Final destination

We've arrived in Seattle! The road trip is over, and we're very glad to be in one place for more than two days. Yesterday we hiked in Glacier National Park, then drove down to Missoula to stay with Elle Walter (hooray! thanks again). So today was our last leg of the journey--about 8 hours through hills and mountains to the Lindvall's house. Pictures to come...

Some photos from Thursday and Friday

An entry from Mary...

Road work. Poor Anna.













On the way out of Colorado

Grand Tetons

We are SO hard core. And so are pancakes.











Our campsite by Jenny Lake

Anna told me to. I think she wanted some time to herself.












On (or off) the trail to Hidden Falls


I wasn't really feeling photogenic...












We continued on the Cascade Canyon trail

But I had fun taking artsy pictures of Anna.

Yellowstone

Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone.













Just to give you an idea how bizarre Yellowstone is.



























This is in America. It is not a movie set. It happened naturally.

















View from hill by our campsite at Mammoth Hot Springs, Yellowstone.

Reflections of faith

A excerpt from my (Anna's) journal, written on a lake in the Grand Tetons... it's a bit long, and I probably wouldn't read it if this was someone else's blog, but here it is, for those who have time...

I sit on an old white fallen tree whose roots kiss the lapping waves of Jenny Lake. I love the sound of lapping water--it brings me back to childhood days lying on a warm wooden sailboat, my hand dragging in the water, the wind cooling my back. If I lift up my eyes from this page, they meet towering mountains, their jagged peaks still covered with snow from a long winter. The smell of pine and newly budding flowers wafts in the air. All I hear is water--the roar of a fall in the distance--and my own blood rushing through my body. It is peaceful in this place.

Places like this quiet me, as if I'm in a sanctuary and don't want to disturb the presence of the Most Holy. I can't explain God or faith or grace or any of those big terms like escatology I learned at Wheaton. All I know is that, somehow, for some reason, at some time, this Mystery spoke into darkness and declared that It Is Good. Who am I? Again, I can't explain it, but somehow, for some reason, at this present time, this Mystery chooses me and loves me.

It is in this Mystery that I rest and am at peace. I do not have all the answers (or all the questions either, for that matter), but I rest in the knowledge of a Redeemer who is calling me forth, calling the world forth, into a holistic restoration of relationship.

My image of God now is like the reflection in the water before me. All I can discern, through the ripples, are large shapes and rough colors. A dark block here, a lighter streak there. I know that the water reflects the true image of the mountains, yet it is far from clear. And that's how I perceive God at this point in life--I know some aspects of His character, but He is largely unclear. What I rest in is the assurance that beyond the reflections, over the ripples is a God so magnificent and real that were I to see Him, see Her now, my eyes would not be able to behold the glory.

...come, everyone who thirsts,
come to the waters...

Aspen

We hiked and hiked all day
Until college stress went away
With sun on our cheeks
And snow on the peaks
We've not been this happy for weeks!

In the morning, we hiked in Aspen and discovered the reason for the name--
so many stands of Aspen trees, reaching high up into the blue sky.

Mary and Bonnie stand on a bridge over troubled water...
(can you tell we've been listening to that Simon & Garfunkel CD a lot?)

In the afternoon, we tried to drive up to Maroon Bells but the road was closed. We walked for over three miles on the road, enjoying the beautiful views, but then found out we weren't even half-way. With sadness, we turned around and walked back to the car, Mary in bare feet and Tanner happily trotting along.

Our last exploration was at a ghost town in Ashcroft, a silver mine that went bust. The following poem, written nearby, depicts the hard life that the miners were trying to hold onto:

The Prospector
When our grub pile's slim and scanty
Not a dollar in the shanty,
And our threadbare garments letting in daylight:
The pay-streak still eluding,
And barren dykes intruding,
And we are chased by harsh collectors day and night
When our efforts lose their footing,
Our pard's insults sure cutting,
And misfortune's cruel jeers and sneers are keen
From our Ashcroft habitation
We behold bleak desolation
When scar Autumn's gold's transformed to silver gleen.
(-Jack Leahy-)

Tomorrow we're on to the Grand Tetons! Woot!

Into the mountains!

...a travelogue from Anna...

