Three Days in the Wilderness: On Faith, Leadership, and the Power of Quiet Conviction

From the desk of Chuck Fuller, CEO of The Results Company 

Throughout the year, I look forward to the privilege of sharing with you some of my own personal reflections, usually around the holidays. Most of you know well by now that I’m a man of deep faith (so the Easter holiday is one I very much cherish) and that I’m an amateur historian – which is another way of saying I read a lot of books and watch a lot of shows about history.

The theme for my note to you today actually struck me several months ago as I was reacquainting myself with the story of President Teddy Roosevelt’s 1903 trip into Yosemite with the naturalist John Muir.

It’s a story about the improbable journeys of two men whose intersecting paths brought them together in one of the world’s great wildernesses, prompting the most sweeping natural preservation effort in history.

“Leave it as it is,” President Roosevelt said when he returned from Yosemite with Muir. “You cannot improve on it. The ages have been at work on it, and man can only mar it.”

***

John Muir, who moved from Scotland to Wisconsin as a young boy, always loved the outdoors. But he was also a brilliant inventor, and after adventuring around the eastern United States during adolescence, he settled down at a wheel factory in Indiana. Muir rose quickly through the company ranks, devising new machines and processes.

But in 1867, a tool impaled him through his right eye on the factory floor. Muir wrote later, “This affliction has driven me to the sweet fields. God has to nearly kill us sometimes, to teach us lessons.”

Muir went temporarily blind in his other eye, too – part of the body’s way of coping with the kind of grievous injury he suffered, apparently. During his monthlong recovery, Muir promised that should his vision return, he would “turn away from mechanical inventions and devote his life to the study of the inventions of God.”

When he could see out of his left eye again, Muir kept his promise. He set off into the wilderness, walking through Appalachia and to the Gulf of Mexico before finding his way via steamship to San Francisco. He asked a local which way to Yosemite, a place he’d heard of but never been, and walked east.

He built himself a small cabin there, venturing out all over the land by day and returning at night to read and write.

Muir began publishing essays, letters, journals, and books – about geology, his own adventures, and the splendor of the natural world.

It’s through those books that President Theodore Roosevelt – a famous outdoorsman himself – learned about and came to respect Muir for his knowledge and shared passion. In 1903, Roosevelt resolved to embark on a great tour of the American west, including to Yosemite. He wrote to Muir, asking him to be his guide: “I do not want anyone with me but you, and I want to drop politics absolutely for four days and just be out in the open with you.”

Muir saw the engagement as an opportunity to truly preserve what he considered God’s most incredible gift to the world.

For three days, Muir and Roosevelt disappeared into the wild. Muir guided Roosevelt to the most awe-inspiring parts of Yosemite. Muir waited until the third day to suggest that Yosemite may not endure without meaningful legal protection.

Muir won Roosevelt over, and he did it by showing, not preaching.

After being gone for three days, Roosevelt reemerged – and set about saving the natural land from destruction.

“It was like lying in a great solemn cathedral,” Roosevelt said when he returned. “Far vaster and more beautiful than any built by the hand of man.”

Roosevelt said at a speech a few months later, “There can be nothing in the world more beautiful than the Yosemite, the groves of the giant sequoias. . .Our people should see to it that they are preserved for their children and their children’s children forever.”

***

The Bible recounts that Jesus, after the resurrection, appeared to his followers several times. They’re not these all-powerful, earth-shaking encounters. They’re peaceful and even tranquil. The Book of John, for example, describes Mary Magdalene mistaking Jesus for a gardener when he appeared to her outside the tomb.

A  few things strike me about this. First, gently showing others – as Muir did with Roosevelt – often proves to be far more effective than powerfully telling them something. “My little children, let us not love in word or in tongue, but in deed and in truth,” says 1 John 3:18.

Second, one experiences the same sort of peacefulness and tranquility when in unspoiled nature – the same that Muir showed Roosevelt when they disappeared for three days in Yosemite.

Third, the parallels of Roosevelt’s trip and Easter seem more than a coincidence. Roosevelt learned what needed to be done, disappeared for three days, and returned to save something precious to God. Isn’t this the story of Easter?

I’ve helped advance many manmade projects in my life. I’m all for harvesting the natural resources God gifted us, and for building the housing and the office buildings and the energy infrastructure that facilitate human progress. But I also know that I somehow feel closer to Him when surrounded by his original work, and I’m grateful for God’s gift to me.

May you and your family be blessed this Easter.