Cairn to Cairn

 

Bill and Mary took their own journey

Aspens are my tree!

Calypso Cascade

Casey's Butterfly

Ouzel Falls

Calypso Cascade in different light on the way down

Estes Cone Summit

Cairn

Cairn when we actually needed it

Cairn when we thought they were just kinda cute

Deer Mountain Summit

Smoke Free View

10,500 feet victory

Pathfinder Cairn

It's been three years since Casey and I did the Grand Canyon. This time we hiked three days in Rocky Mountain National Park, out of Estes Park, Colorado. We hiked Inn to Inn on the Walter Tisma Way. I'm done with camping, but still want the hikes, so this was perfect for us. Give me primitive wilderness all day, but I'm really into beds and running water at night. Bookending the days with coffee and wine doesn't hurt either. 

On the second day we hiked Storm Pass. Rocky mountain high. There was an option to add an extra 1.5 miles and reach the summit called Estes Cone. The added part would be rocky and steep. Hiking the pass, I was really huffing and puffing, completely forgetting that altitude can take its toll on a body. 

You know by now that I believe that God sends the right people at the right time and the right words at the right time, and really, just all the right things at the right time. Call them angels. Angel thoughts. Angel turkeys, angel butterflies, or angel eagles. Holy Spirit? It's all semantics but as MBE would say, "divine Love always has met and always will meet every human need."

Still hiking the pass, I didn't think I was going to make it to Estes Cone. I was lightheaded and clammy. Every step was a battle to pick up my feet and not pass out. I told Casey I was doing my fancy yoga breathing and capitalizing on my diaphragmatic French Horn days. We rested and hiked another five minutes. She suggested I breathe in a different way--more like a runner (which she is). That truly helped and by the time we got to the divide I was recovered enough to tackle the cone. Not that I wasn't slow. . . I was slow, but we made it. I made it.

Our trail guide told us that there would be little stacks of rocks called cairns when we got to the 1.5 mile path to Estes Cone. Isn't that cute? Such sweet little rocks. Photo opportunity. 

She didn't say that the cairns WERE the trail. The mountainside was all rocks and scrappy evergreens trying to get their own oxygen. There was no "trail." It was only imaginary switchbacks made by hikers of days gone by who marked the path with little stacks of rocks. Every fifteen feet or so there was a cairn. Some were fancy and tall, some were just a hint of something that nature couldn't have built on her own. 

An hour later when we got to the top of the cone, the view was 360. Mountaintop experience. Four hawks gave us a flyover and helped us celebrate our victory. 

We couldn't have found the way without the cairns. 

We hiked from cairn to cairn. We couldn't see the next stack until we got to the one in front of us. 

I'm sitting here, writing this at Bill's folks in Nisswa. We are still in the middle of a pandemic. Too much news. Too many decisions. Everyday is a new opportunity to worry about what's next and how is this all going to play out and what is the end game? 

Already on the way down Casey told me I would have to write about the Cairns. This gift of having just enough information. My eyes would flash across the rocky mountain side with the briefest of panic. The rocks blended together. Then like finding the picture in an optical illusion they would settle on the next stack, but you couldn't see two stacks ahead at any moment. 

We only have to see the next cairn. Cairn to cairn. We can't get greedy about the future. You can't go straight up the mountainside, you will probably fall. It's too steep. There is an easier more manageable path. We don't have to see the end. We just have to take the next right step. Do the next right thing. Cairn to cairn. 

Lord, thank you for always showing us the next right thing. Thank you for making the path clear. Help us to trust that you always make the next cairn visible. Thank you for friends and mountains, waterfalls and trees and ferns. Thank you for the much more than cute little cairns and the beautiful metaphor they provided us. Amen.