Flashbacks, Inspiration, and Imagination

Memories are shadow-images of the past. Perhaps I can share yesteryear with you in various flickering flashbacks – cherishable memory moments and wild imaginings. 

Let your imagination paint its own portrait.

Exploring the rugged mountain trails before me, I followed other footsteps into the great unknown. Soon, I came to meadows resting on forest floors, covered with dazzling flowers in bloom. Then, as I walked along the pathways and looked up, the top of the hill seemed to end somewhere in the dark blue sky, and I was so anxious to see what was on the other side. “I am destined,” I thought, “to live in these Rocky Mountains.” 

It was our first family vacation in 1955, and I was fourteen. We had driven to Denver, Colorado and west into the majestic Rockies. My life has never been the same. The mountains have never stopped calling to me.  

For me, time has not lessened the beauty, the sounds, and the scents of  the beautiful Rocky Mountains of Colorado. The mountains became my endless yearning – a mysterious  ‘call of the wild’ that created in me an insatiable, unrelenting desire. 

There was a divide at the head of a stream that ran down into a land of timber and more streams. Trout in open pools. Chipmunks and rabbits everywhere, squirrels chattering and scurrying all about. Birds of every color chirping and singing. The eagle, soaring above, appeared to pass through the sun on its endless flight.

I have always imagined that some form of secrecy lies hidden in the mountains. Mystery is around the next bend in the path, and over the next hill, and I must search it out. “Oh, I can’t wait,” I thought as I anxiously and tirelessly moved onward. 

The valleys run deep, the mountains high; the wind whistles its own tune through pine and spruce trees, and the mountains – calling me deeper, quietly – a mysterious silence and I am always yearning to know what is ahead.

Finally, I reached the top of the beckoning mountain. The vast, endless horizon, so visible from the rugged cliffs that overlook the canyons below, shouted to me with all its splendor. It is scenery like this that causes me to appreciate my Creator and God. 

“God is calling me,” I thought to the mysteries of life waiting for me in these wonderful mountains, and someday I want to move here and own a mountain.

In awe, I felt compelled to drop to my soul-knees with thanksgiving and praise. God created these mountains so we could truly appreciate Him all the more.  

Then, as I rested, I noted the earth turning and shadows in the forest as they slowly passed, then disappeared among other shadows. Suddenly, a ptarmigan leaped from its hiding place, wings unfolding, flapping across the valley and into the limitless sky. I watched until it was gone.

Over in the clearing stood a large bull moose. Huge and fierce-looking, its height was maybe six or even seven feet at the shoulder and it was probably three-hundredweight more than a ton…

… and that was the end of Dad’s writing. I wish there were more, but I doubt one could finish such a story because there’s so much to tell about the mountains and our experiences there, as a family.

I miss my dad more than I could ever comprehend or put to words. I found this story of his earlier today and felt compelled to finish and post it. I wept tears of silent agony and grief the entire time. If you didn’t know my dad, I wish you could have. I’ve met no one like him in all my days.

I’m not sure if Dad ever finished this little story, one set in the mountains that I, too, long for in my soul. The mountains were “ours.” Mine and my dad’s, my mom’s and my sisters’. We belonged there. The mountains completed us; God never felt so close or so real to me, and no place I’ve lived since, away from my mountains, has ever felt as soul-calming and whole.

I have not seen my mountains in over 23 years, and the hole in my heart is a tender and gaping one. I long, as Dad did, to roam about again, winding along narrow mountain trails full of aspens and spruce trees, with the wind whispering through pines and evergreens, the clean mountain air…

There’s a vibration there, in the Rockies (for lack of a better term), one that my soul attuned to as a boy growing up among the mountains; other than God’s love, nothing else on earth can come close to those feelings. Absolutely nothing.

For my Heavenly home, I have asked God to place me in the log cabin of my boyhood dreams, nestled cozy and warm in a perfect spot overlooking the majestic mountains of God’s Perfect Heaven. If you see these mountains when you arrive in Heaven, you can bet you’ll find Dad and me, and even Mom and my sisters, contentedly dwelling there.

Look for us…

G. W. Craig

 

 

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