2024/26 FOOTHILLS

Dave drove us in a passenger van from Austria to Italy. I remember it well. It was Dave and his harem: his mother-in-law, his sisters-in-law, and his wife. He’s a trooper, not only for being able to handle a relatively high-profile vehicle going at insane autobahn speeds, but for handling the relatives in general.

As we passed the magnificent Alp mountain range I was charmed by the little villages tucked into the foothills. “I wonder what it would be like to live in such a place,” I thought aloud.

Then we came home to our house set against the foothills of the Wasatch mountains and realized I already know. We live a charmed existence. Just the physicality of this place we call home is rare and beautiful.

Flag Rock, a short hike into our foothills.

 At Eastertime especially I find myself imagining the day these mountains rose up. I pretend I am watching from our heavenly perch as this place unfolds, spinning into existence, morphing as it rotates, great waters and dry land coming out of molten earth. Then I imagine the earth groaning, centuries later, at the cruel death of its maker, the curtain of His temple rent in twain. The mountains against which our home rests testify of Him. The winds come whistling down them and I can hear in frequencies beyond mortal recognition; “I'm here! I'm here!”

It feels fitting to me that we live in the foothills. This is the spot where I can safely maintain. They remind me of my limits. I have only so much power to handle this little spot at the base of magnificence. It’s going to take some training and pacing and consistent effort to get to the top. I’m frankly pretty satisfied to hang down here for a while. This is where most of my people are. This is what feels familiar to our feet.

Most of my children and neighbors are hikers. They visit the upper places in our foothills. They celebrate the immense beauty and the challenge. They hike and they bike and they ski, weaving their way through the whiskered hillsides, working up a sweat and filling their lungs with mountain air. My friend Lonnie, when his wife Ardene died young and unexpectedly, threw himself against our mountains, up past the foothills, pressing his pain out of his pores in his own Gethsemane. He worked his grief into the earth’s own grief. These juts of rock and soil offer resistance if we need it.

They also offer respite. It still amazes me how quickly we can leave civilization behind and set our weary souls beside a campfire. Feeling the sacredness of the earth, and the warmth of a flame, and the calming aroma of woodsmoke and pine trees. I can see why the exclamation “Holy Smoke” came into being. The early incense of worship fits a campfire as well as a tabernacle.

Personally, even before my legs stopped me, I never was much of a hiker. There was simply too much to stop and see along the way. I was more of a “take a few steps then sit and ponder” kind of person. I like what Join Muir wrote:

Hiking – I don’t like either the word or the thing. People ought to saunter in the mouintains – not hike! Do you know the origin of that word ‘saunter?’ It’s a beautiful word. Away back in the Middle Ages people used to go on pilgrimages to the Holy Land, and when people in the villages through which they passed asked where they were going, they would reply, ‘A la sainte terre,’ ‘To the Holy Land.’ And so they became known as sainte-terre-ers or saunterers. Now these mountains are our Holy Land, and we ought to saunter through them reverently, not ‘hike through them.’

Thanks John Muir. I feel seen and validated as I saunter my way back Home.