God and Nature 2025 #1
Taking a Hike Through God’s Organic Gift To Humanity
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By Michael Colon
Upstate New York is a hub of forests and reservations. Born and raised in New York, I love having access to all these gifts. One of my favorite hiking spots is Bear Mountain State Park, which often inspires philosophical and theological insights.
I remember my first hike there, as I stood before an impressive showcase of stone steps at the start of the Bear Mountain trail. The hundreds of carved steps looked like a granite wonderland with earth around it. With each step I took, I thought about the days of hard work and craftsmanship that went into all this, so I refused to call it quits despite the struggle the steep incline was for me. Every time my foot landed on an inclined stone step, I imagined all the laborers using TNT and tools to excavate the mountain. I imagined the sweat that fell off their foreheads while mine did the same, using the foundation they laid to reach the summit.
Upstate New York is a hub of forests and reservations. Born and raised in New York, I love having access to all these gifts. One of my favorite hiking spots is Bear Mountain State Park, which often inspires philosophical and theological insights.
I remember my first hike there, as I stood before an impressive showcase of stone steps at the start of the Bear Mountain trail. The hundreds of carved steps looked like a granite wonderland with earth around it. With each step I took, I thought about the days of hard work and craftsmanship that went into all this, so I refused to call it quits despite the struggle the steep incline was for me. Every time my foot landed on an inclined stone step, I imagined all the laborers using TNT and tools to excavate the mountain. I imagined the sweat that fell off their foreheads while mine did the same, using the foundation they laid to reach the summit.
The higher I got, the more I found myself in paradise. |
After many steps upward on the cut stone, the trail leveled out, and a wooden bridge was in front of me. The view resembled a scene from a fairytale movie. I walked on the small bridge and let my fingers glide on the surface of the smooth railing. I leaned over the bridge as other hikers walked and ran past me, looking up at the foliage that started to arrange itself in a kaleidoscope pattern. With endorphins rising from my brain, the elevation made me see the gift that is Bear Mountain.
Nature is where love and creativity showcase their eternal being manifested in the organic beauty of creation. The secrets of life are found where the purest forms of creation root themselves. In our case, this place is called Earth. The lush green forests are a playground for life and death to play their fateful game, which balances how our consciousness perceives physical matter. Majestic tree canopies, colorful leaves, flowers, and animals coexist. This is all just a single trail hike away. Our mind, body, and spirit yearn to connect with the source of everything, found in places where creation is abundant, like this trail.
Our planet, this place we inhabit, is a sacred temple we must treat with the respect it deserves, to benefit our kids’ and grandkids' survival. Generations of future bloodlines depend on us to make the right choices so they can reap and sow the fruit of this planet's wonders. We share a home with an ecosystem teeming with life that deserves to live out its purpose the same way we do. The game between prey and predator must be played within the natural law and rules designed to keep this system going for as long as possible. In the story of Earth, the tiny leaf-cutter ant is just as crucial as the hawk patrolling the skies. Each creature has a purpose for which it was made.
While on the trail, the trees, some of them hundreds of years old, tell a story of longevity and wisdom of preservation through the harsh elements. Life always finds a way to grow and stand tall, but it does have a limit. In the meantime, the birds sing love songs to one another. The rocky path in front of us on the trail represents what has yet to be discovered—the elegant unknowns or, eventually, truths from scenic views that are healthy to the soul. The whispers of the breeze in the leaves around us explain how science and religion are wrong when they are in a tug of war to prove the other wrong while missing the bigger picture. The bigger picture is that everything living and breathing that is part of the systematic expression of cellular death and birth, although resilient, has a point of no return, and we need to take this notion more seriously.
This is why I implore everyone, whether or not they work in a career that involves plants and animals, to make it a point to do a long trail walk a few times or at least once a year, and take in the purity of what they are seeing.
During my first hike up Bear Mountain State Park, I remember the streams of sunlight slipping through the gaps in the tree branches above my head. I remember the innocent excitement as I drove toward the state park on Seven Lakes Drive. When I exited the car, I wanted to run across the parking lot and the vast fields where families would have picnics and BBQs. The sounds of laughter and games being played dimmed as I approached the base of one of the trails—an epic silencing that would begin the orchestra of nature, telling me a vibrantly illustrated story. As I made my ascent up Bear Mountain, I was greeted by other hikers from all parts of the globe. The higher I got, the more I found myself in paradise. Although the goal was the summit, the pages of this colored book I marched across to get there made the experience more profound.
