If you are planning on visiting Mount Rainier this summer, you’re going to need a reservation according to the National Park Service.
Evidently there are too many people all at once wanting to get away from it all only to discover everybody else does too.
Where do you go when your heart is overwhelmed, when you need to breathe rarefied air, when faced with decisions looming like an insurmountable mountain in front of you?
More importantly – far more importantly – who goes with you to sort it all out?
We live in a world that has only several hundred cable, satellite, and over-the-air TV channels, streaming TV series and movies, broadcast, satellite, and Internet radio stations, a constant stream of documentaries, blogs, news and commentary websites, YouTube videos, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and other social media, paper and electronic book publishing, audiobooks, newspapers, and magazines.
Feeling overwhelmed yet?
Who doesn’t need to stand atop the mountain? Above the threatening clouds and teeming crowds, nameless people helplessly wandering far below, struggling for purpose, and meaning.
A song from my era was that of Johnny Nash (1972) who sang: “I can see clearly now, the rain is gone. I can see all obstacles in my way. Gone are the dark clouds that had me blind. It’s gonna be a bright (bright), bright (bright) Sun-Shiny day.”
Interestingly, in 1972 I married my life-long hiking companion. She helped me see clearly. The obstacles in our path we negotiated together. There were for sure dark clouds, rain and tears that occasionally made us blind.
But we kept climbing, kept communicating, kept commiserating.
Together.
And though I travel on alone now, I am where I am because of her.
What if we had someone who “listened well to the other’s broken heart?” writes Ann Voskamp in her book “Be The Gift.”
Who doesn’t need someone who listens well, loves much, to join us on our journey?
Got a place and a person like that?
