Up the Sunbeam

-- Standing atop the very spine of North America, the Continental Divide, I drink in the majesty of what for me, is an always-place.  This view, these rocks, this air runs through my life like a favorite melody that recurs again and again in a movie soundtrack.  It's a place I always seem to go back to, a place I never get tired of, a place I miss deeply when I'm far away. High places are always like that for me. I have never met a mountain I didn't love --the higher and more jagged and snow-covered, the better.  Shimmering with an unearthly glory, mountains are rife with evidence of an all-powerful and monumentally grand Creator-God . I am only one of the more than 3 million people who visit these mountains in a year.  Whether they know it or not . . . whether they recognize Him or not . . . each and every one, in some way, feels God on those heights. Ancient people felt God's presence on high places too. Sadly, though they felt Him on peaks and high mou...

-- As a little girl, there were few things I loved as much as trips to the mountains . My folks would pack up our Volkswagen and we would leave the verdant corn fields of the fertile Iowa plains in pursuit of the wilder beauty of the Rocky Mountains. Some of our biggest dreams, God-sized dreams, were born there. We would camp among the towering trees of National Forests and make hot chocolate and S'mores at our evening campfire. At dawn, my Iowa farm-girl mom was already up, cooking scrambled eggs and bacon for breakfast--there is nothing like the smell of sizzling bacon blended with the heady fragrance of pine trees and morning-crisp mountain air! Oh! Take me back!! Our days would find us in our intrepid Volkswagen, Daddy driving, treating the little red bug like a jeep or a mountain goat depending on the quality of the road that had caught our fancy. The place s we went!! The things we saw!! The rarefied air we breathed!! "No clan on earth possesses the memories that...

-- In 1903, a group of fa rmers built an earthen dam across Roaring River at the mouth of Lawn Lake high in the mountains above the ir farms near Loveland, Colorado. The dam was approximately 35 miles away, almost 11,000 feet above se a level, and nearly 6000 feet above the valley floor. This reservoir of water enabled the m to irrigate their crops, and it enlarged and enhanced already beautiful Lawn Lake. For years the dam did its job and the farmers enjoyed the benefit of having a ready supply of water for their land. Fast-forward to the morning of July 15th, 1982. Early that bright, sunny morning, th e dam broke , sending the water behind it rushing downstream at an estima te d 18,000 cubic feet per second. Gathering trees and boulders in its crashing current, the cascade reached and overwhelmed another dam at Crystal Lake, causing it to fail too. The normal courses of Roaring River and Fall River below it were dwarfed by the new channels cut by the 25-foot high, 100-...

  In San Die go's po pul ar Balb oa Park this am azing tree is a testament to the benefits of a strong root system. It i s a Moreton Bay Fig tree and it was planted in 1914. In 2008 it was listed as having "a girth of 42 fe et, a height of 80 feet and a canopy of 145 feet ." I took this picture on our la st trip to San Diego while my children and I stood and mar vele d at the extensive tangles of roots winding an d twisting their way to and through the earth. We felt and looke d tiny under this sprawlin g giant that was so gener o us with it s sh ade (my th e n-10 year old daughter is standing on the l e f t side o f the full-view picture) . It is clearly an incredibl y healthy tree, well-nourished, am ply watered and firm ly est ablished in fertile soil. People come from all over to stand in its shadow . It is so im pressive it is even listed in the California Regis try of Big Trees ! I hav e another picture of a tree with an extensive root system. T...