Light shines in darkness, offering us hope

“North of Hope” — a memoir I’ve just finished — is one of the bravest stories I’ve ever read. The author, a former Army attack helicopter pilot — and scuba diver and sky diver and mountain climber, is obviously not one to back away from a challenge.

But her greatest challenge came from out of nowhere almost 20 years ago. She got the call — from my son-in-law, a police officer at the time in the Inupiat village of Kaktovik who was called to the scene — that her father and stepmother had been killed by a rogue grizzly while rafting the Hulahula River in Alaska’s Arctic wilderness. Everything Shannon thought she knew disintegrated.

A year later she decides she must finish their trip. She and two companions put in on the same river — make it to the same beach where the attack happened — and complete the journey. As she’s being flown to the initial drop-off point she thinks, “It would be easier not to believe in God, not to have to make sense of this. Maybe this place was too far north for hope.”

Toward the close of her journey she recalls a moment looking back at the mountains, “It was not the landscape that held me.

“I was transfixed by the light. It poured over me, filled the corners of the land. It was as infinite as God and as finite as the eyes beholding it. I was immersed and filled up all at once. It lived, it had a being, that light. There was peace in it. There was gentleness and assurance.”

Waiting for the Cessna to pick her up for the return to Kaktovik, Shannon sits alone on the tundra. She recognizes, “I had needed to do something beautiful. In that beauty was hope. In that hope was healing. Even if it took a lifetime.” She continues, “Do not be afraid, says the angel. Looking out over the tundra, I was still scared. But I was no longer afraid.”

This is a story of rafting a river — and rafting the soul. It gave me to understand that in the bleakest of times I must search for and find the beautiful. Believe in its possibility. Discover its truth in the majestic pronouncement found in the Bible, “The Light shines in the darkness and the darkness did not overpower it.”