Back to the Basics

***The little photo montage is at the bottom! :)***

We are back. Back from nature...back from camping...back to the basics. And what a wonderful journey it was!

We spent the past 3 nights in Mineral King; our favorite little niche in the world, carved out by a sequence of summers some time ago where we discovered God, solitude and a mutual love of the outdoors. A part of my heart resides in that valley, and the feeling I get when I arrive there can scarcely be put into words. A feeling of being so at peace...so at home...so content. My heart is at rest in that place. And that is how I felt each of these past three days. Bliss.

We arrived there a few minutes past midnight on Thursday evening/Friday morning, and after a two hour and 26 mile climb to the valley floor (after the 5 hour drive to the base of the mountain), we were deflated to learn that the most prized Cold Springs Campground was full. :( Looking like we had just lost our best friends, we turned around and headed back down the mountain about 6 miles to the only other campground available, and were simply grateful for just one little site left to pitch our tent amid the darkness.

We slept a few hours until dawn began to break open the sky and bright blue light began to pierce the dreams that rolled in my mind. We had a plan to rise in the morning and drive back to Cold Springs in hopes that someone might be vacating their campsite for us to snatch, and with anticipation in my heart, I could not sleep. I giggled aloud when I peaked at my watch when my eyes popped open and it read 6:18am....my sweet Luke must've been waking at that time just as he does every morning. A mother's heart just senses things such as these I think, and I have been well programmed by his internal clock! :)

Once I convinced my husband that it was finally time to arise (an hour or so later), we ate some breakfast, enjoyed the best steaming mug of french-pressed coffee found on this side of the Great Western Divide and got ready to head out. We met our camping neighbors then, as they were seemingly preparing for the same kind of morning...a couple maybe 5 years older than us from Prague, traveling through the western U.S. with their 8 year-old boy/girl twins. Ingrid and Peter were there names (I can't recall the children's names, though I have it written down in the car, along with their address, email and phone numbers which they gave to us that same morning). We spoke to them at length that morning, after being asked to possibly recommend some places to visit in California during the rest of their 20 day stay. Neat people, there were. We ended up riding with them up the road that morning, helping them to find a new campsite like we were searching for and each day, we found them along the same trails and lakes that we were also hiking. Our conversations with them seemed to echo what turned out to be a one of the themes of our long weekend...simplicity, or the return back to it.

Back to the basics. It was the lack of technology and the amplified solitude that truly made me feel alive this weekend! Being in a place like that, surrounded in granite peaks, drenched in the aroma of pine trees and campfire, and bathed in such unabashed beauty, I began to see how, with so many distractions and responsibilities in the day-to-day world, my joy can be easily robbed from me. How the cell phones and computers and Facebook and television all work so hard to distract me and narrow my focus to a little pinpoint of self. Because for me, true joy arises when I shake free from all those distractions and turn outward, looking at the beauty around me. I realized it as we hiked that first day. With my heart thumping away in my chest and my lungs aching for more air as we climbed the 2,200 feet in elevation to our prized Eagle Lake (aka Engagement Lake). There I was, sucking air at 9,000 feet, focused inward at the torment my body was enduring; willing myself to move a bit faster...one dusty footstep at a time up that sometimes steep terrain. My focus aimed downward at my feet and inward to my chest. And then suddenly, I came to a stop, needing a rest...needing for my heart to slow its crazy pace. It was then, as I looked up from my filthy shoes, that I realized all that I had been missing along the way! Beauty! Intense, bold beauty! Literally, I had been so focused on myself and getting there, that I was missing the whole point of the journey...to enjoy the beauty! If you will, I was missing the forest for the trees! LOL! It was then, and along the trails the remainder of the weekend, through long conversations with Ty and deep stretches of comfortable silence, where God spoke some small, but profound truths into my heart. Things that I am not sure I have words to articulate. Things that I am not sure I want to. Things that are better left understood by the heart.

A smile crosses my face now, putting myself back on those trails, feeling God's presence and the deep companionship I felt there with Ty. My heart swells now as it did in that valley. I am so, so thankful for the time we had this past weekend! So thankful!!!

Backing up a bit, we did find a new (aka PERFECT) campsite in Cold Springs on Friday morning. Right along the creek, enclosed in pine trees and lime green foliage. Our little corner of paradise! We hiked to Eagle Lake Friday after lunch. A gut-thumping climb for us both! Though this was our third visit to the lake, it seemed more difficult than we remembered, maybe because we just weren't acclimated yet. Two hours, 2200 feet and 3.4 miles up, we arrived at the lake around 3pm, just as the clouds were starting to build along the tops of the peaks. We came across an adolescent black bear along the trail, some 50 yards from us and meandered through some intensely beautiful wildflowers along the way. The lake was even more beautiful than I remembered, and we dangled our feet along the cold edge, snacking on trail mix for quite some time. Ty, the brave, BRAVE soul that he is, even got IN the lake! That water was cold, let me tell you!!! But he did it! I resigned to taking photographs instead! :) Go figure!

It rained on us during our journey back down the mountain, and I count those moments as some of my most favorite of the weekend. Being there on the trail, moving quickly through the switchbacks, smelling the moist, alpine earth and watching the drops fall on the backdrop of pine trees and wildflowers. Again....bliss!

We made it back to camp around dinner time to find our tent and sleeping bags slightly drenched because we forgot to put the rainfly on top! Oops! LOL! Nothing a few towels and a sizzling campfire couldn't remedy though! After we dried off and cleaned up, we filled our bellies, enjoyed the soothing effects of a glass or two of chilled wine and watched the deer meander through camp. A few hours, a few s'mores and a few logs on the fire later, it was time for sleep. A quiet, soothing end to an exhausting, but enchanting kind of day!

Dawn broke a tad later for me Saturday morning! It was already 7:30 when my eyes slowly drifted open. Yay for sleeping in! :) We had decided on a longer, new hike this day and by 10:30 we were on our way to Monarch Lakes. Another 8.4 mile (round trip), 3 hour (one way) hike to the most pristine set of alpine lakes I have EVER seen! A great hike too...less strenuous it seemed than the day before, though the elevation gain (2,500 ft) was more intense and the distance a bit longer. Strange. We must've just been better acclimated the second day. It was a GREAT hike (though Ty's poor feet would have argued differently...he broke open both heels on that climb!) We arrived at the upper lake sometime around 1pm and ate what tasted like the best PB&J sandwiches and chips I have ever had! LOL! Food tastes a whole lot better when you work so hard for it! :) For those of you who remember the ziploc bag story from the day we got engaged, it will make you laugh to hear that Ty deposited another little gift into this lake....his sock! :) Thank goodness he brought an extra pair, just in case 'cause the poor guy would have been hiking home with sock-less, blistered feet!

Saturday evening back at camp was spent in much the same fashion as Friday. We washed up in the creek, again filled our hungry bellies, nursed our sore muscles with a little Advil and a little more wine :) and read our books by fire light. Solitude poured upon solitude! Life was good!

We packed up and made our way for home around noon yesterday; leaving our favorite place with happy, peaceful hearts and promises to return with Luke and Ellie maybe in the year or two to come. They will come to love it up there as much as we do, this I know. I look forward to sharing our piece of Heaven on Earth with them someday. For now though, I cherish it as my quiet little corner of the world where that still, small voice in my heart speaks boldly and my heart finds rest along side my best friend.

***Here are our pictures from the weekend, set to the only song (a current favorite of mine by Addison Road) that played in my mind along the hiking trails and in camp!***

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