With my body hurting in a weirdly satisfying way, I heard the murmurs of a crowd just up ahead. Extra wind filled my lungs to make the last grueling strides to the very top of Bear Mountain. From the summit, I could see the top of the entire forest. It felt like I was on top of the world, with my head in the clouds, and I was looking down on the Earth's scalp covered with deep, intimate green, ocean-like wave patterns. Dozens of people around me were capturing their personal experiences within nature using their phones, and I did the same—not as a final goodbye, but to remind myself to indulge in other adventures out there. When I descended Bear Mountain, I felt full of the soul food nature serves us when we respect and show the same love back.
Recently, this past year, 2024, I returned to Bear Mountain State Park with my wife and friends, and we found the same magic there as we shared God’s organic gift to humanity.
Michael Colon is a creative freelance writer and writer for Gifted-Magazine born and raised in the Big Apple, New York City. Michael’s mission is to use his craft to impact the lives of others in deep, thought-provoking ways.
Nature is where love and creativity showcase their eternal being manifested in the organic beauty of creation. The secrets of life are found where the purest forms of creation root themselves. In our case, this place is called Earth. The lush green forests are a playground for life and death to play their fateful game, which balances how our consciousness perceives physical matter. Majestic tree canopies, colorful leaves, flowers, and animals coexist. This is all just a single trail hike away. Our mind, body, and spirit yearn to connect with the source of everything, found in places where creation is abundant, like this trail.
Our planet, this place we inhabit, is a sacred temple we must treat with the respect it deserves, to benefit our kids’ and grandkids' survival. Generations of future bloodlines depend on us to make the right choices so they can reap and sow the fruit of this planet's wonders. We share a home with an ecosystem teeming with life that deserves to live out its purpose the same way we do. The game between prey and predator must be played within the natural law and rules designed to keep this system going for as long as possible. In the story of Earth, the tiny leaf-cutter ant is just as crucial as the hawk patrolling the skies. Each creature has a purpose for which it was made.
While on the trail, the trees, some of them hundreds of years old, tell a story of longevity and wisdom of preservation through the harsh elements. Life always finds a way to grow and stand tall, but it does have a limit. In the meantime, the birds sing love songs to one another. The rocky path in front of us on the trail represents what has yet to be discovered—the elegant unknowns or, eventually, truths from scenic views that are healthy to the soul. The whispers of the breeze in the leaves around us explain how science and religion are wrong when they are in a tug of war to prove the other wrong while missing the bigger picture. The bigger picture is that everything living and breathing that is part of the systematic expression of cellular death and birth, although resilient, has a point of no return, and we need to take this notion more seriously.
This is why I implore everyone, whether or not they work in a career that involves plants and animals, to make it a point to do a long trail walk a few times or at least once a year, and take in the purity of what they are seeing.
During my first hike up Bear Mountain State Park, I remember the streams of sunlight slipping through the gaps in the tree branches above my head. I remember the innocent excitement as I drove toward the state park on Seven Lakes Drive. When I exited the car, I wanted to run across the parking lot and the vast fields where families would have picnics and BBQs. The sounds of laughter and games being played dimmed as I approached the base of one of the trails—an epic silencing that would begin the orchestra of nature, telling me a vibrantly illustrated story. As I made my ascent up Bear Mountain, I was greeted by other hikers from all parts of the globe. The higher I got, the more I found myself in paradise. Although the goal was the summit, the pages of this colored book I marched across to get there made the experience more profound.
With my body hurting in a weirdly satisfying way, I heard the murmurs of a crowd just up ahead. Extra wind filled my lungs to make the last grueling strides to the very top of Bear Mountain. From the summit, I could see the top of the entire forest. It felt like I was on top of the world, with my head in the clouds, and I was looking down on the Earth's scalp covered with deep, intimate green, ocean-like wave patterns. Dozens of people around me were capturing their personal experiences within nature using their phones, and I did the same—not as a final goodbye, but to remind myself to indulge in other adventures out there. When I descended Bear Mountain, I felt full of the soul food nature serves us when we respect and show the same love back.
Recently, this past year, 2024, I returned to Bear Mountain State Park with my wife and friends, and we found the same magic there as we shared God’s organic gift to humanity.
Michael Colon is a creative freelance writer and writer for Gifted-Magazine born and raised in the Big Apple, New York City. Michael’s mission is to use his craft to impact the lives of others in deep, thought-provoking ways.