. . . Where every road is another blessed memory, a new experience to carry inside my journey. . . (Chief Brynjulson)
Of all the paths you take in life, make sure a few of them are dirt. (Unknown)
At least once a week my sister and I take a meandering back-roads car ride. Whoever is driving that week gets to choose the route, and we have only two criteria: one is to find a road that we have never been on before, and the other is to find a “church in the valley by the wildwood.” It usually turns out to be a journey into time — the nostalgia and sweetness of discovering old places we’d forgotten about, or the amazed delight of finding new places about which we hadn’t known. Since we’ve been doing this for some time, we’re pretty familiar with many of the back roads in the area, so our search for unknown roads has pushed us to explore some far-from-the-beaten-track kinda places. We’ve ended up on some mountain trails with grass growing down the middle and right sharp drop-offs, forded lotsa streams, turned around (maybe I should say “inched” around) in some dead-end spots, and found potholes which had no bottom. We’ve discovered old spas from the early 1900s, hidden communes, more derelict farms than we can count, beautiful hidden lakes and streams, cathedral forests, fields full of emus, peacocks parading across deserted dirt roads, and what we’re sure are likely many “safe houses” inhabited by probable spies. Always we return home with a big ol’ sigh of relief and a renewed sense of how much incredible beauty and wonder there is in this world.
For us it has been worship in the truest sense of the word: awe, appreciation, gratitude, laughter, wonder, hope, and a sense of truly having been in the Presence. I recommend it highly! — to anyone, but particularly if you are ever in need of a bit of refreshment for your spirit.
Happy Trails!