A Sunday Stroll

It is a quiet day here at Elk Lake. It’s Sunday and the guests have gone, leaving little kitchen work to be done. This is the perfect opportunity for a walk which Lerrina and I did after our internet-provided church. We went for a walk. Now let take a moment to define a walk. A “walk” tends to conjure up words like stroll, relaxing, quiet paved country roads. At least in my mind these words come to mind. A “walk” here is not quite the same. No, to get a more adequate picture think words such as stair master, hands and knees, labored breathing–actually heaving sides, game trails, rock slides, fallen trees, and wet jeans. That is the hard part. There is a better part, though, whose value basically negates those aspects. This part is hard to describe unless you’ve been here. Ground dropping away from your view until it stops at the lake shore far below, clean valleys, bright yellow sunflower-like flowers against bleached white fallen timber. Tiny purple wild flowers dotting a grassy slope, mighty mountains in the distance bumping heads with piled clouds. Add to that the bonus of nature’s natural drug–endorphins–flooding your brain’s life-is-sweet department! Oh, it is worth it all right. Even after I’ve tripped over the hundredth sage bush or stopped to gasp air and let the burning in my leg muscles ease off, it’s worth it. The views, the sage smells, the companionship, the sky, the mountains, the flowers, the vast bigness of it is priceless. We “walked” in this land for two hours through valleys, up steep slopes, across ridges, and across streams. This is a workout at it’s best, outside, lost in the beauty of the things God has super-blessed us with.