Summit Stories

We hiked a local trail in our small community yesterday.  We have hiked and observed these TALL aspens in all  four seasons. This particular aspen was 50+ yards from others of similar size, but this one stood out to me.... against the blue skies and green pines.  It  STOOD ALONE . Actually... it doesn't  STAND ALONE... because a little known fact for those who live elsewhere... where aspens don't grow...is aspens are one of the largest organisms on earth.  You can not see it from above ground.... but every aspen tree is a part of a HUGE underground 'community'.  Their root systems are intertwined with one another.   If I carelessly dig one aspen up...it might very well damage the other aspens who share the same 'neighborhood'. This reminded me of us humans... who share a home, neighborhood or city.  We might believe we  STAND ALONE ..but we really don't.  We are interconnected....even us introverts!  We are to protect...

Sunday night it was said that this is likely going to be one of the saddest weeks in American history. Our Pearl Harbor, our 9-11 moment. I can’t fully explain what yesterday was like, the weight I felt, the emotion of it all. The only thing I can equate it to is a grief that has been a part of our family for a few years. Because the thing about Pearl Harbor and 9-11 is that no one was prepared, each event came by surprise for most people, and death is like that sometimes. Suddenly in a moment it is in your lap and there was absolutely no time to prepare for it’s arrival. Like a car accident or a heart attack. But sometimes we receive a warning… sometimes it comes after days, weeks, months or years of anticipation. You see, several years ago we found out that my mother-in-law has Alzheimers. We knew for years that something was wrong, but when the diagnosis came there was a cold hard reality to face. There was finally a name, a label for the issue itself, the things we’d been ...