2 approaches to tagging claim posts:

1) Contest to see which group or individual can walk the farthest in a given day, and get the most work done. Bragging rights and an improvement in fitness over the summer.

2) How much, in the space of a 10 hour day, can I observe in nature as I walk over this hillside with the excuse that at some point I might come across a claim post and nail something to it?

So what's the best way to spend the day? Get all the work done and birds, trees, and mountains be damned? Or stop and have a picnic 'cause really, once the work's done in the area you're not coming back for a couple months?

Top five reasons why its hard to be a Christian in a bush camp:

1) If your the only one, there's no one to sit down with and discuss your faith, pray with, or identify with

2) You live with, play with, eat with, work with your 30 'best friends' (or, by mid-August, worst enemies) and your every action is documented.

3) There's too much work and too little time

4) The topic of conversation is sex and drugs and drugs and sex, and if we get a weekend off, its drinking time.

So your looking at this post and thinking "man, that's rough" or, if your completely honest with yourself, your thinking that the five reasons its hard to be a Christian in a trailer by Eldorado Creek are the same reasons its hard to be a Christian in an apartment by the North Saskatchewan river.
The following five points, while I was living in Edmonton, simply looked as follows:

1) If your the only person in your church with a certain take on any issue, it may be hard to start a discussion. If your slightly shy, it might be hard to seek out another person to pray with, and if your going through rough times and feel like no one gets you, even the most well-meaning small group can feel like you just don't relate to anyone else.

2) We often look at the actions of our roommates, classmates, co-workers, friends and family; we contrast these actions with their words and best intentions, and use this to determine where they are in their walk with God, as they are doing to us. I recall a conversation in Winnipeg where, at 4 in the morning, after a discussion on pride, a friend mentioned that I "must be farther ahead in my spiritual walk than he had thought by my lifestyle." Another friend wrote in my yearbook that I was impressive in my ability to "be a good Christian and a rediculous drunk at the same time." Our actions are always being used to determine the extent to which we are actually following Christ.

3) Once a month, I think about this blog. Most of the time I think about Klondike Schist, thrust faults, and diamond drill core. Last December, I thought about the life of David once or twice, but most of the time I thought about my grades, a large tile mosaic, Arrested Development, and McDonalds.

4) "Well, Jesus turned water into wine didn't he? That means there's nothing wrong with a good party. I'll settle down and do the goody goody family values thing when I'm thirty. Right now, I'm ______." And really, where is the line? Is it where you are controlled by drinking that you aren't obeying God? Is premarital sex just an archaeic tradition meant to repress us? Is Focus on the Family brainwashing us into choosing a lifestyle that may not even be ideal?

So really, what do we do about it?