trails Archives ~ Rambling ranger

Finding peace in today’s world isn’t easy. So much chaos! So many things going wrong! Cold war with both China and Russia, the war in the Ukraine, climate change and crazy weather, women’s rights going backwards, mass shootings practically every week, inflation, earthquakes….AAAAAAGH! Things seem pretty desperate!

Well, yes, the world situation is desperate. It’s desperate more often than not. Always has been. We’re just better informed about it now. That’s the problem. Bad news gets more engagement than good news so the algorithms are heavily slanted toward whatever will get people’s blood pressure up and make them worry.

Goldstream Beach. Redwood National Park — A walk on the beach may help you find peace.

How can we overcome this? For one thing, put the device down! Whether it’s your computer or your phone, when you start doomscrolling, cut yourself off. Go outside instead. It’s good to be informed about the world, but we are all suffering from information overload. It’s enough to rob anyone of their peace. And since most of these things are problems we have no control over, the frustration makes it worse.

So let it go. Do not let your empathy paralyze you. Decide if there is anything you can do about the problem and then do what you can. Donate to a relief fund for those in the midst of a disaster. Write your congressperson. Do what you can and then let it go. Don’t doomscroll.

Death Valley National Park — Make sure your walk is somewhere interesting or difficult enough to keep you fully engaged. This canyon in Death Valley was both.

I’d like to offer a few meditative exercises to do that help me find peace. Maybe they can help you, too.

Take a hike or a walk. This is a walking meditation on how to live in the present, how to be here now. Make sure that where you go is interesting or difficult enough to keep you engaged, so that you can shut down the endless tape loop of anxiety you are working and reworking in your head. Shut it down and appreciate the present moment instead. That’s guaranteed to bring you some peace, if only for a little while.

A walk in the forest can help you find peace.

If you’re mobility challenged and can’t take that walk, watch birds. Really watch them, don’t just tick species off your list. Observe their behavior. There’s a lot more to the world than just our species. It’s good to get out of ourselves and get to know some of the other creatures we share our planet with. Finding a way to get in touch with our Mother the Earth is the best way to find peace.

Perhaps what’s disturbing your peace is a little closer to home. Maybe it IS home. Personal conflicts, work pressures, worries about loved ones are hard to overcome. They can take away every vestige of peace in our lives.

Finding peace — Let the wind and the water wash your worries away.

In some cases we can make it better by being better listeners, keeping quiet and listening to understand another’s point of view. Sometimes we just may need to take some alone time.

Olympic National Park — Find moving water and listen to its song.

Find moving water. It could be waves roaring in the ocean. It might be a waterfall. It could even be a tiny babbling brook. Find that water and listen to its song. Let it fill your head completely, driving out all thought and agitation, until the only thing in your head is the sound of water. Let it fill you. This is a great way to find peace.

Orcas Island — Let the song of the water fill your head.

Maybe it’s your own mind that destroys your peace. Self pity and self judgment are soul wreckers, guaranteed to disturb the peace. Self judgement is a big one for me. Let it go. Give yourself a break.

My favorite way to find peace is to go to a forest or a glade of trees and contemplate the trees, really see them. Think of time the way a tree experiences it. Let yourself be awestruck at their size and the miracle of their existence. Realize how small and unimportant you and any of your petty problems are in the grand scheme of life on Earth. This might help to put problems into perspective and help you find peace.

Redwood National Park — Contemplating trees helps to put your problems in proper perspective.

Perhaps, you say, that you have no problem feeling small. That feeling small is part of the problem, feeling insignificant, weak, and helpless in the face of insurmountable challenges. In that case, choose a flower. It could be a wildflower or something growing in your own garden. Ponder the perfection and beauty of this tiny being. Think of how ephemeral and insignificant their lives are, yet each flower plays an important part in the world, adding to the richness of life’s tapestry.

As do you, Realize that you, too are precious and beautiful just as you are. Realize that you, too, are an important part of life’s tapestry. Let this realization help you find peace.

