It was the winter of 1969. I was a student at Trinidad State Junior College, some 200 miles from my home in Lakewood, a western suburb of Denver. I had not, at that time, become an authentic Christian, though brought up in a God-fearing home by believing parents who lovingly gave me every encouragement and assistance to do so. And yet God’s mercies were poured out upon me even in my Trinidad days. I was on the college newspaper staff, living in a comfortable rooming house in town, and having every opportunity to finally change from the lazy, reckless course of life I had been following the past two years.
But I was badly squandering these latest favors and was instead pursuing my carnal desires all the further and faster. I had started, as they say, living for the weekend, hitchhiking back to Denver every Friday afternoon and returning, after dates and parties, back to Trinidad on Sunday nights. However, on this particular weekend, I had gone over to Alamosa (just 110 miles away) where a couple of my skaggy friends were attending Adams State. Though a shorter trip, it meant heading through the mountains and over La Veta Pass. And with winter coming on, that was not a pleasure trip...especially when you’re hitchhiking.
Now it’s true that my thumb was already experienced in this mode of travel. In fact, just 3 months earlier (and all on my lonesome) I had hitchhiked the full thousand miles from Los Angeles, California back to Denver. Still, even that adventurous cross-country trek failed to prepare me for what was to come on this trip; namely, being stranded in the Colorado mountains, in the winter, in the wee hours of the morning.
The trip had already started off badly. I had stayed way too long in Alamosa and left for Trinidad long after the sun had disappeared behind the San Juan Mountains. It was a stupid decision but I was initially encouraged by hitching a ride almost immediately from a couple of fellows in an old pickup truck. Better still, these guys were also drinkers and were generous enough to share their bottle. But it didn’t take long for things to go sour.
Just after we had passed Ft. Garland and started up into the mountains, I began to realize that these men had particularly nasty plans for me. They started with hints, then taunts when I rebuffed their advances, then they turned to direct threats. I responded by feigning sickness, acting like I badly needed to vomit. It worked. They stopped the truck and let me squeeze out from between them in order to get to the side of the road. Once free from the truck, I was determined to be free from these goons. I grabbed a large rock, turned back, and did a bit of threatening of my own, letting them know that the price for messing with me was going to be a lot more than they wanted to pay. And, after a couple of minutes of angry cursing and promises that they’d be back with help, they got back in the truck, turned all the way round, and started back the way we had just come.
I had only a light jacket, no gloves, no hat. Good grief, I had escaped one danger only to be enveloped by another.
Well, the two thugs never came back. But I kept hold of that rock just in case and, at every appearance of headlights coming east down the highway, I was ready to use it. Not that I saw very many vehicles on Highway 160 that night. No more than a half dozen passed me in the whole 2 hours or so that I was walking east. But I was beset by more than loneliness -- I was frighteningly cold! My shivering had only gotten worse and I was becoming a bit crazy with desperation. Therefore, when I finally came across a building set off a bit from the highway, I was determined to find shelter there.
It wasn’t anybody’s home; at least, I didn’t think anyone was living there. There were a couple of heavy equipment machines in the yard but no cars and no tracks in the snow, making me pretty sure that no one was on the premises. There was one yard light was on the large, rectangular building that lit things up for 30-40 yards around it. And so I could see there were a few windows that looked big enough to crawl through after, of course, I had busted out the glass. I guess, my rock was going to come in handy after all!
To be sure, I wasn’t happy about the “breaking and entering” option. I was pretty sure there was no night watchman around but, then again, there could easily be some kind of alarm. And that could mean the police, an arrest, more shame for my family, and yet one more crime added to my already ugly list of tawdry offenses. However, I didn’t really have a choice...and I preferred even a warm jail cell over freezing to death.
But before I hiked over to the building, I decided to say one more prayer. Oh, make no mistake, I had been praying hard and constantly during this whole ordeal. But, not being a Christian, my prayers were, though plaintive, were something more like wishing or crossing your fingers. But now, faced with the awful cold, the fear of arrest, and a desperation of greater intensity than any I could remember, I was bold enough to lift up a much different kind of prayer. I looked into the night sky, profusely adorned with glittering stars, but I prayed to the God I knew intuitively was beyond that dazzling sky. And although I was all-too-aware that I didn’t know the Almighty personally and that He was under no obligation to intervene in my predicament, I was certain that my Grandma Ellsworth and my parents and at least a couple of my siblings did know Him personally. And so, my fledgling faith being inspired by theirs, I made my appeal to God.
