Nita Gilger
Our guest blogger today is Nita Gilger, writer, thinker of deep thoughts, trekker into fierce landscapes. She and her husband live and work on a spacious ranch that sprawls under the wide skies of Texas.
Capitol Reef National Park provides so much to be discovered. It is stunningly beautiful and also holds a sense of history and hope. Just recently we hiked to the Pioneer Register and walked along the canyons of the Freemont River. At the end of the long trek we arrived at orchards planted long ago by early Mormon settlers. As a great treat, visitors may enjoy fresh pie and pick their own fruit. It is a treasure trove, an unexpected oasis.
One may hike or drive along the geological wonders of vast desert-like canyons and giant water-folds of unbelievable rock formations, only to arrive at this beautiful anomaly of an orchard and a river.
I love everything about this place:
The mountains.
The green valley.
The barn.
The clear blue sky.
Capitol Reef National Park
I also like the way that the road winds, a road whose edges converge in a place impossible to see beyond the trees.
Before I lead you too strongly toward my own conclusions, let me share a poem I recently discovered. It says all that I want to say, or at least most of what I want to say.
Just Beyond Yourself
by David Whyte
Just beyond
yourself.
It’s where
you need
to be.
Half a step
into
self-forgetting
and the rest
restored
by what
you’ll meet.
There is a road
always beckoning.
When you see
the two sides
of it
closing together
at that far horizon
and deep in
the foundations
of our own
heart
at exactly
the same time,
that’s how
you know
it’s the road
you
have
to follow.
That’s how
you know
it’s where
you
have
to go.
That’s how
you know
you have
to go
That’s
how you know.
Just beyond
yourself,
it’s
where you
need to be.
As I engage in the search for meaning, place, and identity at this stage of my life, I find myself a willing traveler, traversing a road whose ending I cannot see but whose edges somehow converge in the deepest places of my heart.
Prayer: Lord of all creation, help me to find my way. Amen.
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