opportunity to reverse Roe v. Wade. David Bahnsen was his usual loquacious self, giving two presentations about economics, the image of God, productivity, free enterprise, and the cause of a free and virtuous society. Oh, by the way, his new book is out.

I spoke about persecution in the 21st century west. If you click on this link, you will find a downloadable PDF of my prepared remarks. It’s more a sermon than anything else, and I hope you enjoy it. (Note: if you have trouble with that link, email me and I’ll send you the PDF—my website is having some back-end DNS issues)

Also, our After Party was quite a rousing affair. This once-a-year fellowship with these dear friends is something I look forward to all year. Yes, I think I’m rolling my eyes at something David is saying—it was, no doubt, provocative.

Now, some odds-and-ends style observations from the road:

I couldn’t be more pleased to report that the twenty-year-old BMW, a lemon when I bought it, is at long last living up to its branding of “The Ultimate Driving Machine.” After all of my sweat and frustration, it gives me great satisfaction that she purred along effortlessly.

The “mask wars” are something I’ve had little investment in for a long time. But I got a glimpse of why other people are so fired up about it. Here in Big Sky Country, I cannot recall the last time I so much as thought about wearing a mask. When I got to the San Francisco Bay Area, I discovered I was in the land of—well, I want to be polite. Grown adults, children—everyone!—walking around outdoors in the fresh air and sunshine, wearing masks. That is, um, a sight to behold, and it signals some kind of mental instability, if you ask me. And it wasn’t just California: Elko, Nevada is under a mask mandate, which genuinely surprised me.

Gas prices are really high. I caught sight of a $5.29 sign. For regular unleaded. I tried to spend as little money in California as possible, and was pleased that I only had to buy a half a tank there.

The Interstate highways had unusually light traffic. Particularly semi-trucks. We drove roads that are usually clogged with big rigs, but the shortage of 80,000 truck drivers is actually noticeable.

I’m thinking of starting a petition to ban the newfangled cold-and-bright-blue halogen headlights. You know the ones I’m talking about. They are absolutely blinding, particularly on pitch black, winding Napa Valley roads. The old style “yellow” tinted headlights are bright, but still manageable when they’re shining in your face. The new headlights are downright dangerous.

If you go east from Bend, Oregon toward Idaho, you’d better fill up your gas tank first. There is literally not a gas station for hundreds of miles. We thankfully checked the Google map before that disaster materialized.

We saw some spectacular country. Southern Idaho doesn’t make that list.

The best glass of wine I tasted in Napa did not come from the wineries we visited. While they were very proud of their $150-per-bottle price point, they were profoundly outclassed by a $15 “by-the-glass” Zinfandel I had at a Mexican restaurant. Go figure.

The bald eagle population is robust.

Tara and I took a two-mile walk through an old-growth Redwood forest. We’d never seen a Redwood before, and it was truly wonderful. The oldest tree in the grove is named “Colonel Armstrong.” It’s 308 feet high, has a diameter of 14.6 feet, and is 1,400 years old. They had a cool cross-section of one fallen tree displayed with date markers on the tree rings. It was germinated in A.D. 948 and lived until well after the Civil War. The forest was understandably dark, since sunlight doesn’t get through the canopy, and incredibly quiet and still. It is a shame that J.R.R. Tolkien never got the opportunity to walk through a Redwood forest. It would have delighted and overwhelmed him.

And I will leave you with this:

I asked the Park Ranger how deep the roots of these Redwoods have to be, to grow to these heights. He said the roots of a Redwood are surprisingly very shallow. A Redwood on its own is susceptible to any gust of wind. “But,” he continued, “when Redwoods form a grove, their roots intertwine and interlock and each tree, with the added support of all of the others, can withstand any storm.”

The sermon illustration writes itself. Tend to your grove and interlock your roots, my friends.