A group of 10 high school students from the Presbyterian Church of the Cross in Omaha traveled to Estes Park this month for a weeklong service and spiritual mission trip to restore the Kent Dannen Meditation Trail on the campus of the Presbyterian Community Church of the Rockies.
Ethan Bennett, one of the chaperones from the Nebraska church, said the students, nine girls and one boy, shoveled dirt, unearthed buried moss rock, and with the help of a Kubota tractor, pushed an estimated 16 tons of trail base gravel and 18 tons of moss rock into place along the trail’s footprint.
“Our goal was to spread the gravel about four feet wide and three inches deep,” said Bennett, who said the kids worked diligently to restore the 800-foot trail, which starts at the southeast corner of the church parking lot, traverses a quiet path down a hillside above Fish Creek Road through a wooded area.
The teens also repainted benches in the outdoor chapel, which is used for both worship services and weddings.
The quarter-mile loop, originally designed and built by Kent Dannen in 1983 and 1984, was destroyed in 2013 when a weather system that sat over the Front Range from Sept. 9 through Sept. 15 dumped 9.31 inches in the Estes Valley. The average annual rainfall in Estes is approximately fourteen inches. The historic rain event washed out roads and hillsides, flooded homes and businesses, and brought the community to its knees for several weeks.
Dannen, an ordained minister, naturalist, and noted author of hiking guides who died earlier this year at the age of 78, not only designed the trail but also wrote a meditation trail guide that blended biblical verses with an invitation to see and experience the beauty and mystery of the divine in the natural surroundings.
Copies of Dannen’s guidebooks, which designated 15 stops marked by wooden pillars, were tucked into boxes at both ends of the trail. Benches along the path encourage people to stop and soak in the moment.
A certified Backyard Habitat
The Presbyterian Community Church was the first church in the country to receive a designation as a Backyard Habitat by the National Wildlife Federation, a program that began in 1973 to encourage homeowners, commercial properties, and schools to manage their gardens and yards to encourage diverse animal habitats and ecosystems.
More than 1,000 places of worship have taken steps to create certified rain gardens, pollinator gardens, butterfly gardens, meditation spaces, healing gardens, and outdoor education spaces. Since 2013, the National Wildlife Federation’s Sacred Grounds program has recognized congregations, houses of worship, and faith communities that create wildlife habitat and actively link faith practices in caring for the environment.
Additional work on the trail is planned to restore the path that continues to the columbarium and the outdoor chapel designed by architect Roger Thorp. In 1999, the Colorado North Chapter of the American Institute of Architects awarded Thorp Associates a merit award for its design of the open-air chapel.
The link to Omaha
The connection to the church in Nebraska was made through Christine Dempsey, who served as the associate pastor of the Omaha congregation before coming to Estes in 2023 to lead the Presbyterian Community Church of the Rockies. Dempsey, who was a history professor in Nebraska before going to seminary and being ordained, said she is interested in seeing the meditation book updated as part of the restoration project.
While in Estes, the students and their chaperones stayed in a family reunion cabin at the YMCA of the Rockies with their chaperones. In addtion to the physical labor, and a bit of free time which included a trip up Trail Ridge Road, a horseback riding excursion, some downtown shopping and a dinner at Poppy’s Pizza and Grill, the chaperones integrated prayer and bible study into the trip, said Bennett.
“We had a daily Bible study. We usually do a theme that our director of Christian education puts together for us. This year it was all about prayer, different methods of prayer, and different types of prayer,” said Bennett. “Prayer can be just as basic as a quick prayer, too, about prayer anywhere, in between things, whenever you can pray and ways you can pray,” explained Bennett.
An excerpt from the meditation guide
Stop 4 Inspiration
For the mountains may depart and the hill be removed, but my steadfast love shall not depart from you. Isaiah 54:10
Up the hill from this point, the church youth built rock dams across a shallow gully eroded by water flowing off the parking lot. The dams reduce soil erosion because dirt carried by the water gets caught behind the dams while the water flows down to the flood plain. Soil accumulating behind dams provides a stable area for plants to grow. Their roots also resist water’s natural erosive power. These small dams show good land stewardship that encourages the creation of life on sterile ground.
Stop 4 Meditation
This carrying out of God’s present purpose for his land will not change the eventual eroding away of this hillside and of all the Rockies. Geologists tell us that the present Rockies rose some 70 million years ago, while the ancestral Rockies rose and eroded away between 300 and 400 million years ago.
To most people, one million, 70 million, and 300 million all mean the same thing: a very long time. The difference between one million and 300 million years is vast. But our experience of the earth is too short for us to gain meaningful impressions of the differences between vast and much more vast periods of time. To the people who first heard Isaiah’s prophecy, the idea of the mountains departing must have seemed to be a poetic device used to emphasize the steadfastness of God’s love. Today, it is easier to understand these words literally.
We probably cannot really comprehend vast stretches of geological time any better than the Israelites could, for our lifespans and experiences are similar to theirs. Nonetheless, the geological knowledge we have gained in the last 2,500 years since Isaiah 54 was written has given the prophecy even greater impact in two ways.
First, we can acknowledge the passage of great expanses of time which we cannot truly comprehend. This helps us to realize our humble position within God’s creation.
Humility often comes along with greater understanding of how God works in his world.
Second, our new geological knowledge enables us to understand these verses literally, which seems to give this particular passage even greater power. The mountains really do depart, although they take an incomprehensibly long time to do it. But God’s incomprehensibly great love remains beyond time and forever.
You must be logged in to post a comment.