With or Without People

I'm thinking about photos today. I took two pictures in nearly the same place last Wednesday morning.

Are pictures better with or without people in them? 

They can be beautiful without people. 

They can tell a story with them.

Last week, my daughter and I climbed up from the Granite Trailhead to Bell Canyon Reservoir. It wasn't our first visit to the reservoir, but it was our first time walking round the whole lake. 

On the east side, it was particularly muddy close to the shoreline. There was also a lot of poison ivy. So for more than one reason, it was important to pay attention to where we landed. Somehow, I managed to keep the sides and tops of my shoes mud free. I stretched, leapt, and balanced between rocks, branches, and clumps of weeds. Both of us managed to avoid the poison ivy.

My daughter was following a short distance behind me and accidentally stepped into the bog. Soon after, she gave up trying to keep clean. You can see in the picture she sank into mud up toward her right knee.

You may also see that she was looking out toward a goose that was rapidly approaching on the lake. This was the only one there. It came right up to us and more or less begged for food. The duck was the only duck there and also begged for food. Both eventually gave up on us feeding them.

The smokey skies have made it difficult to be outside sometimes. I've also been dealing with an ongoing illness. The combination of the two has made for some tough days. I'm so grateful when I'm able to spend time in the mountains. It makes me happy and grateful to relive the good days.

While the picture of trees and reservoir remind me of the beauty we saw, the picture with my daughter reminds me of the whole experience. It's the one I've posted other places. It's probably the one I'll keep.

Additional Lyrics Just For Fun

Sunday, a high council speaker in church mentioned his favorite sacrament hymn is "In Humility, Our Savior," a song with text by Mabel Jones Gabbott.

The speaker said, "I wish someone would hurry up and write additional lyrics. It's my favorite sacrament hymn."

My mind brightened. "I'd like to try that," I said to myself. It happens to be my favorite sacrament hymn too. 

I took it up as a personal challenge, just for fun. 

I looked at Gabbott's rhyme scheme. I looked at the syllables she uses for each line. She adds in additional syllables for some of her words, so I did that too. For continuity, I repeated one of her lines and otherwise tried to imitate her style.

Here are the lyrics Gabbott wrote for the hymn:

"In humility our Savior,
Grant thy Spirit here, we pray,
As we bless the bread and water
In thy name this holy day.
Let me not forget, O Savior,
Thou didst bleed and die for me
When thy heart was stilled and broken
On the cross at Calvary.

Fill our hearts with sweet forgiving;
Teach us tolerance and love.
Let our prayers find access to thee
In thy holy courts above.
Then, when we have proven worthy
Of thy sacrifice divine,
Lord, let us regain thy presence;
Let thy glory round us shine."

Text: Mabel Jones Gabbott, b. 1910–2004 © 1948 IRI
Music: Rowland H. Prichard, 1811–1887
 

Here are my additional lines:

Fill our souls with light and healing
As we come to thee in prayer.
May we hear thy Holy Spirit;
Help us feel thy constant care.
Let me not forget, O Savior,
Thou wilt heal all humankind.
When our lives are pained and broken
Truth and solace may we find.

With a humbled heart, dear Savior,
Now we plead with thee for grace.
Help us overcome our weakness
That we may behold thy face.
Let me not forget, O Savior,
Thou didst pay the price for sin.
Let thy justice and thy mercy,
Guide us back to thee again.

Cougar?

My youngest daughter, youngest brother, and I went hiking yesterday. We started at Hidden Valley Park and walked along the Bonneville Shoreline Trail to the Bear Canyon Suspension Bridge. I posted about this adventure on Instagram. Instagram crops pictures and limits the pictures-per-post to ten, so here are more.

After the bridge, we walked down Ralph's Trail, along the Aqueduct Trail, and back to the park using the Hidden Valley Single Track. 

Along these paths, there are "cougar country" warning signs everywhere there is a trail sign. Cougars have been seen in this area, though I'm not sure how recently.

