New trails, listening to the river, seeing beauty, this is to live.
And apparently, it is to die.
Above Lake Cushman as you approach Washington’s Olympic National Park by way of Staircase, there is a rest stop, viewing area, and a picnic table.
And a cross.
But you wouldn’t see the cross but what you approached the edge and looked down and there, reachable in only a few steps, is a simple placard on the iron cross that reads “Mom and Dad, August 1, 2015. Rest in Peace.”
Nothing further.
Left then to the imagination as you look out across the forested hillside, the expanse of the lake that stretches far to the mountains the streams of which pour down from glacier peaks, the setting of this memorial to life, and to death, suggests another couple had embraced the beauty of a life lived gently and quietly.
Someone, in a different time but likely in a similar frame of mind, wrote “There are two places you need to go often. The place that heals you, and the place that inspires you.”
And so I go.
For healing, and for inspiration, on this eve of what would have been our 52nd Anniversary.
To the mountains, the rivers, the forests.
It’s not a new trail, it’s one we two walked before.
Because listening to the river, seeing beauty, this is to live.
