My Favorite Beach

This month I was asked to do a guest post over at Rx For Travel Blues, run by Nathan Hill. You can read it here: My Favorite Beach

 

Planes, Feet and Automobiles

This summer I took a trip up to the northwest. Over seventeen days I flew twenty-five hundred miles, drove four thousand miles, and hiked fifty miles. During this travel, I was blessed to see some of the most beautiful country God has created. The places I visited include the Grand Tetons, Yellowstone, Glacier National Park, the Columbia River Gorge, Crater Lake, the Redwood Forrest, Yosemite, and the California coast. I traveled and hiked among high, snow capped mountains; steaming geysers; lush, green valleys; cascading waterfalls; jagged, glacial carved peaks; winding canyons; towering, majestic Redwood trees; and cliff lined shores. I walked where buffalo, elk, moose, deer, and Grizzly bears still roam freely. Throughout my travel I was truly humbled as I was continually awed by what I saw, and contemplated how amazing and awesome God’s creation really is.

Some say that the best way to appreciate such places is purely to look, and not try to understand. That to have how they came to be explained to you takes away from the wonder of it. However, as someone with a background in geology, and who has a pretty good understanding of how these places were formed; to contemplate how great the forces of the earth that formed these places are, and the numerous stages of development and vast amounts of time involved; fills me with an even greater sense of awe and wonder at how amazing God’s creation really is.

As much territory as my trip covered, it barely scratched the surface of all the beautiful and wonderful places there are to visit in this country, let alone the world. And the reality is, I didn’t even cover the areas I traveled through very thoroughly. When writing about Glacier National Park, John Muir said “Give a month at least to this precious reserve. The time will not be taken from the sum of your life. Instead of shortening, it will indefinitely lengthen it and make you truly immortal.” This is true of most of these places.

And then there are the vast reaches of space. A modest sized telescope and a dark sky are sufficient to reveal wonders that one could spend years exploring. The size and grandeur of the universe is greater than most people can begin to comprehend. To think about the vastness of space and time, and the terrific forces at work  is to feel extremely small and insignificant. To think about the God that was able to conceive and create it, is to realize how awesome and powerful he really is. To think that this great and powerful God loves and cares for someone as insignificant as me, is the most amazing and humbling feeling of all.