Today, I walked three miles to reach the edge of the William F. Hayden Green Mountain Park, and then spent the next couple hours trekking around the ridges of the Rocky Mountains’ foothills, on trails paved with dirt and round stones amid dry grass and scrub brush. The warble of meadowlarks, the scrape of the rocks on my shoes, my panting breath, and God kept me company. A warm sun and a dramatic sky of cumulus drifted above bastion upon bastion of mountains that jutted up from the plane, jagged and blue with snow-drifted peaks peering over their shoulders. I wept, I laughed, I spun around, and between heaving breaths from my out-of-shape lungs, I yelled, “I’m in Colorado! Hiking! I’m hiking in Colorado!”
The full weight of the Rocky Mountains’ presence is still seeping into my soul, so for now I leave you with the words that I repeated out loud to myself as I wandered the massive hills and gazed out at mountains so young, so stark, so full of a wonder that nothing short of the Word Himself could fully describe them.
The Road goes ever on and on
Over rock and under tree
By caves where sun has never shone
By streams that never find the sea
Over snow by winter sown
And through the merry flowers of June
Over grass and over stone
And under mountains in the moon.
More later, when I can conjure the words.
Money spent today: $2.54 (On frozen yogurt. I have decided another coconut-flavored thing to love.)
Leeway so far: $17.86
~Lisa Shafter
No comments:
Post a Comment