To the woods!

 These are some photos I snapped over the week-end! We saw a MOOSE!!!

This weekend I traveled out to the beautiful Colorado mountains with my parents to close down our family cabin for the winter season. Our cabin is nestled in the mountains of Taylor Park, a namesake of which I am very proud. This place is my sanctuary: surrounded by pines and a few scattered aspens, perched on a hill overlooking a pond and river, with mountains saluting our land from across the road. I love this place. I will be completely cliché here and say that if home is where the heart is, this place is most certainly my home. When I drive up the gravel road, turn a corner and see our hammock, our elk racks hanging on the garage, and the variety of birdhouses and feeders my grandma has decorated the outside with, I can barely contain my joy. I take a breath of the pure mountain air and I feel filled, despite the thin atmosphere. When I am here, my thoughts echo Thoreau: “I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.”

My dad taught me to fly-fish out in these streams, and I am convinced there is no greater feeling than when that trout strikes the line, you reel him in, and land your prize on the bank. It’s an altogether unique form of bliss; rivaled only, for me, by rocking a baby to sleep. Kansas has its own form of beauty—probably the most beautiful sunsets around, but the woods and mountains are enchanting. I love feeling like a hermit in our cabin. I’ll cuddle up with a blanket and cup of tea by our wood-burning stove and think, “this is the life.” When I am here, I forget everything that worries and plagues me back home in my everyday life. I read books, wander through the woods, scope out wildlife, laugh with my loved ones, and lay on our deck to observe what seems like millions of stars. I don’t think about where I’ll be in a year—if I’ll have a job, if I’ll have a love interest, who our president will be—I am completely thankful for the present moment.

Sometimes I fantasize about completely abandoning the real world and escaping to the woods as Thoreau did at Walden Pond, away from the constraints and suffocation of society. When my mind turns toward this course, I’m reminded of the movie Into the Wild, which I believe was first a book based on a true story. In this movie, a young man completely abandons his life and escapes to the wilderness of Alaska, where he believes he will find life’s true meaning. He meets a variety of people along the way, including an old man father-figure that makes me cry every time I watch a certain scene in the movie. He ends up eating some poisonous berries and slowly starves to death. As his life slowly and agonizingly ends, he is confronted with the conviction that “happiness is only real when shared.” I don’t want to turn my back on the world or the people I love and seek the wilderness to fulfill me. The truth is that it gets to be extremely isolating and you feel alienated and insignificant. In the bustle and chaos of the world, as well as in the stillness and tranquility of the woods, my one constant is that Christ is alive in me. He has rescued me from sin and death, and living a life to honor him does not involve rejecting the world and all the lost souls in it; quite the opposite, actually.

Note: I wrote this blog while I was at our cabin, and while we were there my parents received a phone call informing them that my “poppy” (my mom’s dad) had a stroke. It is almost a year to the day that he had his first stroke, and the news made us immediately pack up and head home early. As I looked at his picture on the wall of the cabin holding a monster of a fish, with that bright, huge smile, I prayed. I asked what I’m sure all people ask God in moments of crisis. I prayed for peace, for his protection, for God’s will. My dad prayed, and simply said, “God, we trust You with him.” That’s what it really comes down to. In moments of helplessness and fear, you can either trust God no matter the outcome, or let the fear and worry overwhelm you. I’m so happy to report that my beloved poppy is doing much better, and I give all the glory to God.