In one of the rare moments when I took the driver’s seat, the landscape unrolled like a Persian carpet before us. Clint stole away a short nap after an over-priced lunch just outside of San Francisco. The girls were assigning their stuffed animals ridiculous accents, trying to hold back laughter to let The Man get some much-needed rest. Orchards flew past my windows—thousands and thousands of acres of orchards. I recognized the olive and then pomegranate trees, but the rest is still a mystery. Their perfect rows looked like a giant engineer had his way with a ruler and a bag of seeds many years ago. The black soil, the green trees, the blue sky—it redeemed a lot about California’s notoriety for me. Well, it tidied up whatever disgruntled crumbs were still left-over from the Redwood visit.

Goodness gracious. Those trees (which still seems a trivial word to use with those goliaths) stirred something in all of us. It rained the past two days, so the woods had a sweet, earthy smell—just like patchouli. Our two youngest couldn’t help but run back and forth on the few fallen ones. They didn’t even have to side-step when running past one another. Our oldest softly sang to herself while feeling the giant chunks of bark, often staring straight up to see the canopy without stepping back. We had already admired a vast ensemble of trees, but these made us feel at once so small and deeply connected to the created. After we resumed our trip, we stopped again to drink the Redwoods in just one last time. And then we did it one more time after that. The only other scene we felt we couldn’t pull ourselves from was the Pacific Northwest Coast.

I had no other conceived usage for the word craggy until I saw those rocks with the ocean spray shooting off like fireworks. We were at once damp, cold, wind-whipped, and completely exhilarated. After walk/climbing through a tunnel in the rock separating two very different beaches, we traversed our way through miniature versions of the crags to beachcomb for sea glass, sand dollars, and agate. With numb fingers, wet socks, heavy bags and hungry bellies, we continued to say, “just 10 more minutes” as we inched further away from our van. Hiding and revealing sharp cliffs, we experienced the marine layer approach and pass like it had prompt business in the next town. Instead of searching for food, we drove on an hour down the coast to another beach—lather, rinse, repeat. The plan the following day was to zip down HWY 101 towards SoCal, but that Pacific Ocean drew us in again as we followed the GPS to a random lighthouse overlooking a beautiful stretch. I’ve been to the Atlantic several times, but this was my introduction to her sister of the West. The wildness of her is mesmerizing. The pattern is there, but the cadence is all wrong. I just shook my head as I worked to not blink.

I did a lot of head-shaking on our two-week road trip. The Arches of Moab, Utah with their red loops and edges only highlighted more so by the setting sun. The still clearness of the Great Salt Lake as we all wiped the salt from our lips after standing in it for an hour. The nonchalant herd of bison crossing the road as part of their, no doubt, regular rhythm of grazing. The sheer size and girth of the moose walking through the Grand Tetons park entrance—and then the spectacular reflection of Mormon Row in Jenny Lake. The timeliness and absurdity of Old Faithful. The death of Capulin volcano that now yields life abundantly. The nimble black bear running through Rotan Pass. The chipmunk following us alongside the Grand Canyon after Margo hand-fed it acorns. The drive-thru tunnels at Zion, revealing another head-shaking view of great heights and depths. The surging waterfalls to gaze at, the rivers to skip rocks across, the balanced rocks to gamble at their demise, the shaking aspens to dance next to, the bright, sunny days, and the cloudy, rainy ones. . .

My friends, the point is that God’s creation is good!

I’ll admit I naturally feel closer to God when I am outside, especially at night when it is quiet and dark; when there is little to be heard but the effects of wind and the nocturnals; when our pollution is in the rearview; when standing amongst simultaneous anomalies like canyons and mountains.

We set out on our 2-week, 6,000-mile, 80+ hours of driving road trip with our daughters to experience these Great American highlights. We still recount these things with them as good gifts from God, not for utilitarian purposes but to be enjoyed in real time as we draw nearer to the Creator out of love, glory, gratitude, and desire.

And here lies the tension that exists between man and nature: A vast majority of Christians may feel closer to God whilst in nature, but the absolute truth is that we are even closer to God when we are in the presence of another soul—of an immortal. Everything we saw and captured on film is good—but as we spent 14 days traveling in 89 cubic feet of space, we were in the presence of the very good.

The oceans, mountains, volcanoes, valleys, eagles, moose, and sunsets are easy because they require nothing. They are more deeply enjoyed when paired with silence and attention, but truly they are often treated like playthings we can get around to when we have free time, overlooking the grandeur of complex simplicity because we have more pressing matters at hand. That’s a straightforward fact of humanity—the Romantics attempted a lifestyle of constant observance of nature, but they went broke because as it turns out, daffodils and hedgehogs won’t pay your bills.

But people, however, require nearly everything. “People are messy” is the single most loaded statement ever. We’re capricious, fickle, often hangry, and possess some innocent run of the mill habit that makes others want to throw things. But there exists side B, and we are athletes, intellectuals, jokesters, lovers, tinkerers, banjo players, book writers, collectors, and friends.

And so it goes—rocks and rivers aren’t made in God’s image; people are. We can scratch the itch to get away from the noisy city and busy lives of others to a quiet, desolate place because we see Jesus in this very practice (Luke 5:15, Matthew 14:13). His material life was centered around people: the rough fishermen, shady tax collectors, sticky children, needy women, devious church leaders, faithful servants, curious patrons, and loyal friends.

This was perhaps the strongest truth God brought to my mind on the trip and in the days since. Some days that van felt small and the girls’ voices huge. They brought too many stuffed animals; someone would eat too many Dots Pretzels; someone else would sing too loudly; Margo could never find her shoes; someone would always need more sleep, more water, more caffeine; we were always 1 bathroom short of what we needed. . .

But—God reminded me again and again of their immortality. Clint and I each married an immortal soul, and we now raise 3 immortal souls who will live on forever, just like their Creator. Looking at the present from the future with this in view makes an incredible difference when I think I’m too tired or busy to teach another subject, to prepare another meal, to straighten another head of hair, to read another chapter or picture book, or to paint 30 more fingers and 30 more toes.

Not many would consent to say a tree or lake is more meaningful than a child. But in the ordinary, daily interactions with those around us we do the most significant soul-shaping work through how we see one another. Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s “Life Together” (this book is a treasure to be read on repeat) says this:

“God did not make this person as I would have made him. He did not give him to me as a brother for me to dominate and control, but in order that I might find above him the Creator. Now the other person, in the freedom with which he was created, becomes the occasion of joy, whereas before he was only a nuisance and an affliction. God does not will that I should fashion the other person according to the image that seems good to me, that is, in my own image; rather in his very freedom from me God made this person in His image. I can never know beforehand how God's image should appear in others. That image always manifests a completely new and unique form that comes solely from God's free and sovereign creation. To me the sight may seem strange, even ungodly. But God creates every man in the likeness of His Son, the Crucified. After all, even that image certainly looked strange and ungodly to me before I grasped it.”

This is what it means to count others as more significant (Philippians 2:3). When petty annoyances surface in others (likewise, when your own bubble up and over) remember their existence. Evoke their immortality. Consider the origin of their image: our Father who is above the sun; who is over all and through all and in all (Ephesians 4:1).