After the happy afternoon of fun at Breckenridge, Jonathan thought it would take him an hour to finish up back at the job. He left early to get to it, and the children and I came later. The job was still not done, and the campground we checked out up the mountain was closed for the season. I made sloppy joes back at our travel trailer while darkness set in. Jonathan and Sammy were frantically trying to get the last odds and ends done and trying to get away from people who were talking. It had been well over two hours.
Now it was too late and dark and we were too texhausted to find a pretty campsite in the mountains
by the aspen.
It was the second of our only three nights away and we couldn't manage to get to the aspen.
Humph.
We made a quick decision to check out a campground by Lake Dillon which was just minutes away. In the van, I followed behind Jonathan's truck and travel trailer.
I was having a lot of thoughts on the way there which I will not attempt to write about.
It was dark when we got there, but with our headlights we could see that it was barren and ugly.
And to top it all off, we had to pay $18 to park in that beetle-wasted wilderness plus an extra $5 for the van. No potable water, and a bunch of ugliness to start off the Lord's day tomorrow. And it was cold.
I stayed in the van a while. All I wanted was to be warm--and to hit the bed to sleep off my disappointment. My feet had been cold almost all day till about 3:30. Also--I wasn't sure what I was going to say if I did get out to be with the family who were hovering about the blazing fire.
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The next morning what I first noticed was that the travel trailer was warmer than the first morning. The sun was shining beautifully.
The sun can't reach us through aspen leaves or pine trees.
We didn't get what we wanted last night--but instead we are finally warm! We checked our leftover provisions and had an unusual breakfast by the fire--watermelon, eggs and bacon, orange juice, leftover dried up bread toasted in bacon grease--
so yummy you wanted seconds! We had never in our lives had such a delicious, wonderful breakfast-
all eaten in that beautiful, beautiful sunshine--
the sunshine that we would not have had if we had parked under aspen leaves and pine.
Through all our lives--we have a choice.
Do I focus on the ugly in my life? Do I sit on the ashheap of my broken dreams? Do I stay in the middle of beetle-ridden stumps--the disappointments, the heartaches, the messed up plans?
Or do I crunch through the mess and explore my options for joy?
That morning, after a wonderful family time of worship, we moved away from the above pictured ugliness, the dried up branches from all the pines that had been destroyed by pine beetle blight, the ashes, the wasteland, and we walked about one quarter mile away to see
what was beyond the bleak horizon.
This is what we found.
Breathtaking beauty!
We just had to look for it, walk to it, hope for it, open our hearts to it, see it!
In the backyard of beetleridden barrenness was the beautiful, blue lake.
It takes so little to make little ones happy!
Hannah collects pretty little stones and a feather!
Carrie sets the fifth, or seventh, or ninth feather in her daddy's cap, and they dub him "Chief Nine Feather!"
They walk along looking for flat little rocks to skip.
And then skip them. And everyone cheers.
The waves lap. The sun shines. The hubby whose plans went so awry the two days before invites me to sit on his knee so I don't have to sit on the hard rock.
And the beautiful yellow aspens smile behind us!
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