Beach Bums

Hope you are making plans to attend the Mid-South Forestry Equipment Show in Starkville, Miss. on October 3-4! The Backwoods Pew will be there, and we will be hosting a morning prayer meeting just outside the main gate each morning at 7 a.m. Come join us and stop by our table.—Brad

You know the expression: “It’s not the heat, it’s the humidity.” Welcome to Summer in the South: land of heat and humidity. Blink and you will sweat. The kind of day I really love is the day the local news channel has issued an ozone alert. It goes like this: “The high heat and humidity will make it extremely dangerous to be outside today. Residents are advised to stay inside as much as possible.” But loggers look forward to the gentle breeze made by a falling tree; so, it is off to work they go. And if the loggers are in the woods, so are the foresters. And so is the original logger, and that is the beaver. His logging will keep a diligent forester up at night. The beaver will block the one pipe that will flood the road the loggers are hauling out of, or flood the timber sale itself. Beavers can mess up a logging job faster than you can say, “It sure is hot out here!”

On one such day as described above, I had to make several rounds in an effort to thwart some of those furry little engineers. And as the day progressed, I realized that I was not going to get all the rounds done before the hottest part of the day set in. No problem, I thought. I am young and in great shape. So, while the melting clock on the dash of the truck read 1:30, the temperature plus the humidity pushed 110°, and the local DJ warned, “Don’t go out there,” I did. Now my preferred mosquito repellent is 100% cotton; that is, I wear a long sleeve shirt. It actually keeps bugs and poison ivy off of my arms, and for that I endure the added heat. On this day I dressed as I usually do, long sleeve shirt and hip waders, and into the swamp I plunged.

The problem on this particular tract was this: beavers were damming a stream under a power line about a half-mile into the tract. We were scheduled to log this tract, so the water had to go; therefore, the beavers had to go. I had to check that my recent trapping activities had been successful, and that, in fact, the water level had dropped so that we could move a logger onto the tract. It is here that the wildlife management portion of my college degree was finally used! Because of the nature of the land, and the activities of the beaver, the entire trip in was knee-deep in mud. I hope you can get a picture of all of this, especially the young man (me) who thought he could handle the heat. He was unconcerned about it. He never even thought about it. Just as arrogant and confident of his abilities as he could be. But with each step, each herculean effort to pull a boot out of the mud and set it back down, and each attempt to make another step towards the dry land that seemed miles away, his confi- dence was quickly eroding. It was on the trip back to the truck that certain ideas began to flash through his mind, such as:

“How will they find my body out here?”

“Would it be better to die suddenly with a heart attack or simply collapse and fall into a moccasin-ridden swamp?”

“Do mosquitoes still take your blood after you have already died?” But as I stopped every few feet, trying to breathe and holding on to trees to keep from falling, I had a revelation: “A cup of water would sure taste good right now!”

In Psalms 143:6, David writes: “I spread out my hands to You; my soul longs for You like a thirsty land.” In Psalm 42:2, the writer declares; “My soul thirsts for God…” David lived in the South— the south of Israel, that is—so heat and humidity were not uncommon for him.

In John 4:14, Jesus is talking to a woman who is thirsty. She has come to the well to get some water. He tells her, “…whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him will never thirst. But the water that I shall give him will become in him a fountain of water springing up into everlasting life.” Christ is the answer to our thirst, the desire that we have within us for something we never seem to find. Some will try to fill the emptiness inside with a career. Others will seek to drink from sensual pleasure. Still others will try drugs and alcohol. Many try to just ignore the nagging thirst. They know it is there. It is a pesky feeling in the back of their mind. It picks at them whenever they see a baby or a starry night. Whenever a tree sheds an autumn leaf, or a friend dies, it is there. The mouth is dry. The soul is parched. There is the emotion that something is miss- ing, and that something is critical to our survival.

Jesus Christ is our living water. David knew where to go to quench his thirst. The woman at the well, a woman whose personal life was in shambles, finally heard what she had been ignoring all her life: water gushing. The water that changed her life can change yours too. Are you out in the woods on a hot day? Thirsty? Do what David did and reach for the Lord. Reach for eter- nal life.

Excerpted from Bibles, Beavers, and Big Timber, Bradley Antill, author. Visit www.onatreeforestry.com for more.