Here’s our overnight campsite in Raton, New Mexico.  We feel like we’re at the top of the world, in many ways .  The mountain views are strange and wonderful to us flatlanders.

We’re told by the management that we’re in bear and mountain lion country, and we should definitely pick up and bag our doggie poop, because that’s a bear’s favorite snack.  Hey we do that anyway, but the twist is: don’t leave it outdoors.  Aargghh, we have to bring that bagged stuff inside?!?   OK, say we reluctantly, whatever it takes to keep the bears away.

We journey through life, and we live through journeys.  We encounter places, and events, and people new and strange to us.  We look with a quizzical eye; a question mark forms in our brain; a feeling of discomfort envelops us; sometimes it’s only for a moment, sometimes it lasts longer.

How long do we feel like a stranger in a strange land?  I think only as long as it takes for us to say ‘I’m accepting this as I see it.  I don’t understand it, but I’ll appreciate it because it is what it is, just as I am what I am.’

The next morning we awake to everything covered in the Mother Of All Frost — so heavy it looks like snow.  We’re enshrouded in heavy fog (clouds?) and can no longer see beyond our little camping area.  We tentatively decide this is not a good day to travel.

Sometimes we just need to sit tight and give the universe time to make things right for us.  When we can sit tight with a smile, that’s a WOW moment.  How easy it is to sit tight when there’s no deadline to meet; we can just say ‘Oh well, we’ll do it another day.’  When we can sit tight with a smile while missing a plane flight, well . . . THAT’S a moment to frame.

Mid-morning changes our mind: within what seems like minutes, the fog clears, the sun is strong, the frost is melting, and someone in the campground says the highways are clear.  Let’s go, whoopee!

We break camp and head north, destination Colorado Springs.  The drive is uneventful with the exception that the landscape we journey through changes every few miles and we find this so curious!  We really are traveling on a different part of our planet.

Even when we expect the unexpected, we’re not immune to being surprised.  What a good thing to know, especially for those of us who really like surprises!  I can know with a measure of certainty that I don’t know what tomorrow will bring.  Fun thought.  I can plan tomorrow, and have my to-do list handy, but there are possibilities that sneak in between the written lines, making every day feel like a little birthday.

A few drops of mist on the windshield becomes many drops of mist, then a fine rain.  We turn on the windshield wipers but they don’t do much good and we’re frustrated because we’re driving a brand new vehicle.  Then Sara says I know why they’re not working.  That’s not rain on the windshield, it’s ice!  Turn on the defroster!  Duh.  Seems like it’s getting colder as we travel north.  And we forget for a minute that we have a purpose in heading north.

We will be very cold for the next day or so.  A blast of winter is visiting southern Colorado, surprising everyone.  The tree to the left is not blanketed in snow; that’s heavy frost, and every single pine needle in that tree is entirely encased in ice crystals.  Every leaf on every tree in entirely encased in crystals, and every single blade of grass, the same.

This is the time to ‘take no thought’ but just let the beauty absorb into me, through my eyes and into my core.  Just look at it and love it and let the feelings flow wherever they will; this is the very way that God looks at me.

Related posts:

• Winter: Super Natural
• I Am Tree
• A Pinch of Silence, for Good Measure
• Serenity and White Knuckles
• My Neighbor, My Brother

Tags: change, journey, life lessons, silence, unexpected

Categories: Road Trip