WONDER
It spills down the mountainside like the mixture of pines, cypress and firs that grow intermingled almost on top of each other. Wonder. The word, dressed in its noun finery, draws you in and then in an abrupt wardrobe change becomes a verb that carries on from there: inexplicable admiration followed by curious grappling of how such things can come to be. The Rocky Mountain terrain is at once as much a teacher as it is a provider of incomprehensible juxtaposition. A continual “Watch This” from a God who whets our imagination and then gives us a hand-out with a bunch of “fill in the blanks.”
The wondering is part of the wonder. He likes us to have skin in the game.
From the jagged rock faces to the steep slopes harboring trees whose roots anchor them in at a hard, tight 45, the landscape is a canvas of “How can this thing even be?” Tiny white flowers with yellow centers spring from a crevice in a giant boulder…one fir thrives in the center of a forest thick with cypress where no sunlight ever shines…a towering pine with roots exposed stays anchored by a thread that crosses to a stream where it refuses to let go. There’s no real explanation for how these things survive, and yet they do. The environment, it seems, has decided to continually make amends for the needs of those who are among them.
The mountains have much to teach us about the importance of finding a way.
In the fall, the Rocky Mountain show belongs to the aspens who burst as if they have been waiting for the chance to make a scene. The white-trunked specimens indigenous to the region turn when the temperatures begin to say they should, glowing florescent as if they each stole a ray of sunshine and kept it for their own. Their neon leaves wiggle incessantly like little kids who can’t sit still in church, as the pines, their pious parents, stand stoically behind. And when the aspen’s leaves are ready to let loose and fall, the outstretched arms of the pines catch them, displaying them like Christmas ornaments on their boughs. What a team they make together, the old predictable and the show-off. They remind us through their kinship that there are lots of kinds of pretty, and that contrast deepens beauty. We are at our best when we stir up our gifts.
The mountains have much to teach us about the art of getting along.
Trails that cut up and around the Rockies spawn surprises of their own. But unpredictable terrain requires attention. Tree roots, rocks, loose gravel…all kinds of things form potential hazards if run upon unaware. Keeping an eye on the twelve inches underfoot is the way to make steady progress while mitigating risk. Unfortunately, it’s also how you miss the view. A thicket teases with slivers of light drawing the curious to lift the curtain to a golden meadow encircled by pine covered peaks and topped by a cerulean sky. The kind of spot God might hang out in on a hammock on a Thursday afternoon. The kind of spot that escapes you if you’re only looking down. Being attentive to the detailed steps is how we get to the places where wow lives, and yet, if we only keep our heads down as we trudge, we miss everything we came for. “You can see a lot by looking”, Yogi Berra said. Up. And down. And up and down. And up and down.
The mountains have much to teach us about where to look and how to see.
Moving water is also part of the package that the mountains offer up. In places it rushes, over rocks and logs cutting swaths across the land. And in other places it pools, as if resting from its race. But mostly it just meanders, sort of giggling along with a patient paced sureness. It doesn’t need to simulcast where it came from or where it’s headed. All that matters is that it knows.
The mountains have much to teach us about following our heart.
Fred Bear’s ten commandments of hunting teach us to never step on anything we can step over and never step over anything we can step around. But traversing through the mountains is less about trying to avoid things than it is about trying to discover all we might not initially notice or ever be able to completely understand.
It’s the wonder quotient. The way the world looks is just a little different when you’re standing next to the clouds.
“…now he walks in quiet solitude the forests and the streams
Seeking grace in every step he takes.
His sight has turned inside himself to try and understand
The serenity of a clear blue mountain lake…”
The “Colorado Rocky Mountain High”…simple things wrapped in wonder juxtaposed at every turn. God’s peace lies in waiting there under all we cannot comprehend.