I freaked out more than a little bit when I first realized I could see Mt. Rainier from my neighborhood. The day has to be clear and the air quality has to be decent, but it’s totally possible to see that giant, magnificent, looming dormant volcano steps away from my back door. And without fail every time I see it, I turn into an overexcited fangirl with zero cool.
I don’t know how, but that mountain finds a way to sneak up on me. I’ll be passively scanning the skyline, minding my own business, and then what’s that, a cloud? A trick of the light? Then BAM. Mountain. Just like that. Ari now knows to expect cheers and a good amount of jumping when it turns out to be a “mountain day” as we’ve so creatively coined it.
I was really hoping to make it to Mt. Rainier National Park before winter set in since that’s the destination my protagonist sets out to reach in my upcoming novel, All That Fills Us. I was hoping to get a sense of what the park looked and felt like during the fall, since that is when she’s set to arrive. I’ve only ever been during the summer months, and I worried I was writing about this gloriously brilliant fall mountain landscape when in reality everything is dead and covered in snow.
So more or less on a whim (after checking the weather forecast 20 times and successfully talking myself out of the trip then back into it an additional 20 times), we dropped off the dog at a friend’s house and the three of us made the 2.5 hour trip to Mt. Rainier National Park. Even with a 1-year-old who had decided naps were no longer in style, it was a lot less grueling than the 34-hour car ride required the last time we visited the park.
The day was overcast and as soon as we headed out to hike the Skyline Trail in Paradise, it started to drizzle. The weather forecast I obsessively checked the whole way there did NOT say rain was a possibility, so it makes me feel real good that the people who run the weather app make a living telling lies.
No matter, though. We traded our flannel and fleece for raincoats and rainsuits. Which signaled to the universe that it was time to stop raining and once again become a glorious overcast day with little pockets of sunshine. For some reason, Ari didn’t seem to fully appreciate the life of luxury he was living in his top-of-the-line hiking backpack, but other than the constant scowl on his face he more or less kept his opinions to himself.
Truth be told, I think I found the trail even more beautiful than when we visited in the height of summer. There was a stillness to the air that I don’t think can be found on anywhere other than a mountain. The crowds were thinner, the air crisper, and everything had a raw and wild quality to it. Looking out at the river snaking its way down to the far off mountain ranges while the wind bit my cheeks and air scraped my lungs (thanks to lugging 35+ pounds of baby and carrier on my back) I felt aware of the privilege of living more so than I ever do back in my daily life.
I read a book recently that said that “once you come to know that in Christ, God is forever overcoming the gap between human and divine.” The book (The Universal Christ by Richard Rohr) speaks to the idea that Christ is in every one and every thing. Some people and places in my life are solid evidence of that. Mt. Rainier especially. Climbing that trail, breathing that air, being in the mountain’s shadow was proof of that gap being overcome- our human world and the divine one coming together to reveal God’s glory over and over. I think God gives us these grand reminders of his presence in our world so we remember to also look for him in the hard to reach places. The less majestic things. The difficult to love people.
As we headed down the mountain and placated our trooper of a son with veggie straw after veggie straw, I knew we would remember this wind-whipped afternoon for a long time to come. We had been filled with God’s presence, not just from the mountain’s shadow and glacier streams, but from the conversations and companionship that climbing over slippery rocks and through muddy puddles often brings. We were leaving full of the goodness of God. That and veggie straws.
