About a week ago, I saw a window between duty and the many appointments dealing with my injury.
Impulsively, I packed up the car and set out early one morning to drive to the Gaspe Peninsula, a place I’ve long wanted to explore.
I’m so glad I did. So much beauty packed onto one spit of land, it wasn’t possible to see it all in one short week.
So many trees!
And seals that howled like wolves.
The largest colony of Northern Gannets, squawking and tussling like my middle school students.
Rocks everywhere, grand and common.
Ocean, gulf, river, lake: water in all its diverse forms.
Did I mention trees? The stunning variety of them, their sweet shade, the heady, pine-y scent; spontaneous gratitude would often erupt in my soul for God’s gracious gift of trees.
Every day, I tried to walk a little further on the local trails until, at last, I felt ready to tackle an actual mountain.
Standing proudly on the tip of Gaspe in Forillon National Parc, Mont Saint-Alban, at 285 meters, was a little over a five mile loop, much of it on the International Appalachian Trail.
Seemed like as good a place as any to kick the tires.
Rain pelted my windshield as I parked at the trailhead, waiting for a break. Yes, I wanted to see the views promised in the trail description, but I also longed to see if my damaged soft tissue was healed enough to propel me up the mountain.
Muscle memory took over as I exited the car and practically danced – cautiously – toward the summit and the observation tower at the top.
Perhaps, upon discovering that my legs did, in fact, still work, a view would be nice after all. I willed the misty clouds to part at every outlook.
When I reached the top tier of the tower, they did, in part, recede, affording me some of the most elegant displays of the entire trip.
And that’s when it hit me.
Without the clouds to frame the landscape, the tip of the Gaspe, the cliffs and trees and sea, would have appeared flat, dull. It was the clouds themselves that revealed the beauty.
For the rest of the trip and thereafter, I started paying attention. Cataloguing.
Confident in my restored limbs, I tackled Mont Jacques-Cartier.
Found other paths.
Everywhere I looked.
Veil in sky or vapor over field.
The clouds were the show.
Integral, insistent.
We so often denigrate the clouds in our lives. The times when the sun is shrouded and our lives are marred by frustration, confusion, and pain.
But what if -?
What if those times are necessary, to help us truly see and appreciate and know?
Perhaps we don’t value a thing until it is lost, for a season or forever.
I want to look with new eyes.
To not despise those cloaked things.
It is said my King will one day return. It is said He will come with clouds.
Should I be found here, waiting, when this occurs, let it be with a heart full of gratitude for the times with and the times without.
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