I feel God here. I feel the beautiful glory that exists within our Universe.
The sun travels across the great open sky, gifting us life-sustaining light and the rhythm of our day.
The clouds and wind that pass over the land, bringing the gift of storms and showers that refresh its lands.
The moon and stars that shine brightly, unobscured, in the dark ruralness of its realm.
The mountain range, the Tetons, that embody the Creator itself. The youthful, young mountains, still growing taller with each year, earth shifting below it. The powerful, magnificent, and prominent peaks towering over its flatlands, the valley below. The jagged landscape of rock is shaped by the snow that accumulates and melts, year after year, cycling through its beautiful lakes and streams that feed into its river before continuing its journey southward to the ocean.
The mountain is home and harbor; diverse ecosystems throughout its altitudes provide for the complex network of life within it, from low-land plants to subalpine trees and the bears, deer, moose, and small critters that move throughout the mountain with its season changes.
And I am blessed to see a glimpse of its perfect beauty and feel its magnitude as I walk along its towering trees, staggering rocks, and perfectly sculpted peaks. To know what it is like to climb its path, to exert and challenge myself and my body, for the reward of its hidden secrets, alpine lakes, towering waterfalls, and snow-tipped peaks.
I am also blessed to see it from afar, viewing the entire range, with its valley and river on display like an altar before it.
I am witness to something larger than myself. Through this, I am reassured that this world is as it is meant to be and that life is exactly how the Universe intended. We are solely responsible for the quality of our lives, our minds being the source of our discontent. Only we create our problems and frets.
I am blessed to have this gift of retreating into the mountains, into the Tetons, even if only for a few days a year. Its magic lingers with me for much longer, and its feelings fill me and set me anew, refreshed. I am reminded of the beauty that exists in the Universe, the perfect design always at play. The true scope of my worries and my problems are placed back into perspective.
I am blessed to have met the Tetons. To say that I have gotten to know them would be a false claim, for not even a lifetime within them could make it so, to actually grasp the extent of their magic and beauty. But I will take all the time I can get to learn whatever it will teach me, to remind me what I already had known but could not remember on my own.
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