Over the course of the race I’ve been astounded by the gifts God can give. There are times when he has give me entire spaces just for myself. Some may call it trespassing, but since the earth is God’s and everything in it, I consider it a gift. I first noticed it in India- I went for a run in Hyderabad and I noticed the park I was going to run in was closed. As I contemplated hopping the gate and going for it, a gardener passed by and signaling me to do just that. I had the entire park for myself to enjoy and commune with God in gratitude. The second time this happened was in Nepal. I went to the local gym after a day of ministry and found out that it was closed. I stood outside of the gate for a minute and a man came up to me and asked, “do you want to work out?” I said yes and the man had the owner open up the gym for me. I had the whole gym to myself for $5. When you are constantly surrounded by people in community and you are an introvert, you learn to really appreciate these gifts.
This time in Thailand we were given an entire national park to ourselves. One Saturday my teammate Jonathan and I decided to go to Mae Sa waterfalls, which was about 30 minutes outside of Chiang Mai. Mae Sa waterfalls is a hike composed of a river that creates 10 levels of waterfalls in the middle of the jungle. We took an Uber to the park and once again witnessed a sign that said it was closed due to flash flooding caused by the previous day’s rain. It was a beautiful day with no sign of rain and we just drove a half hour – so were not going to let a sign turn us back around. Our Uber driver drove through the gate and the security guard didn’t say anything to us – our adventure had begun. I’m going to miss the lack of rule enforcement in Asia. We were all alone in a beautiful jungle filled with epic waterfalls. The rain had turned water brownish red and the water overflowed powerfully over the rocks. We hiked all of the levels keeping an eye out for potential security guards- but no one came.
We made it up to level 10 and I suddenly realized that we could totally get away with skinny dipping in a waterfall. I had not swam naked since Vietnam, and I’m always a proponent of this incredibly freeing activity. So we enjoyed skinny dipping in the waterfalls, laughing at the shear insanity of it all, and then we hiked down the mountain in our birthday suits. The end.
