As I clip my snowshoe bindings tightly around my boot, I think, I know, most people won’t believe that I’m doing this alone.  Most don’t believe what has happened to me over the past year or why people would do what they have done to me.  I can’t answer that either.   I don’t know why.  I needed to get away.  I find solace in the snow-covered mountains where I grew up.  The quiet, the beauty, and the strength I get from these mountains, help center me.

I dig into the steep snow-covered road, that leads to my father’s cabin.  I see the “A” frame  as I round the corner; I smile.  I stare at the trees surrounding the deck.  I’ve measured my life by theses trees.  As the snow lay heavily on their branches in attempts to weigh them down – life continues to breathe through each needle; they will continue to grow, as I do.

Something is trying to weigh me down.  I am trying hard to fight it.  Thoughts of the recent past keep creeping in.  I don’t understand it.  I’m over that never ending betrayal. I ask myself why would a human being continue to hurt another over and over when they loved that person so much, that they wept from the pain they caused?  We can’t begin to explain or understand others; their thinking, or control their actions.  We really can’t even ask why.  because really, I’m sure they don’t even know.  The pain they have caused comes from their skewed reality, insecurities, and fears.  It has nothing to do with me or you.  I know who I am.  I have truly forgiven and moved on.  My heavy heart is not from my own pain; that is long gone; but from his.  A pain he cannot confess to himself or anyone else. He hides it well; he’s still searching.  I can still feel him.  I cannot explain that connection.  It goes beyond my understanding.  I keep asking God what he wants me to do with this.  I may never know.  I don’t want it.  I can only pray for him, as I have moved on with my life:)  I pray he will find his “Happily Ever After.”

I brush off the white powder that sits atop the stump beside the deck and look at my favorite tree that has grown up with me.  It has some gouges, nicks, broken branches and it is not so green in some spots.  I think we have lived a similar life; that tree and I.  But the top is full of needles, green, and brand new, even with the new fallen snow lightly dusting each branch.  My new branches have begun to grow.  My  path is full of new and exciting adventures.  Maybe there isn’t a “Lived Happily Ever After” But what is most important is that you have lived.  I have and will continue to live my life even with the snow that might dust my branches now and then.

I breathe in the crisp, cold air, brush of the snow that was trying to weigh me down.  I feel free again.  The sun is shining and new  growth is popping up from the snow packed ground.  New beginnings surround me!

“It’s not so much the destination as it is the journey.” ~ Kimberly Rae

Keep looking up and Keep hiking to the top!!

Kimberly Rae