The Great Outdoors

Our daughter Banks and I had been on the road for six days. She was 12 years old at the time, and she endured the doldrums of long driving spells like a seasoned long-haul driver. That’s not to say our journey had been without excitement. Quite the opposite. We tried to summit Mount Rogers, the highest peak in Va. We conquered Mount Mitchell and Sassafras Mountain, the highest peaks in N.C. and S.C., respectively. And we hiked headlong up the steepest trail we had ever been on at Bald Mountain, Ga. which is the Peach State’s highest mountain.

We spent two days in Va. in a treehouse equipped only with a propane heater. It snowed two inches while we slumbered on the first night. The white blanket seemed cozy and inviting as we peeked out the windows, shivering at the thought of dancing through the undisturbed quilt of snow. We gently stepped, side by side, across the virgin snowfall so we could look back over our shoulders to see where our feet had fallen. “Some people spend their whole life looking back from where they came,” I remarked. “What do you mean?” the inquisitive 12-year-old asked.  “I mean they live with regret. Regret for the mistakes they think they made or regret because things aren’t like they used to be.” I made air quotation gestures with my fingers. She nodded her head with understanding. “It’s hard, though, to keep your eyes on Jesus if you are always looking back, isn’t it?” I didn’t necessarily expect an answer to my rhetorical question, so I was somewhat surprised when she said “yes” in response. “Is that why we’re climbing all these mountains?” she continued. Puzzled at her remark, I ask for a more detailed explanation. She stopped kicking the snow with her toes and looked up at me.  “I mean, are we going to the highest mountain in each state so we can be closer to Jesus?” Her blue eyes peered straight into the hazel of my own as she dropped the tips of my fingers from the palm of her hand. “Sort of,” I responded. “We are not climbing them to get physically closer. Yes, heaven is up, but He is all around us already. We are climbing them because I know that from the top of these mountains, you will be much better able to see all that He created—and that will bring us closer to Him.”  She paused for a moment and then quipped, “Seems like it might be easier to just look at pictures,” and then she laughed as she pulled away and scooped up a snowball.

A few days later, we stood atop Mount Sassafras in the middle of nowhere S.C. as the sun melted into the Great Smoky Mountains. The stars rose to our east, and the western sky shone orange across the haze of the blue Smoky. Banks leaned into my arm with her head and shoulder and wrapped her arm around my waist. She broke the silence of the sunset and said, “I get it, Dad. I get it.”  “See what He did?” I asked. I felt her nod her head in my rib cage and thought the sunset was beautiful, but the moment was more so. And that’s why we go Shepherding Outdoors.  

“For His invisible attributes, namely, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So, they are without excuse.” Romans 1:20

-Walt Merrell

A Christian Outdoorsman who writes of his adventures with his family, with the hope that others might be inspired and encouraged to embrace God’s tapestry, otherwise known as the great outdoors, as a means of finding Common Ground. You can follow him at Shepherding Outdoors on FB, YT and IG and at shepherdingoutdoors.com. His most recent book is available at shepherdingbook.com. Read his faith story at www.BirminghamChristian.com. 

 

The Great Outdoors

Looking for that perfect Father’s Day gift? The staff at Mark’s Outdoors is ready to assist you in finding a gift Dad will love and use. Besides being a one stop shop for hunting and fishing needs, Mark’s also carries a wide variety of lifestyle products for the husband or father in your life. Here are just a few ideas for Father’s Day.

Protect in Style. Give Dad the shades he needs for all of his outdoor activities, including Costa, Bajio and Ombraz brands. Lots of great styles to choose from with lenses that offer 100% UVA and UVB protection.

Play it Safe. Shirts with sun protection are a great gift for the dad who spends anytime outdoors. Mark’s has sizes ranging from small to 3x in great colors and styles from the top men’s sportswear brands including Coastal Cotton, Simms, and AFTCO. Along with a sun protection shirt, gift dad with a sun protection hat. Mark’s has a variety of Tilley Hats- perfect for people susceptible to sunburns.

