It was downright chilly that day, especially as high in the mountains as I was.  Yet as I clambered out of our two-door Jeep, not even the frosty air could dampen my spirits.  

I was wearing a new pair of hiking boots—a charcoal black L.L. Bean model, with bright red laces—and a backpack with a patchwork design in pink and blue.  Inside that backpack were all the supplies I would need for an overnight stay—toothbrush, comb, clothes to sleep in, and snacks to eat along the way.  But I was hauling more than just necessities. I was also carrying the culmination of several years’ worth of dreams…dreams that had once seemed futile and hopeless but that were now coming gloriously, unmistakably, true.  

I can’t remember when it was that I first heard about Mt. LeConte, only that it was a few years prior to that morning. Maybe a fellow hiker mentioned it in passing, or perhaps I saw photos in the visitors’ center or printed on postcards.  Looking back now, it seems that LeConte has always been entwined around my heart, but somewhere, I must have learned that deep in the heart of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park was a wonderful place called LeConte Lodge.  It was located at the summit of the Smokies’ second-highest mountain, and the only way to access it was by any one of a series of hiking trails—the shortest of which was a steep and strenuous five-and-a-half miles.  “Lodge,” I learned, referred not to the opulent accommodations of a flashy resort but to a much more Spartan experience.  Guests to this establishment were treated to an overnight stay in a rustic cabin, warmed only by a propane heater and lacking any electricity or running water.  

Many people, I discovered, viewed LeConte only as a destination for thrill seekers and adventure addicts.  After all, what would they do in a cabin with no electricity and even more seriously no WiFi?  However, I fell in love with the idea.  An enormous fan of the Laura Ingalls books, I considered a trip to LeConte as my chance to relive Little House days, and I immediately added an overnight stay on the mountain to my (ever-expanding) bucket list.  I couldn’t be discouraged by any of the hurdles that stood in my way:  the effort it would take to complete the hike, the discomfort of missing a shower, or even the seeming impossibility of an overnight stay away from my home.  You see, I have a severe peanut allergy that has always prohibited me from eating in restaurants or staying in hotels.  My allergy makes a simple birthday party or visit to a friend’s house a daunting challenge…let alone a night on top of a mountain. 

All practical considerations told me to abandon the idea, to relinquish the notion of climbing LeConte as something reserved for all the other people, the people who were braver and stronger than I. However, I’ve never been one for practicalities.  So on October 19, 2009, when I stepped out of our Jeep in those scarlet-laced hiking boots, I was doing more than simply preparing for a unique wilderness experience.  When I gripped the cables and trudged up the rocky slopes of the massive peak, I was realizing that faith and determination produced results.  When I enjoyed my first meal away from home in the LeConte dining hall, I was proving to myself that the barriers that so often seemed to hold me back were nothing more than spiderwebs.  (To this day, LeConte remains the only place where I have ever been able to “eat out” thanks to prior alerts from my family and me and careful planning on the part of the crew.) And most importantly, when I finally stood at 6,593 feet and watched the brilliant blaze of the fire-quenched sun, breathing the icy dusk of a snow-crusted mountain night, I was fulfilling a lifelong dream.  

That day in 2009 was the culmination of my dream, but it was only the beginning of my love affair with LeConte.  My parents and I stayed the night at the mountain many times, and the experience became an annual tradition.  When I grew older and the burgeoning popularity of the lodge made it impossible for us to acquire overnight reservations, we transformed the overnight stay into a day hike, completing a round-trip distance of twelve or thirteen miles in a single day.  Since 2009, there have only been two years in which we haven’t hiked LeConte due to circumstances beyond our control. In fact, we just returned from celebrating my parents’ fortieth wedding anniversary in our beloved Smoky Mountains, and our trip included (of course) the day-long excursion to LeConte. And when I entered the high alpine forest, when I caught the first glimpse of the weathered log cabins peeking through the trees, I felt no less excited than I did on that first trip all those years ago.  For me, LeConte never becomes mundane.

Others besides me have felt that same way.  At the age of 45, a chronically ill woman named Margaret Stevenson decided to turn to the outdoors to find healing.  She developed a habit of constant walking (in her lifetime, she is said to have hiked the equivalent of five and a half times around the globe) and discovered freedom from her nearly bedridden prior life.  She first hiked LeConte in 1960 and went on to summit the mountain an amazing 718 times, the last one being when she was 83 years old. Margaret explored many other areas—she was the first woman to hike all 900 miles of Smokies trails, formed several hiking groups, and helped initiate the Trails Forever program, which conducts restoration and maintenance work on Smokies trails—but LeConte was her first love and held a place in her heart to which nothing else could compare.  Today, her bronzed hiking boots adorn the Lodge’s main office.  

Like Margaret Stevenson, Gracie McNichol suffered from extremely debilitating health conditions.  In fact, an accident in her thirties left her completely crippled until she taught herself how to walk again.  She did not begin hiking until 1954, at the age of 62, and made her first ascent of LeConte that same year.  It was certainly not her last:  she completed 244 summits of the mountain, 155 on foot and 89 on horseback, the last trip at the age of 92.  (These 244 ascents were a record that was later broken by Margaret Stevenson.)  A woman of deep and abiding faith, Gracie used her hiking time on LeConte’s slopes to pray and even presented the Lodge with an autographed Bible.  “Being out on Myrtle Point [on top of LeConte] was a spiritual experience for Gracie,” recalls Lisa Line, a former LeConte Lodge manager.   

