Estes Park Hike Reflections

Yesterday afternoon I headed up to Estes Park to spend the afternoon with my friend Michael Dascoli.  Michael served on our pastoral team for 7 years and we remain good friends.  Neither of us just like to sit around and talk so we decided we would hike and talk.  Mike suggested we head up to Gem Lake, about 1.9 mile hike.  In between gasps for air, we had a great conversation.  We are both excited about our work and God has blessed our families.  He just returned from a week with Jack Hayford so he was pretty pumped!

1.9 miles is not a very long hike -- but it's 1.9 miles up a mountain at over 10,000 feet.  I sitll don't know why they can't pump a little more oxygen up here.  Fortunately, coming down is much easier than going up.  Along the way we stopped and just allowed our souls to soak in some gorgeous vistas.  Maybe I've been in Dallas too long but the mountains have a way of rejuvenating my soul.  I just love those "Wow! Yea, God!" moments of worship!

Both Mike and I are people people so we met some interesting people along the trail.  This kid had an IWU hat on.  I told him I graduated from IWU.  He said, "Oh, yeah, you have a Titans Baseball shirt on."  Only my Titans Baseball shirt is from my son's select baseball team in Dallas.  His IWU hat was from Illinois Wesleyan University, so there are two IWU's in the world.  He just graduated from high school and lives in Normal, Illinois, which is next door to Bloomington, IL, where ILWU is.  So he is staying home for college.  If I lived in Normal I think I would want to get as far away from home as possible.  I didn't say that because the boy's parents were standing right there. 

Then we met a guy from St. Louis.  We talked about how you don't see these sights in St. Louis or Dallas.  "But hey, you have a big arch!" I said.  He was coming down from the top so I asked him if the view at the top was better than the arch?  He only said it was different.  Then I remembered that St. Louis is in Missouri and isn't Missouri the "Show Me" State?  Evidently it's hard to impress a guy who has a big arch in his city!  Can't figure out if that's normal or not!

Then we saw something really interesting.  This squirrel had this huge fat mushroom in his mouth.  The mushroom was at least as big as the squirrel.  He was trying to climb this tree with the big mushroom in his mouth.  But the mushroom was so big that he kept falling down.  I didn't know squirrels ate mushrooms.  The mushroom was probably poisonous too.  Or maybe squirrels do something else with mushrooms.   (I have been hanging out in this mountain where there are a lot of hippies!)  But for whatever reason, this squirrel was sure excited about the mushroom.  But try as he might, he couldn't get the mushroom up the tree.  Finally, we had to get back so Mike could go to a dinner meeting.  I still don't know what the squirrel did with the mushroom.  Life is hard when you finally get your teeth into something you really want but you can't get it up your tree!  Maybe the squirrel out to stick to nuts!  But then that would be so --- normal! 

My beloved is flying up to Colorado this morning.  There is an upside to normal -- can't wait to be together again.  I get to share some of my abnormality with her!  You see, there is nothing normal about life up here in Nederland!