Besides remembering your Dad with a gift this Father’s Day, most importantly, we hope you will have the opportunity to spend some time with your Dad- if at all possible, in God’s great outdoors.

Mark’s Outdoors 

1400-B Montgomery Highway, Vestavia 35216

205-822-2010, www.marksoutdoors.com

Don’t’ Miss Take a Kid Fishing Day!

On Saturday June 15, 2024, Mark’s Outdoors will be giving the first 150 kids that come into the store a free rod and reel. The doors open at 9 a.m.  The only “catch” is that the parent must take their kid fishing asap. “It is our way of giving back to the community and getting parents involved with their kids and interested in the outdoors,” explains Mark Whitlock, Jr. “The objective is to make memories. With the rise of cell phones in the hands of children they miss out on nature and we want people to get involved.” Mark’s will also have sales throughout the store on fishing reels and rods, clothing, fishing accessories and much more!

 

 

 

The Great Outdoors

I woke during the night… rain pitter-pattered on the tent top. A once soothing creek right behind our camp now gargled into the Cahaba River, as if it were angry.  The slow, steady rain had swollen both creek and river.  The noise likely wouldn’t have disturbed me had my air mattress not deflated sometime during my slumber. And it was getting colder in the night… for which I wasn’t adequately dressed. Nor was I prepared for the big rock that now positioned itself in the middle of my back as I lay on the cold, hard ground.  It seemed that amidst life’s discomfort… I needed better shelter. 

At sunrise, Chris Jackson and I got up to begin the day… Easter Sunday. Chris, an Executive Coach with C12 in Montgomery, has been a dear friend for much of my adult life. But more than that, he has been a spiritual mentor, accountability partner, brother in arms, and any number of other titles at various points in my life. A tarp hung lowly over the fire bed from the previous night. Chris, always thinking ahead, had anticipated the rain. After breakfast, Chris’ two youngest boys and my two oldest girls all scavenged the rain-soaked woods around trying to stave off boredom… there would be no floating further down the river today with the threat of some severe weather looming. We hunkered down to try to keep shelter from the elements. The rain, though, would not dampen the cause for celebration… and after the kids had all worked off some of their restless energy, we called them all back up to the campfire. The rain had slowed to a drizzle and the warmth of the fire, and the smell of the smoke was inviting. I read the Gospel’s account of the Resurrection, and Chris delivered a great devotional about the importance of finding Jesus wherever you are. He then commissioned the kids to conduct a very special scavenger hunt. “Go find something from nature and bring it back to the group and tell how you “found Jesus” in that piece of nature you bring back.” Before dismissing us, Chris reached into his pack and pulled out some bread and a small bottle of grape juice. Communion on the Cahaba… and on Easter Sunday, no less. What a memory to be made. And in memory of Him, we did.

Assembling the crew back together, Chris and I settled them down with a few ‘booger tales.’ For whatever reason, they didn’t believe Chris and I once captured Big Foot and shaved him down…. turns out he is really a French Poodle with a bad perm! One by one the kids opened their plastic Easter egg to reveal the fruit of their scavenger labor. Bay took a sweet gumball and cut it in half to signify the Crown of Thorns. Jake fashioned briars in a similar Crown. Cape put salt in her plastic egg and then read from the Good Book about how we are to be the salt of the earth. Grey held fast to a flat granite rock… “the cornerstone” he explained. And Chris and I both knew that these kids had truly found the Shelter they needed.  No rain, no passing thunderstorm, no flood of life… will ever sink their spirit. For they know well where to find Shelter… “[their] refuge and [their] fortress, [their] God, in whom [they] trust.” Psalm 91:2. A few hours later the sun majestically made a triumphant and glorious entrance in the treetops above our camp… and then just as quickly, disappeared again. I couldn’t help but think it was just a reminder that just as the sun and the rain falls on everything, His grace does too. Matthew 5:45. 

-Walt Merrell

A Christian Outdoorsman who writes of his adventures with his family, with the hope that others might be inspired and encouraged to embrace God’s tapestry, otherwise known as the great outdoors, as a means of finding Common Ground. You can follow him at Shepherding Outdoors on FB, YT and IG and at shepherdingoutdoors.com. His most recent book is available at shepherdingbook.com. Read his faith story at www.BirminghamChristian.com. 

