Our Most Excellent and Beautiful Adventure

My husband and our doggy Shira and I had a most excellent and beautiful adventure yesterday taking a multigenerational Afghan family in both of our vehicles out into the Columbia River Gorge. We also did the full loop trail at Latourell Falls, taking in both the lower and the upper falls. 

 

This was a trail that I’d first hiked 44 years ago when my first husband and I lived in Corbett and I was pregnant with Brian, our first son. Our three boys all grew up hiking here. I've also long found it best to park and start out at Guy Talbot State Park and walk to the lower falls first: https://www.alltrails.com/trail/us/oregon/latourell-falls-loop-trail. In addition, our family likes to park in front of the "haunted house," a very old house that looks haunted and over the years has been gradually collapsing back into the earth.   

 

And now it was absolutely pure joy for us to witness the joy of this beautiful family experiencing something that they’d never done before. Can you imagine or remember what it’s like to see the gorge or a waterfall for the first time and hike through a forest? Amazing. Spectacular. Beautiful. Breathtaking.

 

We are truly loving all of our experiences with so many of our new neighbors — and like holding a 10 day old baby on Saturday. Melted my heart! It’s such a gift for Ron and me to have these wonderful relationships with people from very different cultures and languages and experiences. And like Ron commented to me on the trail yesterday, “I love listening to the girls (children) talk. I don’t understand what they’re saying, but I love listening to them.” So true. And such fun to watch the young girls playing with and loving on Shira. 

 

For those of us who live with privileges beyond what so many have, it is my belief that there are countless ways that we can put love into action. And again and again I come back to the incredible gifts of our lives and the joy of sharing them. After all, we are all connected, all related, all family. I am so deeply gratitude for so much. 

 

🙏💗Molly