Beauty in the Rocky Places

Amidst the craggy, rough boulders on a Colorado mountainside, there grew a rainbow of wildflowers.

This Kansas girl comes from farm country, a place where fertile soil yielded our second best wheat crop ever this summer. Good soil means strong plants, right? Well, it certainly is one factor in the equation.

 

And yet, there in the Rocky Mountain National Park, delicate wildflowers seemed incongruous as their spindly stems poked through rough mountain rock and created a bouquet along the sides of the road and up the mountain passes.

Purple peeked from beneath pine needles that had fallen.

Blooms crowded right next to roadways where thousands of vehicles traverse up winding roads.

The flowers flourish in conditions that certainly seem less than ideal.

Even though we've been home for a few weeks now, I've thought about those flowers.

Like these mountain flowers, we all go through these "rocky places" in our lives.

Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, 
the evidence of things not seen.
Hebrew 11:1

  

We humans would like to receive everything we hope for or pray for. But life isn't that simple. There are tragedies - pain, suffering and loss. There are untimely deaths and health scares and job losses and family breakdowns. There are low commodity prices on the farm and breakdowns and uncooperative weather. The list goes on and on.

So how do we keep going in the face of those struggles? It all comes back to faith. We may not see it at the time. It may not be the timing we'd prefer. Hebrews 11 reminds us that Bible heroes weren't immune either. Abraham, Sarah, Issac, Jacob and Noah all had to have faith in a future they couldn't see right in front of them.

The wildflowers bravely winding their way through rock show us there can be beauty in hard places, too.

There is beauty all around ... if only we open our eyes to see it. The beauty is probably not in the situation itself. But it can be found in the people who walk alongside us through difficult journeys. It may not be discovered in the hard moments, but our lives may bloom in other ways after the trial is over.

I ask for eyes to see the beauty in both the fertile soil and in the rocky places ...

 

... and for the faith to make it through.

Rocky Mountain High

It is a good thing, therefore, to make short excursions 

now and then up among the clouds, 

on mountain tops, 

to see better what the sun sees 

on our return to common, everyday beauty.

John Muir

Quote at the Kawuneeche Visitor Center

Rocky Mountain National Park

I must agree with John Muir. Indeed, it was good to make a short excursion to the mountains.

 

Two weeks ago, we were in Colorado. It was a last-minute trip, which is what farmers seem to do ... well, it's what my farmer seems to do. As a child, he remembers similar occasions when his dad would come to the house and announce an impromptu adventure.

We were caught up with farm work because it was so hot and dry. In typical fashion, Stafford County Fair week had brought 100-degree temperatures. While the fairgrounds got some rain one evening, we had missed out on any rainfall at home.

Our last trip that didn't involve children, grandchildren or K-State sports was in 2011, so it was time for a getaway. Randy suggested either Branson or Estes Park. I voted for Colorado, since I figured Branson would be just as hot and even more humid than Kansas.

Colorado didn't disappoint!

We were envisioning a little cabin along a Colorado river. However, when you are making last-minute reservations, you take what you can find. The motel wasn't cheap (but it should have been if going by the quality). While we weren't in a picturesque cabin along the roaring river, we did stop and enjoy the beauty and sounds of water rushing over river rock.

It was our first time to visit Rocky Mountain National Park.

One day, we traveled the Trail Ridge Road from Estes Park to Grand Lake.

 

As we traveled upwards in the Park, the temperatures got cooler, and we even pulled on jackets for a little while. It was wonderful!

Even though we called it "snow," the information boards called it a "glacial landscape," or rivers of ice. No matter what it was called, it was a welcome relief from 100-degree temperatures and watching the dryland corn and milo burn up back in Kansas.

While trees don't grow in the alpine tundra, delicate little wildflowers still flourish. It's like a colorful miracle!

 

For a couple of Kansans, the mountain vistas were a beautiful change of pace, including the play of light and shadows as clouds drifted in and out of the panoramic views.

One of my favorite stops along the way was the valley nestled at the feet of the Bowen-Baker peaks. It was just one of those places where my reaction was "Thank you, God!"

When we got to Grand Lake, we ate our picnic lunch and watched the boats.

  

We definitely didn't need our jackets any longer. Grand Lake is the largest natural lake in Colorado and is known as the headwaters of the Colorado River.

We pulled into the Grand Lake Lodge so we could get a view from above.

Our trip back to Estes Park was just as picturesque - maybe even more so since our views early in the day had been obscured by a cloudy, hazy morning.

I love Kansas, and I will never agree that it's a flyover state or simply a way to get to the mountains from the east.

But it was a treat to see mountain vistas - a change of pace from our life on the flat Plains of Kansas. (Not all of Kansas is flat, but our part of the world is.)

We were amused at one of the visitor centers when Randy heard a dad ask how he and his boys could see a bear. The park ranger suggested going to a campground and looking for the dirtiest camp site. I don't know whether the dad tried it or not. We didn't see any bears. But we did see a few animals ...

 including an elk ...

... some mountain goats ...

 ... and some cute chipmunks.

We did not feed the animals.