We'd just passed one of the signs, and were walking through dense forest, when something big moved in the brush above us. 

Then we heard a few very large "waaaak" vocalizations. I thought the sounds might be a coming from a very large bird, like maybe a magpie, but they seemed deeper and bigger than a bird could make. Could it be a cougar? It wasn't like a growl or a hiss, but I really had no idea. 

My brother was convinced it was a cougar. 

"Should we run or hold still?" he asked. He sounded a little worried, but not panicky.

"I think it's a bird," I said. "Let's just keep walking and making a lot of noise."

Not long after, a deer darted through the bushes. We all felt a little relief, but was it running down the mountain toward us and away from something?

"Could that sound have come from the deer?" I asked. "If a cougar is after anything, it would probably be a deer."

Then mostly to reassure myself I said, "Besides, together, we're bigger than a cougar. Like a spider, it would probably be more scared of us than we'd be of it. Let's just keep making noise and focus on the cute little birds." 

So we did that.

Even with all the signs, I have to admit that until that moment, it didn't occur to me there could really be a cougar nearby. For the rest of our hike, I kept looking for possible escape routes to nearby homes through the trees below. Fortunately, it wasn't long before we came across other hikers and then reached the park. We were fine.

Today, I searched for deer sounds on the internet. Now I'm sure what we heard was a bellowing deer. 

I have also learned if a cougar is nearby, DO NOT RUN! Otherwise, you're inviting it to chase. Instead, you can back away slowly, look as big as possible, yell, and otherwise seem not worth the effort of an attack.

There's a cougar encounter in the book I wrote. This experience makes me want to go back and see if I wrote about that situation in a believable way.

Time to Explore

This is the lower part of Bell Canyon's Lower Falls. 

This is the same falls, higher up.

This is a view of Bell Canyon Reservoir, looking east.

This is another view of Bell Canyon Reservoir, looking south.

This is a back view of two of my daughters and my youngest brother walking east on a flat area through Bell Canyon on the trail toward the waterfall.

I took a lot of pictures on this hike, some are on my Instagram account deb.in.ut. Our adventure in Bell Canyon yesterday was beautiful and memorable. The hike was much more challenging than I expected, especially the part right before the falls. I didn't take pictures of that area.

On that part of the trail, we encountered several groups descending the mountain. One was a family: mom, dad, and three teenagers. 

"You have a little ways to go," said the mom. She was being optimistic, but I had no idea. I believed her.

"Oh, so I shouldn't quit now then?" I joked.

"No, and you can take a long rest at the top," she answered with encouragement.

After that "little ways to go," when we'd been climbing up and over boulders on a steep slope for a long time, I thought surely we were almost there. At that point, we just happened to encounter some neighbors of my parents and my brother: a mom and her teenage daughter. 

After cheerful introductions, I asked hopefully, "We're almost there right?"

The mom's face fell, she looked apologetic, and said, "No, not really. We've been walking a while. You have about 30 to 45 minutes left to go."

My heart sank. I was totally exhausted and my heart was beating so fast and hard I could feel it. I was ready to be done. I'd also been feeling a time pressure because I knew one of my daughters and my brother both had places to be soon. Psychologically, the reality that we weren't as close as I hoped, that we might have to quit before we arrived, tipped the balance. I crashed physically. I felt light headed and a little nauseous. I wasn't sure I could or should go further. 

Since I knew my reaction was partly psychological, I also knew I could try to muster the physical strength to continue. We'd come so far. I couldn't just turn around. Nobody else seemed worried or discouraged. I didn't share how close I felt to giving up. Instead, I insisted I walk last in our group. I needed to go slowly. My daughters and brother appeared fine, were enjoying their conversation, and seemed to effortlessly scramble up ahead of me. I tried to breathe more deeply and slowly. I kept climbing one foot in front of the other.

A little while later, we encountered another group descending the mountain. I was much further down from our group. I asked a smiling young dad with a baby strapped on his front, "Are we almost there?"

