Mountaintops and Wildflowers

I’m just back in my flatland home after a week in the mountains, same range, different peaks. Like many people, we have an almost spiritual need to get to the Rockies at least once a year. Sometimes the goal is simply to be surrounded by evergreens and Ponderosa pines (that’s what the tattoo on my left ankle is about), to see a blue sky from the top of the world, and put our feet in a clear mountain stream. We’re lucky to have family in Colorado, so we always have a chance to see someone we love. Justin and I joke that our kids were probably in elementary school before they realized there were other places you could visit on school breaks or vacations.

Sometimes, though, we like to check things off the list, to see and be amazed by other wonders–Arches in Utah, the Redwoods and Yosemite in California, the Black Hills and Badlands in South Dakota. We’ll work our way east one of these days, but for now, the pull is still out west. This trip marked my first visit to Yellowstone and Grand Teton. As the kids say, if you know you know. There is nothing to compare it to. Nothing. At some point, we ran out of superlatives for the views. No “wow” can cover it. No cell phone photo can capture it. Acres of lakes with the perfect reflections of green and jagged peaks, and the waterfalls, famous geysers and prismatic pools, all like something from a storybook illustration come to life.

Oh, but the forest floor! You have to look down, too. If you don’t get in the trees and climb around on the rocks, you’re missing something every bit as wondrous; entire hillsides covered in wild ferns, rocks and fallen trees covered in bright green moss. You have to get low to see the variegation of bright red on tiny leaves and see the delicate wildflowers that flourish after the harshest winters. I spend so much time in my yard, feeding and watering plants and crossing my fingers for a beautiful garden, and here in the mountains are the fruits of the magic combination of sun and snow runoff that happens under the canopy of evergreen trees.

These wild places, so vast and incomprehensible, have a strange way of making us feel at once so small (I love that), and also so connected. There’s an instant and deep connection to the other visitors in the park that day, cheering together when Old Faithful erupts, pointing out where you can see moose on the trail or offering to take each other’s pictures at a canyon overlook. I feel connected to generations of people before me, too, like my parents, who loved the parks, the grandeur of the mountains, and the beauty of the colorful flowers along the paths.

O, God of wonder and delight,

Thank you for the beauty of creation. Thank you for the opportunity to see the world in all her majesty and the smallest details. May we always give thanks for the generations of people who kept the land long before us, those who maintain it today, and the ones who will preserve it in the years to come. Give us the wisdom, Dear One, to do our part to tend the earth with the care it deserves.

Amen

Eli is a worship leader at church. She’s grateful to have found a community that believes God calls us to care for one another and for the Earth.