I love the outdoors especially with a pack on my back and nothing but mountains, deep forests, and expansive meadows around me. This was not always the case. I grew up in the Chicago suburbs, and the only camping experience I remember as a boy was a weekend scout jamboree. That trip was memorable only because it was such a miserable experience. I spent most of my time enduring snipe hunts, searching for smoke benders, and being harassed by other scouts who relished doing whatever they could to make my “outdoor adventure” as difficult as possible. That was my first and last experience as a young man with camping, and with scouting.

     It wasn’t until I graduated from college that I began to develop an interest in the outdoors. One summer, just before moving to Alaska to begin a teaching career, a friend and I cobbled together some backpacking equipment and spent two weeks in my VW bus traveling from California to Colorado, visiting national parks along the way. The ruggedness and pristine beauty of Yosemite, Zion Park, Bryce Canyon, and Rocky Mountain National Park sucked me in like a whirlpool, and I have had a deep love and reverence for the wild places ever since. In no other places do I feel as connected and as close to God as I do when in them.

     I relate all of this because, here on mission, my time in “wild places” is quite limited. But there is one place close by where I often go and feel the presence of the divine more intensely than any other place I’ve been. It’s in the Sacred Grove, a 10-acre section of forest that is part of the Smith family farm. As I’ve written previously, this is the place where Joseph Smith, inspired by his reading of James 1:5, knelt and received answers to a prayer that changed his life and the lives of millions of others as well. Confused by the contradictory doctrines of the various churches he had been investigating, Joseph went to the grove and prayerfully asked which church he should join. He was visited by Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ and told to join none of them but that through his faithfulness he would be the means by which Christ’s original church would one day be restored. That experience marked the beginnings of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.

     Whenever I enter the grove, the soft light, tall trees, and something else I can’t describe, touch me in a mysterious way, and everything changes. A conduit to heaven seems to open, and I’m instantly uplifted. No matter what time of day, how often I visit, what mood I’m in, or what the weather is like - and I’ve been there on sultry summer days, cold winter mornings, and during drenching afternoon thunderstorms - the feelings are always the same. It’s as if the experience that Joseph Smith had in 1820 left an eternal imprint that all who come here can feel. I cannot adequately describe what I experience when I’m in the grove, but what I can say is this: it’s transcendent, and it happens every time I’m there.