Hope for Navigating Life | Help for Navigating Yellowstone
Watch With Me?
During finals week of my sophomore year I noticed a two columned list, double-sided, on my college roommate's desk. It was titled My Life From Now Until I Die. She had a lot to do. College is like that. So is life. In my first post here at Along This Road, after I...
Let’s Sit In Front!
Two years ago my parents took all five grandchildren to Florida to the beach and Sea World and Disney World. Disney World. My mom looked kind of chagrinned when she brought it up, as though she was worried we might think they had taken leave of their senses. She had...
What Matters
Parked on a chair in the hospital lobby, I was beyond the reach of the wind's icy fingers. I'd come for a routine test and stayed to make my grocery list in an attempt to delay meeting the arctic air that had blown in that morning. A family went about their work of...
For This December: On Being Stretched
When my uncle and aunt left their Century Farm in Iowa to ranch in Oklahoma they offered me much of what had been sitting, unused for generations, in their attic. There were books. Heaps of them. My favorites were the old ones with worn covers, among them a frayed...
On Feeling Lost
Because I inherited my zeal for vacation planning from my dad, it wasn’t long after he invited me to go to the writing class that we began to plot the hikes we would take along the way. He charted our route, one that would take us into Yellowstone through the Tetons...
For This November: Before It’s Gone
“Come look at the sky–before it’s gone.” It was my dad. He was hard at work outdoors last weekend, building a wall with my husband and son. As usual, he had his eye on the sky and when he saw that the evening’s sunset was worth sharing, he did. My youngest walked...
Every morning
The Canyon Area is an outpost of civilization near the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone boasting two stores, a post office, Visitor Education Center, hotel, gas station and campground. A slow drive down a wooded lane leads campers away from commotion and commerce into...
Whatever Your Season
There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens: a time to be born and a time to die, a time to plant and a time to uproot, a time to kill and a time to heal, a time to tear down and a time to build, a time to weep and a time to...
For This Fall: What the Squirrel Doesn’t Know
A thud near my head stirred me from sleep. The stirring wasn’t difficult. I was on the ground. We were camping, tucked away in a tent that hadn’t been warmed by the sun since we last slept in it in the back yard seven summers before. We weren’t in the back yard that...
For This October: Too Fast of Speed
Calling my husband’s family a water-sport loving family is like calling the arctic North, chilly. They’re hardcore. He grew up on skis. He also grew up clinging to his dad’s shoulders as his dad perched on a chair which was balanced precariously on a plywood disk (the...
28 Days on the Road: Some Things I Learned
Today I’ll be linking up with Emily at Chatting at the Sky, sharing what we’ve learned over the past month, specifically what I learned during twenty-eight days on the road. Eight of those days I spent with my dad and the rest with my husband and children. Dad and I...
For This Week
If the road you walk this week narrows, if life rises around you and you find yourself in over your head, may you know that you are not alone. The Lord himself goes before you and will be with you; he will never leave you nor forsake you. Do not be afraid; do not be...
For This September: When You Get in Over Your Head
My parents are not lake people. They aren’t river people. When my brother and I occasionally talked about swimming in a nearby lake, they talked about field runoff. So when my mom told me we would be wading a river as we–my parents, the five grandchildren, and I–made...
The Other Side
My children are all in various stages of learning to wakeboard, a sport which uses the wake, that trail of water disturbed by the passage of the boat as it moves over the surface. They wakeboard because my husband comes from a water sport loving family. They’re a...
And Your Parents Have a Twelve Passenger Van Because?
An insistent noise intruded into heavy sleep, waking me just enough to know that I had to silence it, but not enough to allow me to understand what it was or where I was. I stumbled through the dark toward the incessant pounding, wanting only to find it and make it...
For This August: Remembering To Be Thankful
A trail's name hints at what lies beyond. Usually it's the destination: Mallard Lake. Sometimes it's that the trail won't be level: Mount Washburn. Occasionally it's a warning: Seven Mile Hole. Hikers need more than a hint. We need to understand the trail. We need to...
Cicada Song
Every summer the cicadas sing their song. Every summer it starts too soon. Every summer it makes me sad. It made sense when I was young. The cicada’s song signaled school’s imminent return. I enjoyed school, so maybe it didn’t make sense, but as a child, it was the...
On Finding an Abiding Strangeness
Mom and Dad first took my brother and me to Yellowstone when he was eight and I, twelve, to show us a world away from our little town but the showing began long before we packed the car and went west. When I was young we lived for a short time on my grandparents’...
For This Summer: Letting it Go
Each summer we gather with my husband’s family at his parents' house. We converge on their home in vehicles stuffed with people and dogs, books and toys, luggage and anticipation. Mixed among all those are the lingering imprints of our lives. I can pack. What I can't...
When We Make Our Way Back
The last fight between my brother and I involved a fun-size Snickers bar. We were on our way out for a day of downhill skiing and both had our eye the same treat. He was twenty. I was twenty-four. We fought over candy. Travel has a way of bringing it out in people. It...
For This July: Lifelong Learning
A few months ago, Emily at Chatting at the Sky wrote a post about what she had learned during the previous month. Her list was filled with the serious and the lighthearted and it made me wonder what, if anything, I was learning. By the end of the day, I had my own...
A Hiker’s Tale
On a lovely day, when our family was driving from one place to another, we detoured through a state park. It was a good day for a hike, so we got out of the car and onto the trail. It began atop a meadowy ridge where we walked together until the trail turned downward....
Waiting for the Pool to Fill
We wore the road to Norris thin. Home to a geyser our family favored, it was a must-stop. Every time. Echinus’ eruption cycle was short, thirty-five to seventy-five minutes. A half-mile path through the woods led to the broad depression in the earth that was its pool....
Of Recipes and Risk
My brother and I were just a little finicky when we were young. We didn’t like oatmeal. We hated onions. We loathed sandwiches. And what is typical lunch fare for a family at a national park picnic area between hikes? Sandwiches. Eventually, we grew out of it and now...
Ponder the path of your feet; then all your ways will be sure. Proverbs 4:26
