light through the trees

terrible picture, good post starter.  ready set WRITE!


light comes filtering in through the dense forest and is a welcome change from the treeless plains that dominated the landscape since crossing Forester Pass ( 13,200' above sea level) earlier in the day. Now instead of walking on racks and hard gravel the trail is scattered with pine duff, and there are mossy, fern like smells in the air. The downhill is still serious business with a 40 lb pack pushing me, but the idea of camp, fire and dinner shines through any tiredness just as the sun beams filter through the branches that almost block out the sky.  I am in love, with me, with God, with the forest animals and with the few travelers that share the trail. I hug people I do not know, and talk in my head and sometimes aloud with my inner child, allowing that it is he that needed this hike in order to show me the lessons again of simplicity, of purity, and of devotion.  In the valley of ferns, on the meadow of a million grasses, by the streams of crystal clear water flows that life force that I have been looking for, and as surely as the drop of water from the last summer snow field makes it down, and down and down to the ocean, so will my journey be completed. I yield myself to the order that I find, I lay myself on the place of humility, knowing for certain that in this huge place I am very small. I take comfort that it is no effort for my God of infinite knowledge to know where I am when the light fades, the stars fill the sky and the only sound is of my breathing.  I am not alone, nor will I ever be.