Climbing Mountains

Friday I was the second shooter at a wedding for a dear friend of mine (pics to be posted in the next couple days on my photo blog) in Southern Oregon. It was a picture perfect wedding for a picture perfect couple. It inspires me...that there is someone perfect for each of us out there...They are so perfectly suited to one another. I cried all day. :) Such good tears, though. Happy, overflowing, joyful tears. My cup was running over all over the place. TRUE love rocks.

The town the wedding was in, is about a four hour drive from me. I had plans for a friend to watch my babe while I was away. Because the wedding was late, I wasn't going to try to drive home, tired, in the dark, for four hours. So I stayed with some friends of the family and committed to spending a little ME time on the drive back the next day. I don't get much of this; ME time. I contemplated heading over to the coast in order to breathe a bit and just be one with the ocean for a while. But instead, Crater Lake was calling me. I've never been there. There was so much greatness about this trip, but today I'll focus on mountain climbing.

When I got there, all I could think was CRAZY Beautiful! If you've never been, you really outta make it a point to go. AMAZING! When chatting with some folks about it, they mentioned the water being an amazing blue that just can't be explained. It is true. There are not words to describe how truly AWEsome this lake is. I did take some pictures and I hope to capture even a morsel of its beauty (these will also be on my photo blog in a few days). Something about the perfect purity of the water and the depth and how the light reflects...wow...just had a moment of spiritual clarity... Purity of heart creates a depth that the light of the Lord can reflect amazingly onto others... :)

Anyways...I wandered around for a while and took pictures and just allowed the cool mountain air to penetrate my lungs and my head. I didn't have an agenda for the day. I was just going to 'be'...and do whatever I felt led to do along the way. There is so much freedom in that. At the lodge there are rocking chairs to relax and enjoy the view. I was walking along the trail in front of them and there was a rocking chair calling me...I couldn't resist. I sat next to a very nice gal who lives a town away from me. She and her family were there to celebrate her in-laws 50th wedding anniversary. She's a sketch artist and her daughter is an aspiring photographer. We had a lot to chat about. :) Creative minds. She gave me one of her sketches of a mother goose and her baby gosling...so perfect.

I met a handful of her family and when they had to depart in order to get ready for the anniversary festivities, I decided to take a stroll. I brought my book just in case I felt led to sit somewhere...anywhere... and just relax and lose myself in the fresh mountain air and a good book. To the right of the lodge as you are looking at the lake, there is a peak that one of the trails leads to. It doesn't look that far. Sandy, the gal I was speaking to earlier said she'd gone up there earlier and it was amazing and surreal. I imagine one feels like they are on top of the world up there.

I headed out on this trail, with no intention of going 'up there'. I was just going to go...wander...until I didn't feel like wandering any more. As I headed out on the trail, however, I started to feel a tugging...from 'up there'. I needed to go 'up there'. And so after a little while I resigned myself to not reading, put the book in my hoodie pouch, and headed up the trail. I had my camera to capture whatever called me. I was wearing flip flops. My intention was not to hike and it wasn't that far, anyway.

I don't recall at what point I suddenly realized that I was past the point of no return. My body was screaming at me, my lungs were less than happy. I didn't have any water, and I had no earthy idea how much farther...because I could only see a short distance of the trail in front of me at a time. The peak 'up there' suddenly became very far away. The trail was very rocky and narrow and there was only a quarter inch of protection between my bare feet and the jagged rocks. I had my camera around my neck which probably weighs close to 5 lbs, but was feeling like 10 since I'd carried it around my neck all day the day prior, and the strap had already worn a hole in my neck. It was windy and cold, but hiking up a 45 degree angle tends to warm a persons core a bit, so I took my hoodie off (tank underneath) and commenced to completing the journey at hand. I was being tugged at and I needed to go 'up there'. Turning back was not an option.

While I was whining inside my head about how completely unprepared for this I was and how silly of me to start something I had no idea how long it would take to finish, not to mention being by myself... I realized that sometimes we just need to go there. Without thinking about how long the journey is going to be; what is needed along the way; without knowing any details. We all have mountains to scale. Lord knows I've scaled one or two in my life. But the terrain of this life is not all prairies and wheat fields. And if we think too much about the details of how to get to where we need to go, we can often get caught in complacency and fear of starting the journey because of what it may entail along the way. If I'd have actually learned a little bit about this particular journey to the top, I'd likely not have gone because it was a 3.5 mile journey, straight up, with an anticipated 2-3 hour hike time. Me, being who I am, though, who presses through the hard stuff as quickly as I can so as only to endure the agony for the shortest time frame possible...found my way to the top and down again in 2 hours flat. I don't know how I did it. I thought for sure I would colapse somewhere along the way. But I didn't. And when I reached the top, the pain and agony of the journey was all behind me. I didn't feel it. I didn't feel like I was going to die anymore. :) It was fresh air and soft breezes and a view point that took my breath away that welcomed me. Peace. I made it.

And of course the trip down was a piece of cake.

Scaling a mountain is not easy business. But once you've been there, the next time you'll know and it won't seem so overwhelming. I know why I was tugged to the top. I needed to go there. I couldn't just keep looking at it and wondering...what does it look like up there? If I'd have not gone, my wanderlust, or WONDERlust would not have been satisfied and there'd have been a hole...a void that would always wonder, until I found myself there again. But circumstances can bring any multitude of elements that might make the trip even more difficult had I scaled it then, instead of now.

As painful as it is, I love climbing mountains. :)