Openings

Last week I had a photo come up on my Facebook memories from Trillium Lake. It wasn’t my photo. I have never been there. Not the lake OR Mt Hood. But it was calling to me …

And so I knew I was going. Checking the forecast for the week, I knew it would be Monday. 

Three and a half hours on the road, a promise of a brief window of clearing near 8 am. and hope for light traffic on a holiday week. 

Directions from a hiking group friend gave me a pretty clear picture of what to expect. (Thank You Thank You Thank You)

A lot could go awry.

 
The weather might deteriorate. I could hit traffic or construction or an accident. I might get lost. I might get spooked at the trailhead. I could encounter deeper snow than I anticipated. Any number of things could go wrong. 

But I had faith.

 
I think about my frustration in trying to define myself sometimes and then it hits me. This is who I am. 

I believe in possibility. I believe in the “build it and they will come” philiosophy. As much as I’ve been thinking I need to “find myself” after this big change in my life, all I really have needed was to remember myself. 

I’m the one who believes that the clearing will happen. I pull out of the driveway at 3:30 in the morning and hit the road. I drive 200 miles to a place I’ve never been and arrive in the dark to an empty parking lot. I’m the one with the flashlight crunching through the snow toward what I believe is a lake and a mountain view. 

It occurred to me as I arrived at the lake to cloudy skies that I had no idea even where to look for the mountain. But I believed it was there. I sat down in the middle of a frozen lake at sunrise and waited.

 
And believed. 

And then the most most amazing thing happened. The sky began to fill with soft light and I could see the base of Mt Hood. In the minutes that followed there was blue sky and clearing all the way to its tippy top. I sat there mesmerized. This is my reward for having faith. And it is stunning and maybe a little magical. 

I walked along the lake boardwalk trail to get a closer look. It was only minutes before the clouds came back and settled in over the lake and hid the mountain in a cozy hug of white. Not another soul witnessed this light, from this place, on this day. 

My reward for unwavering belief. 

I know in the back of my mind and in the deepest part of my heart that it doesn’t always happen this way. Sometimes, despite all of our believing, there are times when the mountain is just out of reach. But even those days hold something valuable. Sometimes, the reward for believing, is the journey it takes to get there. 

I am an optimistic quester. 

It is that spirit that will drive “what’s next”. 
Thanks for indulging me once again. We are on the edge of a new decade. My next post will be my New Years tarot spread as we make yet another beginning. Onward with love and an uncanny faith in the future ♡