"Oh, what a beautiful morning"
If you are familiar with my writing you know how fond I am of the sea. I put a lot of posts up here and on my Facebook author page about the sea with beautiful pictures and a huge majority of my followers love them. But recently one of my regular followers asked why I didn't also post occasionally about the mountains and it opened my memory bank. I've had many wonderful experiences in the mountains over my long life and perhaps it's way past time that I mention some of them. This commentary will just be a tip of the iceberg, so I'll try to follow up either here or on the other page, maybe both, as time goes on.
My first real experience with the mountains was as a boy on vacation with my family. My dad, rest his soul, loved to take a nice family vacation to a new and different place sometime during the year and the rest of our family time off was devoted to Nags Head. That first trip was to New Hampshire and we stayed at a beautiful old fashioned hotel named the Crawford House at Crawford Notch. While there I learned what real cold water swimming was all about in a mountain fed lake, rode the cog railway up Mount Washington and enjoyed some of the most beautiful sunsets on earth. It was a wonderful time and I believe the old hotel is still around today. It must have been something back in it's hay day back in the early portion of the twentieth century.
My next experience, still very young but a few years later was in the Smoky Mountains. We spent a week between Boone to the north and then Asheville, Waynesville and Gatlinburg. We saw three of the great outdoor dramas of the day, Horn in the West in Boone and Unto These Hills in Cherokee, then Chucky Jack in Gatlinburg. While I liked them all, I still liked The Lost Colony better, but that was probably as much my Outer Banks bias as anything. But I must admit that on a day when we took a tour that made the circle from Gatlinburg to Fontana Dam and then back up the north Carolina side and across to Tennessee again at Clingman's Dome, the sunset before us as we came across that large mountain was absolutely breathtaking.
A few years later I began attending Camp Massanetta at Massanetta Springs near Harrisonburg, Virginia. I spent a week at a time there in Presbyterian Church camp and in addition to learning more about my faith and spirituality, I witnessed gorgeous sunsets over the Shenandoah Valley during evening vespers. The Blue Ridge and that gorgeous valley is second to none in luscious green and blue scenery looking down on farms and towns like they were in a table puzzle.
Later experiences would include the Rockies both in snow country and in the desert, the German and Swiss Alps and even the Spanish Pyrenees. All were special in their own way and all beautiful. So, you see, despite my deep and unending love for the sea, near which I've spent most of my life, those beautiful mountains also put an impression on me of God's glory wherever we look. And, yes, I'll try to throw in a few of my mountain experiences as time goes on.
Wherever you are and wherever you roam, make the most of it. Enjoy the beautiful scenery and what it contains regularly. When you think of the pains that He went through to make it for us, it will humble you. Humility is good for the soul.
My first real experience with the mountains was as a boy on vacation with my family. My dad, rest his soul, loved to take a nice family vacation to a new and different place sometime during the year and the rest of our family time off was devoted to Nags Head. That first trip was to New Hampshire and we stayed at a beautiful old fashioned hotel named the Crawford House at Crawford Notch. While there I learned what real cold water swimming was all about in a mountain fed lake, rode the cog railway up Mount Washington and enjoyed some of the most beautiful sunsets on earth. It was a wonderful time and I believe the old hotel is still around today. It must have been something back in it's hay day back in the early portion of the twentieth century.
My next experience, still very young but a few years later was in the Smoky Mountains. We spent a week between Boone to the north and then Asheville, Waynesville and Gatlinburg. We saw three of the great outdoor dramas of the day, Horn in the West in Boone and Unto These Hills in Cherokee, then Chucky Jack in Gatlinburg. While I liked them all, I still liked The Lost Colony better, but that was probably as much my Outer Banks bias as anything. But I must admit that on a day when we took a tour that made the circle from Gatlinburg to Fontana Dam and then back up the north Carolina side and across to Tennessee again at Clingman's Dome, the sunset before us as we came across that large mountain was absolutely breathtaking.
A few years later I began attending Camp Massanetta at Massanetta Springs near Harrisonburg, Virginia. I spent a week at a time there in Presbyterian Church camp and in addition to learning more about my faith and spirituality, I witnessed gorgeous sunsets over the Shenandoah Valley during evening vespers. The Blue Ridge and that gorgeous valley is second to none in luscious green and blue scenery looking down on farms and towns like they were in a table puzzle.
Later experiences would include the Rockies both in snow country and in the desert, the German and Swiss Alps and even the Spanish Pyrenees. All were special in their own way and all beautiful. So, you see, despite my deep and unending love for the sea, near which I've spent most of my life, those beautiful mountains also put an impression on me of God's glory wherever we look. And, yes, I'll try to throw in a few of my mountain experiences as time goes on.
Wherever you are and wherever you roam, make the most of it. Enjoy the beautiful scenery and what it contains regularly. When you think of the pains that He went through to make it for us, it will humble you. Humility is good for the soul.
Southern Ariona's Santa Catalina Mountains
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