If I Believed In God Part 1: Camp Nelson

     My grandfather, Duane Damron, recently turned 80.  At his charming birthday party, I cried as my family and I sang Buck Owens songs with him, loud and giggling in his house perched high on a Bakersfield hilltop. The gifts his life has given me danced along in my mind to to the sweet melody of my singing family. One echoing over and over in my soul... my Papa taught me to love nature.  Not remotely a conscientious environmentalist, my Papa's fondness for the Earth is one of tradition and divine respect.  My Papa and Grandma Frances raised only boys and bought a simple cabin high in the Sequoia National Forest as soon as they could afford it, a wilderness untamed enough to wear out the energy of three hyper little boys. As my divine luck would have it, my cousins and I ventured to this same haven every year of our own childhoods.  We caught salamanders, fell in rivers, buried ourselves in snow, and trekked mud through the carpets of the cabin for years... all the while I fell in quiet love with nature.

     If I believed in God... this God would inspire his followers to recognize his existence in these quiet places and require of them the prioritization of its reverence and conservation. If God didn't intend for humans to marvel at and fight for nature... how can we possibly justify the beauty that exists on this planet? I have to believe the Yosemite Valley and the peaks of Patagonia serve more of a purpose than to remind us that God is talented... they must be a call to action: to seek to make God's "will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven".  If Yosemite is God's will... then damn I'm all for it.

If I believed in God, I would believe that every time a Christian supports the compromise of nature for the idol of financial gain... his heart breaks.