A Brief Reprieve

We packed up and headed north to escape the heat and chaos of ultimatums and mandates and mob mentalities that turn neighbors into enemies. Opting to eddy-out of the vitriol swirling down the city streets, eroding freedom and humanity everywhere it seeps.

For a brief reprieve we retraced old dirt roads on a map that Rick knows like the lines in his hand. We took to the mountains and all that we’re told we need receded in a dust cloud to settle forgotten alongside the wildly waving wildflowers that bloom where they’re planted to thrill those in need.

The wind in the trees plucked the stress from our being and the knots in our neck unfurl as the incessant ping of texts and emails were drowned by the drumming of whitewater on the river below our camp. We follow game trails instead of people, diving into deep pools of snow melt and hopping from one stalwart boulder to the next, chasing the hatch as the sun warms our back. We’re tickled to death by the sip of a fish, our heart flops in time with the aquatic creatures on the end of our line.

No cell service was a gift as big as the towering peaks ahead, as we wound our way higher and higher on hard-packed earth to have our thirst quenched by the glacial hands that cup an illusive depth of water, iceberg blue. And we hover on it’s rocky fingertips to marvel at the One who made it all.

We didn’t worry about what we’d eat, where we’d sleep or the grizzlies that we were bound to meet. We hiked, swam, fished, glassed, paddled, rested and read. Our world shrunk to what we could carry, we talked of anything and everything; God and marriage, history and hopes, careers and kids, science and sustenance; what makes the rocks here turn red and if women hike more than men?

Time with you Rick Hutton is the greatest gift I could receive, and as I lay my head down to sleep somewhere in Montana, I am at peace.