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Leavenworth
Dec. 27th, 2009 09:54 amAbout two hours east of Seattle through a pass in the Cascade Mountains is Leavenworth, a former mining town gone tourist trap in the bakery/wine shop/kitsch direction. It was our destination yesterday in a day trip away from the cozy home of my best friend.
As our small SUV hummed its way along the interstate past mile after mile of pine trees, snow covered hillsides under a hard bright sun in a nearly cloudless sky, I found myself wondering what ran through the minds of the area's original explorers as they made their much slower path across these peaks. Our road was a six lane highway, dry and clear, the traffic moved fast. What was it like for those explorers, unaware of where their journeys might take them. Was danger around the next corner? Would they beg for a warm dry cabin like my rear seat in the car? Would they push onward and upward as we were? No maps for them, no GPS, no highway signs guiding their way.
It suddenly occurred to me that about a month earlier I had crossed between two other peaks, these formed by volcanoes, one currently dormant, the other softly active. Placed in the middle of the Pacific, they must have presented a much different challenge to the explorer. The hills climbed more gently to the point that given time, one could walk across them today without strain. There was much less mystery to their meanderings. Their destination much clearer and in view more quickly. Was it therefore less rewarding when they reached the shore on the other side? I wonder.
As we made our way to Leavenworth, I tried mightily to find a metaphoric parallel to these two mountain ranges and the explorers who crossed them for that first time. My limited creativity offered few suggestions although it did occur to me, perhaps too tritely, that we are all like those explorers in life. Some of life's mountains are steep and frightening, other like gentle waves in a calm sea. All take us to new places we've not seen. In rare cases, we turn back, defeated. But for most of us we move onward, through our emotional forests, looking for the next mountain to climb, hoping that the path will be easy and clear.
May we all face such paths as we move into another year. May we all continue to be explorers of new lands and of ourselves.
As our small SUV hummed its way along the interstate past mile after mile of pine trees, snow covered hillsides under a hard bright sun in a nearly cloudless sky, I found myself wondering what ran through the minds of the area's original explorers as they made their much slower path across these peaks. Our road was a six lane highway, dry and clear, the traffic moved fast. What was it like for those explorers, unaware of where their journeys might take them. Was danger around the next corner? Would they beg for a warm dry cabin like my rear seat in the car? Would they push onward and upward as we were? No maps for them, no GPS, no highway signs guiding their way.
It suddenly occurred to me that about a month earlier I had crossed between two other peaks, these formed by volcanoes, one currently dormant, the other softly active. Placed in the middle of the Pacific, they must have presented a much different challenge to the explorer. The hills climbed more gently to the point that given time, one could walk across them today without strain. There was much less mystery to their meanderings. Their destination much clearer and in view more quickly. Was it therefore less rewarding when they reached the shore on the other side? I wonder.
As we made our way to Leavenworth, I tried mightily to find a metaphoric parallel to these two mountain ranges and the explorers who crossed them for that first time. My limited creativity offered few suggestions although it did occur to me, perhaps too tritely, that we are all like those explorers in life. Some of life's mountains are steep and frightening, other like gentle waves in a calm sea. All take us to new places we've not seen. In rare cases, we turn back, defeated. But for most of us we move onward, through our emotional forests, looking for the next mountain to climb, hoping that the path will be easy and clear.
May we all face such paths as we move into another year. May we all continue to be explorers of new lands and of ourselves.
