TORAH TREKKING
by Mary Hofmann
Jewish Post & Opinion

I'm not your average wilderness hiker.  In fact, I have only gone camping a couple of times, much to the distress of my husband who, close to 30 years ago, purchased a VW camper for that very purpose.  We still own it.  It has performed wonderful deeds, but very few involving the wilderness.
 
But I'm changing and growing, at the ripe old age of 57.  Cancer four years ago (so far, so good) changed all my priorities and I'm finding myself healthier mentally, physically, emotionally and spiritually than I've ever been.
The Union of American Hebrew Congregations (soon to be the Union for Reform Judaism) has undoubtedly always offered incredibly wonderful adult learning experiences and I am finally, blissfully, taking advantage of as many as I can.  One of the best is their annual Kallah, a five-day study program held each summer at the magnificent University of California, Santa Cruz campus.  My two experiences there so far have been among the most meaningful of my life.

This year, they added on an option . . . an additional three-day Torah Trek held in the Big Basin wilderness twenty miles or so north of Santa Cruz, led by Rabbi Mike Comins.  Mike's entire theological background, including extensive study of classical texts, hermeneutics and moral theory, kabbalah and meditation and has led to a career calling in, for lack of a more descriptive term, wilderness spirituality.  To accompany Mike into the wilderness is to learn from the master-to-be a part of the natural world and to find God without and within. 

I felt prepared for anything-after cancer, fear becomes a very relative thing.  I knew I could depend on my friend, Carol, who as the acknowledged gadget and technology queen of Merced, I knew would have every conceivable piece of necessary equipment packed firmly and competently into her van.  All I had to supply was a sleeping bag, a fold-up mattress, and a collapsible set of chairs to sit on. 

Carol and I reported to the campsite, which was like something in a forest dream (except for the mosquitoes). We pitched our tent and set up our gear-all absolutely new experiences to me.  To my surprise (and I don't know why), the eighteen or so other campers all seemed to be very experienced in the arts of living close to the earth, representing an amazingly wide range of professions and backgrounds.  One of the gifts of wilderness camping and hiking, it turns out, is the development of intensively close personal relationships in a very brief period of time.

I'm sure that for Mike our hikes were something in the realm of baby steps, since he organizes an incredible range of outdoor religious experience, from kayaking to desert hikes to the scaling of mountains.  But for me, our hikes were perfect. 

Over the past four years I've actually gotten into pretty good physical shape.  Most of my perennially excess weight is gone or turned into muscle, attributable to a happy combination of Weight Watchers, Curves and daily (very basic) yoga exercises performed in solitude with my television (a practice I recommend highly, by the way, for whatever may ail you).  So several hours of hiking with a light pack on my back was really no overwhelming physical feat, as it would have been in my life B.C. (before cancer).

The magic that Mike performs, however, is what happens while we hiked.  At regular intervals, we stopped and gathered to participate in religious discussions or experiences.  We learned to hike in silence, absorbing God's nature into us at amazing levels of intensity.  We learned to find ourselves in increasing times of solitude, in which we would find a perfect spot (within shouting distance of our partner, of course) to commune with God and nature through the tiniest of creations to the soaring of the redwoods to the movements of the sun.  We learned to find moments of awe, to allow time to stop and envelop us, to become one with our surroundings-even if for only moments. 

It was an amazing introduction to mysticism and meditation delivered in the most surprising and totally authentic means imaginable, bringing to physical consciousness all those abstract and fascinating concepts I love to play with in my mind.  I don't know how, really, to even describe such an experience.  Awe, I suppose, insofar as that word retains any of its initial meaning anymore.   Some things, as they say, simply have to be experienced.  A Torah Trek is one of those things.

Mike left us to return to his part-time pulpit in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, from which he is retiring after the High Holy Days to return to Los Angeles, where he will be writing books about wilderness spirituality and continuing to lead "adventurous" folk to learn about Judaism through the most mystical means possible-God's majestic world.

You'll be pleased to know he has a website.  If you want to communicate to this wonderful guy, maybe see if he's planning something in your neck of the woods (or if he'd be willing to), you can reach him at www.torahtrek.com.  His is a different kind of rabbinate, to be sure, but if you're willing to experience something profound and magical, he's the guy to see.