Hope for Navigating Life | Help for Navigating Yellowstone
One Question for When You’re Finding Your Way
The gradual slipping away of the pine-lined path went unnoticed—by me anyway. We’d set off that morning, wanting to spend just a little more time on the trail and in the park before heading home from our week in Yellowstone. Situated along the way, the Gneiss Creek...
Two Ways of Waiting
Yellowstone’s Old Faithful Inn gift shop hummed like a hive. All the time. Except when Old Faithful was about to erupt. Then, every visitor in the area was out on the boardwalk, waiting. After a short lull, the gift shop—site of my summer job between high school and...
Waiting for Tomorrow
Dad and I were the last to check in. The arrival window for the nature writing class was from four to eight, and the sun hung low behind the distant mountains when we stepped out of the van and onto the gravel parking lot. We’d put it off as long as possible. We’d...
Putting Myself Aside
With winter’s chill rolling off him as he and his siblings came in from the wintry night air, my son asked, “Can we have our friends over to play boot hockey?” Flanking him, his sisters, echoed the question silently with their eyes. We live in Iowa, and of the ten...
Pondering Life Outside {Why it Matters}
A strange sort of geography took my parents, my brother, and me from Glacier National Park in northern Montana back home by way of a one day drive through Yellowstone. It was 1989, the year after Yellowstone's Summer of Fire. We’d watched it unfold on the evening...
Trail Talk
Happy May! Isn't it wonderful to finally not be cold? If you've read around here long, you've probably picked up on the fact that I am a conflicted outdoorsy type--an avid indoorswoman and a reluctant hiker. Reluctant or not, time, experience, and maturity have...
Walking When You’d Rather Wait
A couple of Mays ago, our family was in Yellowstone, standing in line at the Visitor Education Center at Mammoth Hot Springs, waiting to find out if a trail was open. Because the wait was long, we ended up eavesdropping as a ranger recommended the Sepulcher Mountain...
Pondering Life Outside Challenge
According to C.S. Lewis, “No man would find an abiding strangeness on the Moon unless he were the sort of man who could find it in his own back garden.” My grandma began schooling me in the wonders of the back garden early, when I was just a little girl. Among the...
Whether We Perceive It or Not
Cool mountain air drifted in through our open window, carrying high-pitched beeps and deep rumblings that broke into my slumber. I lay in the dark of our tiny room at the back of the lodge and tried to place it. A tractor? A road grater? I recognized that sound. I...
Winter Gifts and Graces
Regardless of what the thermometer reads today or tomorrow or next week, winter is winding down. I'll just repeat that, mostly because I need the reassurance. Winter is winding down. I need the reassurance because I believe something that isn't true: Everything will...
For When We Find Ourselves Waiting
Bundled against the sub-zero temperatures, we left the cozy warmth of our cabin to brave Yellowstone’s deep winter chill. At twelve below zero, the temperature was up seven degrees already that morning from the previous afternoon's negative nineteen. After fumbling...
The Spiritual Discipline of Expecting Delays and Great Scenery
Because of the invisible cord that ties writing to life, it is with some trepidation I acknowledge that my anticipated writing topics for the coming months center around a theme which can be summarized by a road sign, especially a road sign in a construction zone...
Beginning Again
Oh, I have something special to share with you today: a guest post from one of my favorite writers on the internet: Tresta Payne. I was encouraged and challenged by what she's offered here, and I hope you will be, as well. All creation groans for a new beginning, and...
Because Our Moments Matter {Steps Toward Making the Most of Them}
Cue the music. It’s that time of year, when the world falls in love. Every song you hear seems to say… I haven’t noticed the world falling in love, and if we were sitting down together to write that song this morning, the lyrics might play out a little differently....
Fall Notes
Fall is traditionally my favorite season. Its crisp leaves and cool air combine to make it a time I want to linger on indefinitely. This one is half-gone and I’ve kind of missed it. At least that’s what I thought before I took a look back. I haven’t missed anything....
When Christmas Surprises You
Dad and I crossed the steamy asphalt, melty ice-cream cones in hand. We’d driven cross-country to Yellowstone for a nature-writing seminar and stopped at Mammoth Hot Springs for two reasons: huckleberry ice cream and piano music. The ice cream was a sure thing. The...
Tracks and Transitions
Out west, our family sometimes stays in a cabin on a parcel of land plunked down in the middle of a national forest. There—with no cell service, no cable, and no wifi-- we watch the weather unfold in the sky rather than on radar. A couple of years back, a sunny...
Sparkling in an Unfamiliar Life
My great-grandma was a woman of summer. She kept a garden. She grew the flowers and vegetables that graced her table. She picked the berries that topped our ice cream. Once in a while I helped her in the garden or the berry patch and it always shocked me when she...
Christmas In August
Steamy air radiated from the asphalt as we crossed the road in front of the diner. Dad and I had traveled to Yellowstone for a nature writing seminar and a quick stop at Mammoth Hot Springs for an ice cream cone marked the transition from our leisurely tour of...
Summer Notes
Seasons--the days, the weeks, and even the months they are made of--are easy things for me to give away. I saw this tendency when my son and daughters were small and I referred to them as the age they would be on their next birthday rather than the one they...
No: A Long Bridge to Yes
When I slipped off the wide gravel road and into the woods, I knew it was a risk. The worn, earthen trail between the trees was wore a dark, saturated look, as if just a few drops of rain would transform it into shoe-sucking mud. At first it was solid and often...
What Gives Her Away
Elyse was four when she first showed us how brave she was—and what mattered enough to bring that bravery out. We’d moved, pulling into the driveway at a new house after dark on a Sunday night and popping out for a pre-school visit at nine the very next morning....
Embracing a Big Summer {& a Giveaway}
While the rest of the world waited for February 2 and Punxsutawney Phil to declare just how many more weeks winter would hold on, I looked to February 1. That was the date I allowed myself to count the days until my kids would be done with school and...
When the Mind Won’t Stop {5 Ideas That Might Help}
There you are, on the couch with your kids, in the stands at the game, at the coffee shop with a friend. You’re sitting. You’re supporting. You’re socializing. But you haven’t stopped. You’ve pushed pause. Your body is still, at least enough to watch and cheer and...
Ponder the path of your feet; then all your ways will be sure. Proverbs 4:26