The Great Outdoors

Even in the bitterest of cold January months, most of our eyes and hearts will start to drift toward spring. A few hunters, our family included, will stay focused on what we call the “deer woods” through mid-February, but even for us, after that, all eyes will turn toward the hope of seeds soon to be planted and blossoms to bud.

My wife, Hannah, loves to garden.  We plant a row crop garden with the tractor and back yard gardens in what most folks would call a watering trough. Our girls enjoy gardening too… especially our youngest, Banks and our oldest, Bay. The Middle Princess, her name is Cape, well… she loves to hunt… gardening, not so much.  

Cape, a senior in high school, hunts more than I do these days. Bay, now a Junior at Ole Miss, will “go” hunting with me, though she doesn’t always carry her own gun. She goes just so we can spend time together… “she and I,” as Randy Owen once sang. Banks, an eighth grader, hunts with me regularly, too. And Randy is right… that time she and I spend together is “great and wonderful.”

The girls’ grandfather, my dad, grew up in Sylacauga. He hunted quail more than anything as a child.  Back then, quail were prevalent, and quail hunting was a favorite pastime of Alabama gentlemen hunters. His dad, though… my grandfather, was a deer hunter. In 1959 he killed what was then a massive buck – all eight basket points. I still have the deer mount hanging on the wall in my study. He signed his name and dated the plywood backing. It smells slightly of formaldehyde, and it looks like a fawn hanging next to some of the deer we have taken in more recent years. He killed that buck near Talladega… in the National Forest. It was a prize that is rumored to have made several newspapers at the time.  

And though its small compared to more well-developed deer, it’s a prize to me today. Because of the memories it represents. Sometimes when I write about fishing adventures with my grandfather, or time spent at his Lay Lake cabin, I stare at the now 63-year-old relic… and recall catching bream or snapping turtles. For you see… that deer mount is not a trophy. To me, it’s something of an Ebeneezer Stone that reminds me of the things my grandfather taught me. Every time I see it, I think of him and the lessons I learned along the way. 

I’ve been intentional through the years to Shepherd my girls into adulthood, by way of the great Outdoors. Fact is, every time we go hunting, or work in the garden, or any other outdoor adventure we have, they learn so much more about life than they do about anything else. And I want to teach them those life lessons, because others did the same for me… 

What say you, all who are winter baron in the doldrums of a cold world? What seed do you plan to plant when the thaw comes? I pray its one that will bear fruit… for the harvest is plenty. 

Let’s go…. Shepherding Outdoors.   

-Walt Merrell

A Christian Outdoorsman who writes of his adventures with his family, with the hope that others might be inspired and encouraged to embrace God’s tapestry, otherwise known as the great outdoors, as a means of finding Common Ground. You can follow him at Shepherding Outdoors on FB, YT and IG and at shepherdingoutdoors.com. His most recent book is available at shepherdingbook.com. Read his faith story here.

The Great Outdoors

presented by: Mark’s Outdoors

Struggling with what to buy for your friend or family member that loves the outdoors? The staff at Mark’s Outdoors is ready to help! Here’s a look at items on their Top Ten List, specially priced for the Christmas season.

1. Survival Backpack $40

2. Fenix Flashlight $90

3. Tactacam Security Camera $150

4. Benchmade Bugout Knife $160

5. Warthog Knife Sharpener $90

6. Orca Cup $30

7. Filson Briefcase $240

8. Costa Sunglasses $180+

9. Shimano Curado DC Reel $270

10. Marks Gift Certificate $20-$5,000

As a thank you to the readers of Birmingham Christian Family, Mark’s Outdoors invites you to clip or screen shot this article and bring it into the store for $10 off of a purchase of $20 or more. Valid December 1-31, 2023. Limit one per customer, one time use only.

– Mark’s Outdoors 

1400-B Montgomery Highway, Vestavia 35216

205-822- 2010, www.marksoutdoors.com