100 monthaversary ~ going-to-the-sun

“We need wild places. Whether or not we think we do, we do. We need to be able to taste grace and know once again that we desire it. We need to experience a landscape that is timeless, whose agenda moves at the pace of speciation and glaciers. To be surrounded by a singing, mating, howling commotion of other species, all of which love their lives as much as we do ours, and none of which could possibly care less about our economic status or our running day calendar.”

~Barbara Kingsolver, Small Wonder “Knowing Our Place”

I’ve been re-reading Small Wonder in the bathtub alongside Bobbie Lippman’s book Good Grief, and salting the bathwater with my tears. On the day Bobbie shared in her newspaper column that her husband had died, she said it would have been their 523^rd monthaversary the next day. Reading this quote about our need for wild places that move at the pace of glaciers reminded me of our honeymoon trip to just such a place, by just such a name.

After those readings, I calculated our monthaversaries and realized we were coming right up on our 99^th! And now, today, is the 100^th monthaversary of our love. I know many marriages are being tested on exactly how resilient they are to sickness and health, better and worse, richer and poorer, during these difficult times, and I feel extremely grateful to be able to say that after one hundred months, our love only seems to grow stronger and more resilient. Surrounded by our little bit of wilderness, we immerse ourselves in it together and enjoy observing the slow transitions from egg to fledgling, bud to flower to fruit to seed, the angle of the sunbeams migrating around the compass bearings and between different trees, nature always moving along with its own agenda, unaware of our daily human struggles. Our routine afternoon walks together are a highlight of each day, grounding us back into nature and each other.

I thought I’d post some photos from our first day or so in Glacier National Park on our honeymoon road trip, in honor of our 100 months, and since all of us are staying at home right now, this is one way I can still take us to one of the wild places we know our souls need. Take a virtual drive along Going-to-the-Sun Road beside mountains, wildflowers, and rainbow-rock lakes.

 

Rich, the journey I’ve been on with you these last 100 months has been every bit as exhilarating and as much an exercise in deeply trusting as our first drive up Going-to-the-Sun Road, and the name of the road really says it all: we’re heading towards the light, together, always. I love you!