I do not remember it being a bargaining prayer -- you know, the infamous “foxhole” kind of prayer where one offers God his life if God will only get them out of the jam they’re in. And I don’t think my prayer involved a lot of apologies for my sins or for the lousy decisions which had landed me in this spot. The only two things I remember about that prayer is its urgency and that all I could hope for was God perhaps showing me unwarranted, undeserved, unexpected mercy. I stood there on the shoulder of the road for a couple of minutes more, figuring that I should give God a little time to do something. The snow had started again. It was, I realized, a lovely and peaceful night. How ironic would it...
And then I heard the truck! No, not the dreaded pickup returning for retribution, but a long hauler coming out of the west and down the highway towards me. I dropped the rock, moved back to the southern side of the highway, and assumed the traditional position. And though I understood how unlikely it was that this trucker would stop on a night like this, in weather like this, on a mountain highway like this, all to offer a ride to a suspicious hitchhiker, I also had a remarkable confidence God was kindly answering my prayer.
And that’s exactly what happened. The old 18-wheeler day cab slowed down and stopped right in front of me. The passenger door creaked opened and I looked up at the driver (somewhat past middle-age) who simply asked, “You okay?” I was kinda’ choked up but I nodded and told him yes, I was fine, just really cold. “Then climb on up.” The difference in temperature was astounding and so was the difference in my mood. I expressed my thanks, explained that he was an answer to a prayer, and then, with a bit of embarrassment, I realized I was wiping tears away. He politely seemed not to notice, said he was happy to be of help, and offered me a cup of coffee from his thermos. And that wasn’t all. My good fortune continued in that the trucker, traveling empty, was headed down into New Mexico for a load. And that meant I had a warm, comfortable journey with him all the way down 160 to Walsenburg and then south on I-25 to Trinidad. When I alighted with the trucker’s good wishes, the dawn was just starting to break on a brand new day.
Now the ending to this story should be that, having experienced (and in a very dramatic way) the loving grace of God, I surrendered my life to Jesus Christ that very night. I’m sorry to say, that wasn’t the case. No, there remained an ungrateful, foolish, hardheartedness in me and, in the months to come, I would actually write even darker chapters in my story. But despite my rebellious running away from God, He kept His merciful hand on me. There were some divine judgements meted out to me that winter and spring, but the Lord measured the punishment in ways that emphasized His kindness and His desire for me to receive His offers of salvation, purpose, and power. And, all along the way, one of the things He used was the vivid, unforgettable memory of that 18-wheeler coming down out of heaven to save me. Well, out of heaven via La Veta Pass.
Fast forward to a bright spring morning several months later when I finally did give in to God’s long suffering love and trusted Jesus Christ as my personal Savior. That, by the way, also occurred in the Colorado mountains. I was on a weekend retreat with some Christians who had recently befriended me and I was alone in the pines considering the historicity of the Bible -- which I had by then trusted to be accurate and trustworthy -- and then dealing with the paramount question of whether I would acknowledge the Person of Christ as God. For if I decided that proposition to be true, the natural next step was to believe that His death and resurrection were the means whereby God paid the penalty of my sins.
I had been close to surrendering my pride and sophomoric arguments all weekend long but it was on this clear Sunday morning that I knew my decision couldn’t be delayed any longer. And whether it was my own imagining or an intuition kindled in my heart by the Lord Himself, I sensed that God was inviting me to come to the cross with a stirring allusion to that freezing night the previous December. Come out of the cold, Denny. Leave your degradation, deceptions, ands danger behind. Believe in Me and let’s travel a different highway together. C’mon, climb up in the cab. And I did. Thank God, I did. How about you?
Postscript. There was yet another dramatic hitchhiking story still to come in my future, one that would take this young convert to Christianity, toting a duffel bag and with $12 in his pocket, to a place he had never been before -- Omaha, Nebraska. It would be a place where God would give him a home, a job, the most unusual and effective discipleship training imaginable, and eventually an exceptionally noble and loving woman who would become his wife.
But that story...is for another time.
