About That Time When My Family and I Exposed Ourselves in the Forest...

My family and I are vacationing in Colorado at the moment.  Being from Southern California, where we are intimately familiar with entertainment, we have been enjoying the slower pace of life at 8700 feet.  Exploring the outdoors, we have been in awe of the abundant groves of aspens, the high and craggy mountain peaks, and the sheer grandeur of nature.

A natural response to this sheer beauty, at least for us, is to want to get out in it—for our experience is that once we venture off the confines of the roads, Nature shines forth in all her glory; we hear the songs of birds, the soothing sounds of running water, and the fresh smells of the forest.  While it certainly can be experienced from the car, when we step out of the insulation, we experience beauty in all kinds of new depths.

Of course, with the removal of that insulation, we leave ourselves vulnerable to things outside of our control.  I don’t get to pick what sounds enter my ears, what scents enter my nose (although in our case with three boys, outside of the car is often far, far better than what we are subject to inside).  I don’t get to pick the temperature either.

I leave comfort in exchange for experience.

You might be wondering at this point how this all ties in with my semi-salacious title to this post.  And you may have guessed by now that I might have only thrown that title out there as a bait-and-switch; but hang tight—here it comes:

In the mountains, people use the term exposed a bit differently than in the city.  In the city, if you are exposed, it means that you either were dressed quite inappropriately (if at all), or that perhaps you committed some offense that has been brought out from the secret, or maybe your emotional vulnerability has suddenly found itself out in the open for all to see.

In the mountains, exposed refers to a place without much shelter or protection from the elements:  An exposed hillside is more prone to feeling gusts of wind as it sweeps through a canyon; an exposed trail means there is very little shade; an exposed valley means that lightning has nothing else to draw its attention away from it, and is therefore more prone to strikes.

Enter the ill-prepared family from Southern California.

We thought it might be a good idea to hike up to this nearby lake the other day, so we packed a picnic lunch, threw on our hiking sandals, tossed everything in the back of the car, and headed out.  The trailhead was three miles off of a forest service road that wound its way through aspens with views of the canyon below.

A quick aside: there is definitely a difference between California drivers and Colorado drivers.  While we tend to treat every road as if we’re trying out for a street race, we at least limit that to roads that have pavement on them; apparently in Colorado, it doesn’t matter the size of your vehicle, the amount of potholes, rocks, precipitous drop-offs—if it’s a Colorado dirt road and you’re from California, be prepared to turn off at every opportunity as the locals blow by you with seemingly no care whatsoever for their suspension, drive axles, undercarriage of their car, etc.

Now that I’ve got that off my chest, we can carry on…

The hike was amazing.  Beautiful.  Tranquil, peaceful, and calm—that is, until we heard the sound of thunder to the west.  We kept ascending the trail, all the while the thunder continuing to introduce itself to us with increasing volume.

We should have known that continuing on was a suspect idea when every single hiker we encountered on the trail was headed down the hill in a hurried manner.  Not us, though.  Not the family from Southern California, whose idea of rain gear is nothing but a wide-brimmed hiking hat.

And so the storm approached rapidly (as high mountain storms often do) and started dumping.  Rain, lightning, jaw-dropping thunder.  Then the small hail.  Followed by the marble-sixed hail.

We had nothing but each other, my wide-brimmed hat, and a nearby cluster of trees to huddle under—my wife and youngest son closest to the trunk of the tree where the protection was the greatest.

Even still, we got pelted.  I found myself making jokes about why nobody brought their helmets along for the hike, hoping that the hail didn’t grow to golf-ball sized, as I’ve heard it can do here.

We were exposed. 

We were vulnerable to the totality of the elements—wet, cold, potential concussions from the hail (only partially joking here).  There was a mix of fear and awe—awe at nature’s power, and fear that things were going to get worse before they got any better.

But you know what?  The storm moved out as quickly as it came in.  Sure the trail was muddier than it had been, but we made it out the other side in one piece, and were treated to a beautiful mountain lake that we had all to ourselves.  Our foolhardy courage was rewarded with the sounds of birds as they celebrated the sun, the scent of freshly-washed pine, and the joyful laughter of children hurling rocks into an otherwise still lake.

And it got me thinking: 

We could have avoided all of that danger if we had never left the house. 

We could have stayed warm and dry if we had never left the car. 

We could have avoided the fear of being struck by lightning if we had never set foot on the trail.

But had we done that—had we played it safe and never ventured forth—we wouldn’t have had the opportunity to experience life in 3-D.  We would have been just as well staying home and watching a documentary on the Nature Channel about the Colorado mountains.

We could have stayed insulated, and that would have been the safest route, the path where we risked being exposed the least.

But had we done that, would have missed out on SO MUCH…