Lech-Lecha into the Colorado Rockies

Author

Sara Hoffen loves Judaism, the outdoors, and meeting new people. She lives in Miami, Florida, where she is active in the Jewish community and works in Risk Consulting. In her free time, you can find her either on a plane, at the gym, or somewhere in the woods.

Lech-Lecha, otherwise translated as “Go forth,” is a phrase taken from Genesis, the first book of Torah. It is part of the call from G-d to Abraham: “Go forth from your homeland to the land that I will show you.” With Lech-Lecha, G-d calls to Abraham to follow his instructions and that he and all his descendants will be blessed. But Lech-Lecha isn’t just a call to follow G-d, but a call for Abraham to remove himself from what he knows and place himself in an unfamiliar situation, to trust his gut, his beliefs, those he loves, and step into the unknown.

I signed up on a backpacking trip in the Rocky Mountains with Lech-Lecha Journeys, a Jewish young professional hiking group. I was planning on doing a 10-day solo road trip in Colorado, which my sister was not a fan of. She saw one of her college rabbis post about Lech-Lecha – the organization, not the phrase – on Facebook and sent me the flyer, telling me this was totally up my alley.

I planned to go on this trip 2 months in advance. I bought a 65-liter Osprey hiking bag off Amazon (outdoor stores in Miami don’t sell hiking gear because it’s too flat and nobody hikes), stuffed 30-pound weights in it, put the incline up on a treadmill, and walked for 25 minutes a day to make sure I could carry it.

I arrived in Boulder, Colorado, on the red-eye flight (didn’t want to miss work) and got an Uber to one of the trip leaders' house. When I arrived, it was 1:30 in the morning and I couldn’t see the house number. The door was unlocked, so I went inside. I saw a bunch of Jewish items and figured I was in the right house, so I found a bedroom and went to sleep.  The next morning, I woke up alive and assumed that since nobody had murdered me in my sleep I was in the right house.
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I saw Yisroel at some point, grateful that I made it to the right house. However, Yisroel informed me that it wasn’t, in fact, his house; it was the RABBI’S house, and Yisroel was house-sitting!
At that point, three other girls from our trip showed up. Yisroel whipped up some eggs, we piled into the car, and the five of us drove 2.5 hours to the trailhead, the last half hour of the drive being on a dirt road.

Yes, we really were in the middle of nowhere.

We met up with the rest of our group – 11 of us total – at the trailhead. They had whipped up a delicious meal of cream cheese, guacamole, cucumbers, tomatoes, lettuce, sauerkraut, and chipotle hummus on tortillas. Combining all of those things together in one bowl actually tastes really good.

Especially when you’re hungry.

We doused our clothes in some kind of bug repellant that is supposed to work for a year. Then we proceeded to clean our bowls and spoons with dirt because apparently that’s the best way to keep your utensils clean in the woods.

We loaded our packs on our backs (I was carrying about 4 gallon-sized bags of oats, nuts, etc., a sleeping bag, a sleeping pad, my utensils, my two-person tent, fuel, plus the limited amount of clothes I brought), and onward we went.

I want to take a pause in the chronology of the backpacking trip to point out that there was absolutely no cell signal, meaning I couldn’t use my phone beyond taking the gorgeous pictures dotted throughout this blog post. Not being able to use my phone is part of Lech-Lecha – go forth from your homeland – my comfort zone – into the unknown. So much of life, especially during the pandemic, is tied to this tiny handheld device. Zoom meetings, Facetime with friends in quarantine, scrolling through online dating apps, social media, work emails, AllTrails (yes, sometimes I like to create random hiking itineraries for myself in my spare time), texting, the Wall Street Journal. We need constant stimulation, validation, entertainment, so much so that we forget how to just be. I’m not the first to admit that without my phone I feel anxious, like I’m missing out on something. Does work need me even though I’m on vacation? Are my parents trying to reach me? My friends? 

Lech Lecha. Detach from your phone, the outside world, the addiction to validation, likes on Instagram, 21st century social life, and go forth into to the present, the woods, the mountains, the unknown.

And so we went forth.

We hiked in Pike National Forest, which is in the Colorado Rockies, but not the Rocky Mountain National Park. With 45 – 50 pounds on my back while walking uphill, I had a hard time making conversation. We had a late start and only ended up hiking 3.5 miles the first day.  But let me tell you, those first 3.5 miles were the hardest part of the hike. During the day, the temperatures escalated up to 80 degrees and plunged into the high 30s at night. That first night, I shook with chills. Being from Miami, Florida where it doesn’t get below 70 degrees Fahrenheit then bundling up in nearly freezing weather was extremely difficult for me, honestly the most difficult part of the backpacking trip.
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We camped next to a stream and filled our waters up using a gravity filter and iodine pills. Then we started our second day, with the plan of hiking 8 miles, mostly uphill.

Eight miles is typically an easy hike; I’ve done more than 8 miles on day hikes in Ireland, the Appalachian Trail, Blue Ridge Parkway, and Israel. But the Rockies is its own beast, especially with 50 pounds on my back. Uphill, scrambling on all fours at times, balancing on logs across a river. And by uphill, I mean STEEP, the nearly falling on your back kind of uphill, coupled with high elevation. That second day we went up to 11,600 feet, higher than I’ve ever been in my life. And 36 hours prior I was at below sea-level in Miami, so big change.

We stopped for lunch in the shade with a nice view. A few of us sat on a ledge and chanted Hallel —Psalms of praise and thanksgiving to G-d sang during holidays. It was Rosh Chodesh during the trip, the start of the first day of each month of the Jewish calendar marked by the birth of the new moon. As we chanted Hallel, we looked out at the mountains, feeling the wind, seeing the massive red boulders, hearing G-d whispering across the rocky terrain.