The obvious question rises: after hundreds of trips up LeConte, didn’t the women become a bit bored with the well-known surroundings?  Gracie herself addressed this in a discussion with her friend Emilie Powell, who later wrote a biography called Gracie and the Mountain:  “People would say, ‘Don’t you get tired of going to the same place over and over and seeing the same things?’  But I told them that it’s different every trip.”  

As the mountain was for those women, so it is for me—a joy-filled paradox.  LeConte is at once completely familiar and completely new—both a warm homecoming and a delightful surprise bundled into every successful summit. And as I reflected on the never-ending source of wonder that LeConte has been for its admirers, it seemed in a small way to parallel our relationship with God.  

You see, some people find the idea of an eternal God to be a bit dry, even boring.  If God never changes, they reason, then how can He remain exciting to His followers?  How can those who have served Him for a lifetime still maintain their passion?  

There are two errors in this thinking.  The first is that although God is eternal, and He is unchanging, He is never static. The One Who sang the stars into being, the Lord Who paints the autumn leaves, can never become uninteresting or drab. He is the energy behind every creative act, the music to which the universe dances.  Yes, Jesus is “the same yesterday and today and forever” (Hebrews 13:8 ESV)—His essential character and personality do not change.  However, He is also the God of eternal joy Who triumphantly proclaims, “Behold, I am making all things new!” (Revelation 21:5 ESV) and “Behold, I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?” (Isaiah 43:19 ESV).  

I am reminded of a profound quotation by the great philosopher G. K. Chesterton:  “Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, ‘Do it again’; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, ‘Do it again’ to the sun; and every evening, ‘Do it again’ to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we.”  

Could it be our own sin-sick souls that grow weary, that demand continual stimulation in new and different forms?  Perhaps eternal constancy is not a handicap, but a strength—a strength that our world, which jumps from fad to fad with every puff of the breeze, cannot comprehend. 

But there is yet another reason why God never becomes boring—one that escapes our culture, but one with which every follower of Christ can agree.  

God never changes—but we do. 

There is no process involved in choosing God’s way; it begins as a simple, single decision.  However, we don’t stop there.  As Christians, we constantly grow, continually striving to fashion our lives, our characters, and our futures into the image of Christ.  And as we grow, as we learn, as we become stronger and braver and closer to His heart, we are able to discover more and more of Him that we never dreamed of.  

This is illustrated by an exchange in one of C.S. Lewis’s immortal books, Prince Caspian.  In this book, the character Lucy reunites with the lion Aslan (a symbol of Christ) after an extended absence.  The following dialogue ensues:

“Aslan, you’re bigger.”
“That is because you are older, little one.”
“Not because you are?”
“I am not. But every year you grow, you will find me bigger.”

In reflecting on this passage, blogger Adam Winters remarks, “While God is unchangeable in His being, attributes, and power, our relationship to Him is mutable.  As we grow and mature, our perception of God may change proportionally….Life experience exposes many of the heroes or ideals we admired as children as less impressive than we once thought.  But thank God that our Savior continues to reveal himself as bigger than we could have ever imagined.”

This, then, is the secret, the reason why God will never be dull or boring.  No traveler into the depths of God’s love will tire of seeking Him, and no viewer of His glories will ever shrug and say, “Well, I’ve seen it all.” Instead, those who love the Lord will forever be like Paul, who cried out, “The Lord will rescue me from every evil deed and bring me safely into his heavenly kingdom. To him be the glory forever and ever. Amen” (2 Timothy 4:18 ESV).

By the time he penned these words, part of the last biblical book he composed, Paul had been evangelizing for thirty years in a ministry that covered nearly every known region and even spanned continents.  His singular message—“Jesus Christ and Him crucified” (1 Corinthians 2:2 ESV)—had been preached thousands, perhaps even millions of times.  Yet the sharing of the gospel remained his consuming passion. And when he shared his story with Nero at the end of his life, days away from his execution, he was no less in love with Jesus than he had been when he’d first converted from Judaism years earlier.  

Yes, my first LeConte experience was amazing, but when I look back, I realize that I have grown much since then.  Certainly, I’ve become stronger and more skilled from increased hiking.  For example, when I first visited the mountain, I would never have been capable of round-trip hiking it in one day.  But in addition to developing my physical ability, I’ve also honed my capacity to love, respect, and appreciate the wilderness and discover the love of God as revealed in His world.  Best of all, I know that my spiritual stamina will only continue to improve.

The same is true for all of us who have experienced the depths of God, who have sincerely prayed to know Him better and come ever closer to His heart.  We cannot grow tired of Him, and we can never outgrow Him.  He will remain the reassuringly familiar God we have always trusted for months or years or even decades.  However, at the same time, He will continually surprise us with His boundless creativity, His amazing plans, and most of all, His infinite love. 

Much of the information regarding Margaret and Gracie, including the quotations from or about them, was taken from No Place for the Weary Kind: Women of the Smokies, by Courtney Lix. You can find more about the book here. Also, be sure to check out the LeConte Lodge official blog here!

Did you enjoy this post? How have you noticed your relationship with God deepening? Let me know in the comments!