The Call of the Wild

The soft forest trail, carpeted with years of falling needles and leaves was behind us, giving way to fewer trees and open vistas. The dusty, rock strewn trail wound its way higher and higher. Patches of late summer snow hugged the bare mountain slopes in nooks and gullies as if trying to hide from the hot August sun.

As the trail zigzagged up the mountainside, drawing us ever closer to the top, each switchback offered increasingly awesome vistas of higher peaks and endless mountain ranges. Words like breathtaking, awesome, beautiful, amazing and spectacular never seemed to really capture the essence of such an experience! Photographs paled beside the movie held captive in my mind, captured by the brain and human eye.

The lure of the mountains is a strong force. It is energy, relentlessly drawing my very soul to bask in the solitude found only in the high country. Every mountain offers a unique portrait of its Creator. Geologically, only in my imagination, in my mind’s eye, can I get a picture of the tremendous forces that gave birth to the mountains. What unimaginable power it must have taken to begin in the bowels of the earth and push once layered rock to create peaks of great heights. Such is the trail upon which I walk in the high country.

Spectacular vistas are nothing, however, without color and light. From the quiet of an early morning sunrise watching the illumination of high peaks and valley fog to the evening sunset dancing ever changing color upon evening clouds, each day never repeating itself.

What satisfaction there must be in the Creator Who made all things and said, “It was very good”. Indeed it was!
I was not always enthusiastic about strapping on a heavy backpack and hiking into the mountains. It was not until the Fall of my life did I really begin to appreciate the high vistas.

Now, as I struggle to find the physical stamina needed for high country adventures, I am filled with an insatiable desire for more. Is there no end?