There are places in this world, places that I have been fortunate enough to experience, where the veil that separates heaven and earth feels very thin. Those “thin places” are worth seeking out. Pictured here, Dan Dye fishes the water of Hazel Creek in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Photo by Brad Dye

Recently, while returning home late one rainy afternoon from visiting my dad in North Mississippi, I rounded a turn near Brices Cross Roads National Battlefield and was treated to a captivating sight.

 

My eyes were drawn to the back of the field, where a deer, a large doe, had stepped out of a canebrake. She was beautiful, already cloaked in the lighter, shorter reddish-brown hair of her summer coat.

 

She appeared, however, to be dwarfed by a large wild turkey gobbler standing in the middle of the field, roughly 30 yards away. His immensity caused me to do a double take.

 

I reckon that, without close inspection and the ability to weigh and measure him, he is probably the largest wild turkey I’ve seen in quite some time, if ever.

Standing erect as a bodark fencepost, he had a presence about him that conveyed a sense of command. Perhaps, that’s my human propensity for anthropomorphism or, more likely, it was because he was standing so near the hallowed ground of the 1864 battlefield.

 

As I watched him, I imagined at some point during that battle a high-ranking officer, perhaps a general, stood in that very spot, surveying the lay of the land making plans for what was to come or, in the days that followed, surveying the aftermath and the carnage that had taken place.

 

This gobbler, even at a distance, gave me that sense. The sense he had walked through many battles and stood wounded but victorious in many battlefields. He was the general, resolute, seasoned, stoic; he was General Longstreet transformed into General Longbeard.

 

I continued watching him in my rearview mirror as I drove until, at last, I lost sight of him. At the nearby stop sign adjacent to the battlefield, I sat taking in the cannons and monuments, the gravestones and the small church sitting nearby.

 

The combination of all those things, along with the venerated ground on which they rested, gave me the feeling of a “thin place.”  I’ve experienced the same feelings at the battlefields of Shiloh and Chickamauga, both landscapes that attest to what was lost, what was given and what was taken.

 

According to my quick Google search, “A ‘thin place’ is a term, particularly within Celtic Christianity and related spiritual traditions, that refers to locations or moments where the perceived veil between heaven and earth is thin, making it easier to connect with the divine.

 

The article goes on to state that “these places can be physical locations like mountains, rivers or sacred sites, or they can be emotional or spiritual experiences like moments of prayer, deep contemplation or strong relationship.”

 

The definition and the feelings it invokes feel spot on. It would seem to me that in the case of battlefields, places where so many lives were lost, the veil between heaven and earth is quite thin.  I can only imagine how thin it must have felt in the midst of the conflict.

 

Aside from battlefields, I’ve been blessed to have experienced these “thin places” many times in my ramblings outdoors.  I’ve experienced them in places like Devils Tower National Monument where, walking around the pathway that encircles the tower, I felt the need to whisper, if I spoke at all.  It’s easy to see why so many of our indigenous brothers and sisters view the site as a sacred place.

 

Most recently, I felt the same emotions fly fishing Hazel Creek in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park last fall.  Hiking in along the creek, you see what remains of the once-thriving logging and lumber town of Proctor.

 

While most of the town now lies beneath the waters of Fontana Lake, a few remnants remain along or near the creek, remnants like the Calhoun House (now used by the U.S. Forest Service for storage), the remains of the abandoned Ritter Lumber Company Sawmill and the Proctor Cemetery.

 

The Google article mentioned “mountains, rivers or sacred sites” as potential “thin places,” and as I discovered during our day fishing for rainbows, brook and brown trout in the Smokies, Hazel Creek checks all those boxes. Stepping into those waters was like stepping into a church sanctuary, the stained glass and pews of which had been replaced with rhododendrons and moss-covered boulders.

 

I felt immediately connected to another realm, a higher realm, and I understood with certainty why writer Harry Middleton so loved the “deep and abiding silence” of the Smokies.

 

Middleton battled depression his entire life, but the balm of the Smoky Mountain waters provided healing.  It was in these waters that he “…mingled with fish and water and light…” and “…felt the press of time, the great power of the present, the energy that fashions both the past and the future.”

 

Like Middleton, I, too, have felt this connection in the “thin places” of our world, places like Hazel Creek, places like the Big Field here at the farm, places where, in the words of Harry Middleton, “…there is always the sensation, so deeply satisfying, of belonging, of being genuinely connected.”

 

Until next time, here’s to finding the places where you feel most deeply and genuinely connected, the places where the veil between heaven and earth is thin, and here’s to seeing you out there in our great outdoors.