The Spirit of the Appalachian Trail: Community, Environment, and Belief

Chapter 9. Spirit in Nature: Religious Meaning andthe Transcendent

chApTer 9 SpiriT in nATure: religiouS MeAning And The TrAnScendenT Inquiring about God and the Transcendent Other The fourth element in the SH4DI was the transcendent domain: the relationship to God or “the relationship of self with something or someone beyond the human level a Transcendent Other.”1 The final section of the survey concerned explicitly religious or spiritual responses to the Appalachian Trail. To remain open to a variety of religious traditions, the questions in the survey referred to God (or gods or spirits). Finding appropriate interreligious vocabulary was difficult. Using a list of all the supernatural or philosophical alternatives would have made the questions too complex to read. The mix of monotheism, polytheism, and animism/pantheism drew no margin comments from practitioners of alternative religions objecting to the structure of the statements, though some Buddhists did note that the vocabulary was inaccurate from their perspective.2 A few nonreligious respondents made margin comments to indicate they did not think God existed. The design incorporated an open-ended question allowing the respondents to describe spiritual experiences on trail in their own words. This question appeared prior to the section on transcendence, to reduce the impact of the language utilized in the survey on the hikers’ personal articulation of their encounters with the sacred or completely other.3 PeterAshley,whosurveyedTasmaniansconcerningtheirthoughtsaboutwilderness spirituality, summarized some of the possible relationships as a “feeling on connection and interrelationship with other people and nature; a heightened senseofawarenessandelevatedconsciousnessbeyondtheeverydayandcorporeal world; cognitive and affective dimensions of human understandings embracing Spirit in nature 168 peace, tranquility, harmony, happiness, awe, wonder, and humbleness; and the possible presence of religious meaning.” Ashley notably removed vocabulary concerning God or the creator from his summary, even though a number of his subjects made statements such as: “As I observe and experience the beauty of the wilderness creation, I stand in awe and wonder of God who designed and created it.”4 In the AT hiker survey, the section on transcendence did utilize terms for deity (God, spirit, gods), while the section on personal experience did not. In response to the question in the first demographic section, 62 percent of the respondents indicated they were having spiritual or religious experiences on the trail, while 32 percent checked no, and an additional twelve (6 percent) did not answer this question. Of hikers with some form religious identity (all religions ), 75.5 percent reported religious or spiritual experience on the AT, while 38 percent of those without a definite religious identity indicated religious or spiritual experience on trail (p=.01). Of the sixty-one respondents who reported current membership in a Christian church or organization (also about 30 percent of the hikers), fourteen indicated that they were not engaged in any spiritual or religious experience on the trail, or 23 percent of the active Christians. In terms of demographic characteristics, the hikers’ age, education level, or hiking partnerships made little difference in the level of on-trail religious practice , such as reading sacred texts, with two notable exceptions. The change in the amount of time spent in prayer or meditation was correlated to the size of the hiking group. Hikers who were traveling with companions were more likely to report a decrease in prayer and meditation over their usual practice (p=.001). The amount of time spent reading sacred or spiritual materials was negatively correlated to education level in pre-trail terms (p=.057), and this pattern was even more distinct on the trail (p=.006). Because the majority of hikers who had religious affiliations were Christian, this reverse relationship of education level to reading probably reflects differences between evangelicals and mainline or liberal Protestants. Evangelicals purchased more religious-based reading materials while having lower incomes and educational levels on average than mainline Protestants.5 The hiker logs included quotes from Buddhist sacred texts and poetry, providing evidence that the more-committed Buddhists brought religious reading materials or had memorized texts and were thinking about them. Evangelical jottings in logs sometimes expressed evangelical concepts intended to influence Spirit in nature 169 other hikers, such as declaring Christ as the Only Son of God or as the exclusive way to salvation. They also included biblical passages, along with scribbled fragments of favorite hymns from childhood. The remarks were frequently intended to let a Christian hostel staff know that a thru-hiker appreciated the dry carpet and access to a washing machine. Adherents of alternative religions...