Taking Time

Loveland Pass TrailThis is the very first guest post by Heather, my wife. Yay! (She wrote it back in August.)

It’s 100 degrees this August day in Denver. The school year has started at a time that feels way too early. Our family’s getting cheated out of beautiful days in the mountains, and togetherness around campfires. Summer is not over yet! The narrow window of warm summer mountain days has not closed.

“Busy” has started for everyone but me, and I am alone. What a rare place to find myself. I head rebelliously to the mountains for a hike. I want to see the exotic colors of “the best show of wildflowers in years.” I’m pulled in, determined to soak in the beauty, alone or not. I park and start walking. A short distance later, I leave the forest and the carpet of wildflowers behind and trudge along alpine tundra, passing little springs flowing from melting snowfields. The sun flashes silver and sparkly on an emerald alpine lake. Massive, intimidating and stunningly beautiful peaks surround me on all sides.

I am small in the vast silence. I see how big God is. I speak, but no human hears. My voice and footsteps fall like a tiny drop of rain in the ocean, but the sound reassures me. I’m a little scared. I sit, read, and think, letting a fresh breeze blow away the stale and the stuck in my mind. The sun has moved, the clouds are gathering. It’s time to go back down. Things look different going this direction. I feel invigorated and happy. This heart-pumping day has changed me. Life among mountains always does.

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The Waterfall

This post is an experiment with the plugin called “Apture“. (They left out the “e” when they were spelling its name.)

Anyhow, this also marks my very first ever embedded video. I always avoided doing that because I had friends in Nairobi who had very low bandwidth. But these days, very few of them visit this blog – so I’m adding a video for the rest of you.

Update: I’d suggest clicking through to the blip.tv link – and even then, it’s pretty jittery. Apologies.

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We nearly died

nearly-died

Heather and I just got back from a long weekend. We celebrated our twenty years of marriage! That’s nothing short of a miracle, in today’s world.

On Saturday we hiked up the face of one of the Maroon Bells, a mountain near Aspen. Our goal was to have lunch at a waterfall I had seen signs of but never been to.

Not possible. The face was so sheer that there was no place for us to sit to have lunch! I was clinging to a rock while I took this photo. Heather was debating how to get back down to a safer place to descend.

In the end, we were thankful that we survived. (I’m being a little overly-dramatic, but we wouldn’t hike up there again, even though it was quite beautiful.)

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On the way up?

on-way-up

In these turbulent times, many are focused on whether they are going up or down. In your life, career, marriage, the stock market, whatever.

I certainly don’t know – for you or for me. Obviously we do need to keep a sense of optimism. But the one thing I do know is that I have to keep trusting God – the only rock I cling to.

By the way, I took this shot of my two boys on their way toward the summit of Redcloud Peak, last week – 14,034 feet above sea level. I was so proud of them – no complaints the whole way. Jay even carried my day pack and his too! They both ran circles around me.

As most people do, we also climbed Sunshine Peak – Colorado’s lowest 14’er at 14,001′. The hike between the two peaks was nothing to be sneezed at – that added about three hours to our day’s exercise.

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