There’s this Hebrew word – Hitbodedut – which is essentially going into the woods and talking out loud to G-d. Hitbodedut, self-isolation, was first popularized by Rebbe Nachman of Breslov, a Hasidic Rabbi from Ukraine. Without our phones or external connections to the outside world, in the silence and in prayer, we can hear G-d, see miracles in the trees, the earth, the mountains, the deep red clay, the boulders stretching thousands of feet into the sky. Chanting Hallel into the vast scenery was a form of Hitbodedut in itself, as we are in our own worlds, without distraction, connecting to the earth in front of our eyes.  After 5 miles or so, we hit the peak, enjoying a 360 degree view of the red and snow-capped mountains surrounding us.

When we descended, we saw SNOW on the ground!

We eventually reached our campsite, which had a wide stream running alongside it.  

In the morning, Danielle, one of our co-trekkers, led laughter yoga. Then we packed up camp and continued another 6.5 miles to our destination. As we hiked, mostly downhill, we saw constant views – I call it insane visual stimulation.

Everywhere I turned – BAM! Giant mountain! BAM! Massive valley! BAM! Waterfall! 

At one point during our trek, we had to walk across a river using a thin and unreliable log. Estie, one of the other girls on the trip and my tent mate, fell into the water – she was the test run. From then on, Jeremy, another trekker, jumped into the water and walked all of us across, carrying our heavy backpacks and ensuring we didn’t fall into the creek, too. This just showed that the trip wasn’t an individual activity, but a group effort; if someone needed help, we took one for the team, like Estie testing the log, or Jeremy standing in the freezing creek to help us across. We shifted the weight between packs to make sure nobody got hurt when lifting a heavy load. Nobody was lazy; we constantly offered to help each other out in order to complete this insanely difficult hike.

We arrived at our final campsite for Shabbat, a mostly sunny area beside a creek framed by mountains. There were several other people at adjacent campsites at this point, as it was the weekend.  We hung up the Eruv, a ritual enclosure – normally a string – that allows Shabbat-observant people to participate in carrying objects, which is otherwise prohibited on Shabbat. We made Challah, a thick braided bread that we bless and eat on Shabbat, in a makeshift oven (I actually don’t understand how this was done – you’d have to ask Yisroel and Nadav how they managed to build an oven out of rocks), filtered water so that we wouldn’t have to filter it on Shabbat, cooked lentils and quinoa (which ended up being a tad smoky but in the best way – what’s camping without smoky lentils?), and pitched the tents. We also dug a massive poop hole, but that’s a story for another time.

We began Shabbat with Kabbalat Shabbat songs, welcoming the Shabbos bride. As we sang the Shabbat songs, we danced around the dwindling fire (you cannot relight the fire on Shabbat) and started beat boxing the songs. Then Estie led a meditation. We brought out a brown sugar and cinnamon Challah and Tachina, a dip made of sesame seeds and spices.

Our group was made up of people from all religious backgrounds, yet everyone had something to share about their own traditions. We sang our own Shabbat songs from home, shared our families’ Shabbat traditions, and talked about Jewish life and communities in our hometown.  Most importantly, we learned that there is no such thing as “not being religious” but rather “being Jewish in our own ways.”  We all had our own traditions, our own ways of identifying with religion — our own Jewish Journey -- and it wasn’t a competition of who followed the most Shabbos melachot (categories of activities prohibited on Shabbat) or who kept the strictest Kashrut (Jewish dietary laws) or who knew the most Torah. We had our own traditions that we followed in our own ways and that was that.  And it was respected.

I woke up Saturday morning to a sunny rest day. We started the day with an intimate discussion – what was something that was difficult for you during COVID-19? We napped and lounged around the stream, dipping our feet in and attempting to wash off the layers of dirt coating our nails.

One of the trekkers had just gotten engaged right before the trip and we gushed over his description of his fiancé, the way he pined after her for 2 years, finally won her over through their shared love of the outdoors, and proposed.  Then we talked about love and connection – how do you know how to find it, what you’re looking for? What does it mean when a woman feels her womb turn over, literally turn in her stomach? Is that an actual thing? Is love logical or illogical, like a ball of fiery energy when two people just vibe really well together?

At night, we sang Havdalah, concluding Shabbat and our fourth and final night on our backpacking trip. I was freezing by the end of Havdallah, so I ran and hid in my sleeping bag.
The final day we walked about 7.6 miles to the conclusion of the trailhead, passing streams and more mountains. With one mile left of the 23-mile loop, we paused to reflect.  We passed around notebooks and wrote each other blessings.  Then we finished the trail as one group, nobody left behind.

Yisroel drove the same 3 girls and I back to Boulder and stopped at his glassblowing shop, BGold Glass, on the way home. One of his items is a Wedding Glass Smash Kit, in which the groom smashes the glass, sends it back to the shop, and Yisroel makes it into something new – another glass, a honey jar, a vase. I love this concept – the idea of forever having the glass that symbolized your marriage is beautiful.

I said my goodbyes to the rest of the girls as they continued the rest of their journeys. Then I took a long-awaited shower, which was amazing in every sense of the word. At night, I went to downtown Boulder and walked along Pearl Street. Boulder is such a lovely area.  On Monday morning, Yisroel and I picked up coffee and he walked me to my bus. I felt sad leaving, but I know I’ll be back soon, ready for another hike!
​Don’t worry, I have a list down to the floor of all the places I want to explore next in Colorado.