angeles crest

One Thursday I find myself sitting by the side of the road.  What am I doing here?  I’ve thrown a lawn chair and my journal into the back of the car and headed for the hills.  From whence does my help come?  

The sun is out, and it warms me, warms the earth as it hits the coarse compacted ground beneath my seat.  The warmth rises and engulfs me, with a hint of sage (or is it pine?) fragrancing each breath that I take.  There’s a breeze.  Just a slight one.  It’s cooling me, but I don’t really need the jacket that I’m wearing.  I shed it, drape it over the back of the chair and bask in the sun, gazing out over the hills and gullies before me.  The day is clear, but the more distant hills blur and gray in an impressionistic haze.

My husband sits in a matching chair.  There’s very little traffic so we mostly sit in silence.  Occasionally an observation tumbles from his lips, and I write one down: 

   “The tree is making the invisible wind visible.” 

I can’t explain how, but I know what he means.  It’s like he is voicing a thought that I’ve just had myself:  that single maple tree standing on the summit next to us silently, until the wind blows and the leaves brush against each other making a whispering, shushing sound…what we cannot see, not only visible now in the bend of the leaves, but making silence heard. 

I came to the mountain for peace and rest.  I drove up a highway named for angels, to gather beauty to my breast.  Instead, I sensed the angels gathering me, with the wind and the sun and the heights of the hills also. 

Love, Liz

“You shall go out in joy and be led forth in peace; the mountains and the hills before you shall break forth into singing, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands.”                                                   Isaiah 55:12

“And he will send his angels and gather his elect from the four winds, from the ends of the earth to the ends of the heavens.”                                               Mark 13:27

“To see the world, we must climb the mountain, sit beside the river and walk in the prairie…God is the gatherer, with a primary impulse to always bring us back to himself.”                                                               Karen Mains