It was January of 1981. I was a senior at Westmont and found myself in the Sierra Nevada Mountains for a Sierra Trek program that taught about caring for God’s creation. D’Aun, my fiance at the time, was also on the trip.
We would spend days orienteering, cross-country skiing, and rock climbing. The evenings were spent in group discussions about creation care, led by Dave Willis. Dave, a fascinating man with multiple talents, would guide us through an ever changing array of topics and exercises. It was a great way to learn for me and I loved the interaction.
Our textbook was Earthkeeping by Loren Wilkinson. It is now out of print, I think, and it probably feels dated today. But it was a cutting edge book at the time. The book challenged me to look at how my faith should be integrated into caring for creation. That made the book edgy in its day. No, that made the book radical.
Long story short, it was on that Sierra Trek trip that D’Aun and I first sensed a vision to do something involving our faith and creation care. Which led to us starting Hidden Lakes Retreat a few years later, which led to the Christian Environmental Association, which became Target Earth International. Along the way we worked with some great people to protect nearly 2000 acres of rainforest, publish a magazine, establish college chapters, build research centers on three continents, launch a semester academic program, send thousands of people on short term service trips, and impact the poor in at least two dozen countries.
Earthkeeping may not have been the impetus for all of that, but it was the core reading that got us going. So for that it deserves to be on the list of 25 books that influenced my life.
But there is more to this story.
As the evenings wound down on those cold January nights in the Sierras, Dave would entertain us with poetry. That sounds so incredibly boring, doesn’t it? But the poetry that Dave would recite by memory (with dramatic flourish) was by Robert Service. It fit the setting beautifully and would keep us entranced as Dave amazed us with his memory.
How could I not fall in love with phrases like this:
“There are strange things done in the midnight sun,
by the men who moil for gold;
The Arctic trails have their secret tales
that would make your blood run cold;
The Northern lights have seen queer sights,
but the queerest they ever did see
Was that night on the marge of Lake Lebarge
I cremated Sam McGee.”
Now that’s an opening verse that will grab your attention! I still have the book of Service poems that I bought almost as soon as I got home from that trip to the Sierras, and I still open it up to read a few verses. It makes me smile as it paints pictures of a time long ago in the untouched wilderness.
I was never much of a poetry fan. I’m still not, to be honest. But I have a higher appreciation for the craft because I heard Dave bring those Robert Service poems alive. And for that, the Robert Service collections also deserve to be on my list of the 25 books that most influenced my life.
Want to read more of my top 25? Here is the list thus far:
Celebration of Discipline – #1
The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings – #2
The Cost of Discipleship – #3
The Screwtape Letters – #4
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn – #5
Only the Paranoid Survive – #6
The Spy Who Came In From The Cold – #7
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – #8
Truman – #9
Shantaram – #10
The Maltese Falcon – #11
The Shadow of the Wind – #12
Survey of the New Testament – #13
Calvin & Hobbes – #14
Celtic Daily Prayer – #15
Managing the Nonprofit Organization – #16
A Wrinkle in Time – #17
The Practice of the Presence of God – #18
Catch 22 – #19
The Tortilla Curtain – #20
The Kingdom of God is a Party – #21
Earthkeeping – #22
Reviving Ophelia – #23
The Grapes of Wrath – #24
Peanuts – #25