He said, "Yes! You'll just keep going up as far as you can see, then the trail turns left, and then you're almost there. I'd say you only have another ten or fifteen minutes to go."

Because of what happened after we asked others, I thought he might be speaking optimistically, but I needed to believe him. It took a little longer than he described, but his words help me push through to the destination. There was something about his smile and his tone of voice that gave me hope. 

At the top of the incline, my family members waited for me. A young woman  passed us where the trail seemed to divide. She took the trail to the left. 

"Are you going to the falls?" I called out after her.

"Are you talking to me?" she said, then called back, "Yes."

"That's what the sign shows," said my daughter.

I was so focused on just climbing up over the next boulder that I'd missed the obvious sign with an arrow that pointed left. That was a little embarrassing, but made me realize how I was barely hanging in there. I wasn't even really seeing anymore.

I hardly believed it, but we were very close to the falls at that point. We could hear the falling water. Because of the trees, bushes, and steep terrain, in order to see the falls, we had to climb down the mountain slope, past and around pine trees that had many exposed roots. 

When we finally arrived, I felt an incredible sense of achievement and joy. I stood in awe near the falls for as long as I could.

Going down the mountain took a fraction of the time. We weren't a lot later than we originally planned. Everything worked out.

One of the benefits of the pandemic has been opening of windows of time when I have freedom to go places without worrying about my twenty-seven-year-old daughter who has Down syndrome and severe autism because my husband is now working from home. She wakes up at 9 AM, so I can go places before that time. 

Once a day, she also watches a movie. Once a week, if I time it right, I put on the movie for her and go on adventures. She stays and watches the whole thing and then goes upstairs to play with her toys if I'm not back exactly on time. My husband is here if there's a problem. Yesterday, we were a little late, so my husband fed her lunch during his lunch break. We returned home right when he needed to get back to work. I took over her care. 

As a result of these windows of time, it's been a most amazing summer. We've gone walking or hiking every week. I've documented all our adventures on Instagram. 

Maybe because the hike was so challenging, I just can't stop looking at yesterday's pictures. They fill me with such gratitude for our world, for my body, and for time to explore.

Storm

August 5, 1979, I was eleven years old, second oldest of the seven children my parents had at the time, including my five-month-old baby sister. We all traveled in a big brown station wagon, with faux-wood siding, from our home in Bettendorf, Iowa to a coliseum in Madison, Wisconsin for a church area conference. That morning, we sat in the auditorium toward the top where thunder roared, rattled the building, frightened us, and made it challenging to hear the talks.

On our way home after all the meetings, the storm continued to rage. Wild wind pushed the station wagon sideways. Hard rain made it difficult to see out the windshield. Then dime-sized hail came crashing down and made it nearly impossible to continue. Our parents told us all to be quiet so my dad could concentrate on his driving.

We were also really low on gas. It was the Sabbath, so my parents likely wanted to keep the day holy and avoid buying more than necessary.

We weren’t quite driving down “tornado alley," but we were close enough that the risk of tornadoes was very high. For our safety, and probably because he couldn’t see, my dad slowed down and drove the station wagon off the highway. He stopped on a slope in a grassy ditch and turned off the car to wait out the storm.

I remember feeling very afraid. I sat by a window and watched the rain pelting down in rivulets next to me. I’m sure I tensed with every lightning strike and thunder roar. I imagine the baby cried and needed feeding. I remember the tension in the car and the worried looks on my parents’ faces.

I also remember we said a family prayer.

I don’t remember if it was my dad or my mom who said the prayer; I don’t remember what they said, but I do remember that after the prayer I felt calm. I knew we’d be okay.

We found out later that night, just five minutes ahead of where we stopped in the ditch, a tornado crossed the highway. If we’d kept going, we would have surely been caught up in its path.

I don’t know how long we waited, but once the storm slowed, we got back on the highway. We didn’t run out of gas. We made it home.

It’s been storming here since last night, so it’s a good time to post this story. I remember some details of the event; some I wrote in a journal entry a day later.