Peace Like a River....

Isn't this beautiful? My good friend Karen and her husband recently spent a week here on vacation. This is the Skykomish River in Washington State. I asked her for permission to use this on my blog because I wanted to share a peaceful...tranquil...serene...place on this Earth with you, to remind ourselves that a place like this still exists amongst all the world's turmoil. The copy she sent me in my email opens up to a full-page view of this scene and as I gazed at it I could feel the tension just slip away. It made me think of similar places I'd been to when I was a little girl growing up in Washington. It made me think of 'escape' places Dear Hubby and I have been to in our adult years together where the cares of life roll off your shoulders like water off a duck's back. One such place is Camp Windy, a rather remote camping area with only two primitive campsites waaaaaaaaaaaaaay up in the Oregon Cascade Mountains. We'd never have made it there without a 4-wheel drive vehicle. But, oh....it was worth it. Stretched out for acres and acres below us was a huge alpine meadow in full bloom, blanketed with mountain wildflowers. We had the whole place to ourselves outside of a doe deer who visited us not long after we climbed into our sleeping bags and tried to knock our tent over because we'd raised it on a bed of plants she wanted access to. In the daylight hours we could sit in our lawn chairs and gaze out over the meadow with a perfect view of Mt. Hood directly south of us. Talk about peaceful! I have never understood the appeal of camping in campgrounds. If I wanted to be surrounded by people, why leave home? When I say we go to escape, I mean we go to escape!

I like rivers. I grew up swimming in rivers. I've been out duck hunting with Dear Hubby on the Columbia River. I spent many happy trips crossing the Columbia on ferry boats near the mouth traveling from Washington State to visit family friends in Astoria -- ferry boats long gone since a huge bridge was built there several decades ago. The only camping trip - or any kind of trip - I ever went on with any of my grandparents was a fishing trip on the Hoh River with my maternal grandfather right after Dear Hubby and I were married. That was the one and only time I ever did anything with him that was grandfatherly/granddaughterly. And it was so much fun! Every time I cast out my line I'd get a fish on!

I wasn't going to write any of what I've written here. I had nothing in mind outside of sharing that beautiful photo with you. But this has been a nice escape this evening, thinking on these things. Remembering peaceful times. One of my dearest friends went in for cancer biopsy surgery today. A young man my son works with may have colon cancer. And, just like after 9/11, America is flailing around trying to find some kind of solid footing again. I don't know what tomorrow is bringing. I don't know if America will ever truly recover from this latest debacle.

But life has a way of flowing on, just like that river. And one crisis that tumbles over one boulder is replaced by another crisis that trickles on with the current. There are quiet pools where one can catch its breath, only to be swept on over the rocks to another quiet pool. And eventually it all empties out in to the sea, a sea that is never full. The cycle just starts in again. And again. And we hold on for the ride.