Zion

Good things grow in barren-looking places.  In the crevices of the red red rock sprouts life abundant, pressing out through where there is no soil to where there is only glaring sun.  Hanging from the rocky ceiling, the gardens creep along the cracks fed by misty drips from the last rain. 

I am reminded of home, where maybe it sometimes seems like no good thing could grow but a where really a veritable garden of good things are rooting and pressing upward and outward.  

Taken on our trip to Zion National Park in April 2019

an october day in the forest

  

I was so eager to go for a hike and a nature outing this week and we planned to visit a nearby state forest.  My hope was that we would walk awhile and then settle somewhere for lunch and then we could play and maybe I'd even get to read or knit while the girls romped nearby through whatever natural playground we found.  

We parked along a deserted forest road and trekked up a trail in the quiet woods.  Douglas firs, Ponderosa pines, and cottonwoods towered above us as we picked our way carefully among a rocky uphill section of the trail.  Around the bend and it was a spongy floor of fallen pine needles carpeting our way.  We spotted elk tracks and droppings and many deer trails veering off into the trees and meadows.  A jay scolded us from a treetop before flying off, irritated at the racket made by children excited to be outside.  Lyddie triumphantly identified a Doug fir by its needles.  Millie found a walking stick and followed close to her daddy, while Rosie tried to cling to my hand and carry several sticks and pieces of bark at the same time in her other hand.  I snapped pictures here and there and shushed continually to no avail.  Any creatures that might have been in the woods fled far before us.  

Jesse taught the girls last week how to lay snowberries on a hard place and stomp on them to make them pop loudly.  I laughed to see the antics so reminiscent of Independence Day "pop-its" but occurring entirely naturally.  He said this was something he used to do as a kid in the woods where he grew up, and he was a little pleased to impart something happy from his childhood to his own children. 

We made our way to a picnic area and sat watching the robins in the bushes across the creek while we passed the grapes and chewed our sandwiches.  There were some complaints about the cold, and apparently a sweatshirt and a woolen sweater weren't enough for the children (though to be frank, it wasn't just the children complaining of cold; apparently my strong mountain man no longer likes to be cold.  I was sure to find every opportunity to tease him).  My disappointment was real that we had to wrap up the day early, right when we were arriving at my favorite part.  But first we roamed the creekside and I was pulled  - "Mama!!  Close your eyes!  Let me lead you" to forts made of branches the girls constructed with Jesse last week while I was home sick.  We balanced on logs and noted how much higher the creek had risen since the previous week, and marveled at the increased color in the leaves as well.  There was such a riotous display of beauty in the hills there, even the usually-yellow aspens had decided to put on red-orange gowns to compete.  Although we were really just a half hour's drive outside of town, it was such a different landscape that it felt like we had traveled much further.  We will certainly return to this forest and my grand plans are to be sure to bring hats, mittens, and coats and to hopefully have a campfire over the afternoon.  We will have our very own outdoor classroom if I can help it!  I think it is quite likely that the days we spend in this way are the most formative and important thing we might do in these young school years.  They are certainly the most favorite thing we do. 

eden undone

  

  

 

The world is a mass of crazy; down the road, around the world, within each of our own hearts, and we all sorrow again together for the sufferings of our brothers and sisters at the hands of evil trying to stifle the light.  The shootings, bombings, beheadings; these are words I can stand only to glance over, knowing there are a host of other words involving smaller deaths of heart, and body, and emotion that to speak aloud tonight would feel like the precipice of some grief I am uncertain I could recover from falling off.  

Over it all and through it all stands the Designer, a feeling-loving God who sorrows over the broken messes we have created.  A God who loves justice and is not okay with our messes, the big messes and the small messes, a Father who longs to gather each child and mother and father and grandmother as a hen gathers her chicks and we run away determined and mad for... what?  Self?  Gain?  Control?  Comfort?

He soothes and quiets and gathers and rejoices over us again, then again again. For the joy set before Him, for the prize he was gaining - US - he endured the cross of shame and suffering.  He squeezed Himself, that infinite and all-powerful Word, into the skin and bones and veins of His creation, not just in allegory but in reality and lived all the demands of the righteousness we scorn and fail. This for you, for me.  For us together.  An insurrection turned upside down and inside out, our souls are pieced back together, the atrocious rending of Eden undone and the sutures on our broken hearts closing. "While we were yet sinners {at enmity with Him}, Christ died for us."

And the earth spins and the sun shines and clouds rain.  The leaves drift slowly from the trees and settle into ponds and musty sweet decomposition scents the wet air, a fragrance from my younger days that I don't often find here.  Crabapples cling tenuously to branches bare and I gather mittens and hats on my lap and carry them like mothers everywhere carry the burdens of their children.  I watch quiet, content to intrude only when necessary because the world of imagination and dreams needs no adult intervention.  That world His children are returning to, the one where the Fairy Tale is True and the King will come riding on a white horse and put all things right and indeed, we know in an unseen way that He is doing that even now.  

strange sabbath

Last press of sun and warmth has given way to the bite of fall and this last week was the last walk we will take without coats.  The smell of fallen apples, the tang like that of cider vinegar, greets me when I open the door and the fruit flies swarm.  We are counting the days until freezing now, when the house flies will blessedly disappear.  The tomatoes still ripen on the vine and frost has not yet killed though the days have turned cooler.  Leaves are a crunchy carpet underfoot.

We visit friends and the sound of small children wrestling, tagging, and squealing bring me happiness.  We take this week slow, a break from school, a time to recover and evaluate and plan and complete, and I'm so thankful I planned it this way, confirming my gut feeling that I need to allow myself to ease into this school business and there's no need to be rigid and pressured.  Education still happens in a different way and it is like a cleansing breeze to return to a less scheduled day for a short time, to let the morning slip away full only of dolls and riding bikes and slow piano practice.  We, especially I, will be ready next week to return to routine but the change of pace for a couple days is life-restoring, a strange Sabbath. I must remember this.