After driving hundreds of miles on vast, flat land, we let out a whoop when we first spied mountains looming over Denver, CO. Within one hour we went from land literally flatter than a pancake, to twisting roads, rocky canyons, and snow-peaked mountains. I have officially decided that mountains are far superior to great flat plains and would much rather live the life of a mountain goat than a plains buffalo.

We stopped in Denver to stock up on oil, a tire gague, and radiator fluid. It took us several trips between the car and the store to figure out exactly what kinds we needed, but we finally came out with a large bag of goodies. We spied a grocery store across the parking lot and decided to see what they might have to offer for our lunch. After wandering around the small store, we found some injera--Ethiopian sponge bread. I have eaten at Ethiopian restaurants before and loved the bread, so Mary and I decided to buy the package of five large injera and soup to dip it in. As we were talking about it, we met a Mestizo man who works at the attached café. Our conversation with him reminded me of conversations I had with people in East Africa--there's a certain sense of curiousity about one another. We headed for a park to eat our injera and soup. We both ripped off pieces to scoop up the soup, but Mary was put off by the 'alcoholic' taste to the bread and soon opted for a spoon.

Now we're at Bonnie's house in Basalt, CO. We just played some good rounds of Mennonite Scrabble and are soon off to bed for a long hike tomorrow. Hooray for friends! Hooray for mountains! Hooray for road trips!

Gateway Arch

...a travelogue from Mary...The Gateway Arch is enormous, a gleaming silver that reflects and soars into the blue sky. Its feet are large and firmly planted in the ground, but the top seems to lightly float in the sky even as it melts into it. After doffing our graduation garb, Anna and I entered nomadic lives, and we thought that the Gateway Arch would be a meaningful place to begin our post-graduate journey. We are at once both strongly supported by our families and dear friends and soaring (sputtering?) into a future that, like the sky, seems very large and ambiguous.
We drove through Missouri and a lot of Kansas today, listening to Simon and Garfunkel, eating raisins, and reading Nelson Mandela's autobiography, Long Walk to Freedom. Nelson's only about 23 years old right now, so he and we both have a long ways to go yet. Missouri had lots of hills, farms, and large swathes of trees. It's lovely to drive through such openness. I can feel my soul relaxing like the Mississippi River spreading into a floodplain. Having spent the past four years in the Midwest, however, we're resisting its charms and charging on through towards Aspen. Right now we're in the bathroom of a KOA campsite in western Kansas, because there's an electrical outlet in here.

Yesterday we drove from Wheaton to St. Louis. We had a little bit of a problem leaving: namely, a tire. When I got the tires changed on the lovely car my Great Uncle Frank gave me, I asked them to give me the best old one for a spare. But then I discovered where the car was already hiding a spare, and, besides, the other one was entirely useless, because for some reason they'd given me the part of the tire you make tire swings from. Maybe some of you reading this would know what to do with it, but I personally have no idea how to turn a tire swing into a wheel. It's not environmentally friendly, nor probably legal, to just toss a tire swing. I thought about leaving it by the Wade Center dumpster, but that would not have been right. So we headed off, Anna and I, in our tank tops and sunglasses, with a full car and the tire part of a tire swing. We pulled into a car repair place on Roosevelt, and I asked a young man if I could drop it off. He checked with his boss, who said, "No." I looked as much as I could like a naive maiden in distress, who had thought the nice automobile men would take care of everything. (OK, I didn't have to fake it at all. What on earth were we going to do with a tire sitting in our back seat all the way to Seattle?) The nice young man looked troubled at my predicament, took it, said, "All right, you're fine," and disappeared around the back of the garage.

We got to the church in time for me to take a long nap in the park across the street, while Anna played with her new camera and took pictures of people taking pictures before prom. We were both so glad to be at Grace and Chris's wedding, and to see our dear friend Michelle Heinze. At the reception, we sat with some friendly people from the area. I asked them what a particularly St. Louis thing to do would be. Drew said there was a drag strip outside the city, if we were interested, and the other guy suggested sniping, or else shooting the raccoon that had been raiding his bird feeder. It is illegal to kill snipes, now, because so many people wanted to call themselves snipe shots, so groups of people go out into the woods and night, catch snipes in bags, and then release them again.
We stayed at Anna Moffat's house with some other Wheaties last night. On the way out from the reception, we asked if they wanted to go out. Anna Moffat was like, "Ummm....do you mean like Steak and Shake, or the other kind of out?" Well...

Dear parents: Please don't worry about us. The police have got us covered.