Sometimes flowers can help us find peace. — You are as beautiful and precious as a flower.

I hope you’ve enjoyed my meditations. I hope they help some of you find peace, even if only for a little while. Thank you to Tina of Travels & Trifles for this week’s Lens-Artists Photo Challenge, Finding Peace.

The Peak-to-Peak Highway is one of my favorite Colorado scenic byways. My recent sojourn down this beautiful road was an incredible trip down memory lane, scenic but also big on nostalgia.

The Peak-to-Peak is the closest access to Colorado’s alpine for folks living in the northwest Denver/Boulder metro area. Since that’s where I grew up, this road was once my favorite way into the high country.

Estes Park, CO — You can sometimes catch this kind of action going on in downtown Estes Park.

Rocky Mountain National Park

The route starts (or ends) in Estes Park, the gateway to Rocky Mountain National Park. I spent 2 summers there in my early twenties, the first mountain town I ever lived in.

In a landscape created by the rubble left behind by ancient glaciers, lumpy ridges and random boulders painted with lichens form the bones of the land. Stately Ponderosa pines and small groves of aspen adorn huge, park-like meadows, superb habitat for herds of elk. Tromping the trails whenever I had a chance, this country crept deep into my soul as I made the transformation from a city kid to a mountain woman.

Shortly after passing Lily Lake south of Estes, there’s a turnoff to reach the Long’s Peak trailhead. Long’s Peak is the northernmost fourteener (mountain over 14,000 ft.). in Colorado It was the first fourteener I ever climbed.

It’s a scramble, not a trail, to get to the top. The climb turned into an epic adventure when we were caught near the summit by a quick-moving thunderstorm. Torrents of hail felt like ball bearings under our feet as we charged down the slippery scree-covered slope. I watched a bolt of lightning break off a chunk of the mountain the size of a small house and send it crashing down on the slope below. Intense.

The Peak-to-Peak provides access to many other alpine adventures. Trails in the Wild Basin area near Allenspark travel along creeks filled with cascading waterfalls to pristine lakes. Climb higher, above the treeline, and immerse yourself in a tapestry of tiny tundra wildflowers.

Peak-to-Peak Highway — Walk by waterfalls in Wild Basin

Indian Peaks Wilderness

The Indian Peaks Wilderness lies south of Rocky Mountain National Park, just a few miles west of the highway. I remember the challenges of my first week-long backpacking trip as I revisit Brainard Lake and gaze at the peaks and passes beyond.

When I hiked the Continental Divide one summer a few years later, the Indian Peaks Wilderness was one of my favorite sections. I recall how we spent the best day of the entire trip here, up near Fourth of July Mine and Mt. Neva.

Indian Peaks Wilderness Area — Brainard Lake gateway to the Indian Peaks

The Towns

At the foot of the Indian Peaks, you’ll find a smattering of old mining camps, towns like Ward, Jamestown, and Eldora, ghost towns turned hippie havens. The friendliest and funkiest of them all is Nederland.

It’s definitely a hippie town. It’s the home of the Carousel of Happiness. Nederland was the third community to legalize pot in Colorado, just after Denver and Breckenridge. The locals call themselves Nedheads.

Nederland celebrates the eclectic and just plain weird. Case in point – the town hosts Frozen Dead Guys Days every March. This festival celebrates the attempt by a local resident to practice a little homemade crionics, stashing his grandfather in a storage shed with a bunch of dry ice, holding out for some future date when the miracles of science could bring him back to life. Some of the fun things to do in Nederland during the festival include coffin races, frozen t-shirt contests, and a polar plunge.

Just past Nederland is Rollinsville. This old railroad town once had a fun bar, the Stage Stop (now a restaurant under new owners). I loved dancing on the timeworn hardwood floor to name acts like Tab Benoit.

Rollinsville also reminds me of my first backpacking disaster. I took my little sister and brother with me to teach them the joys of backpacking. Crossing a creek on an old log, I proceeded to teach them how to prevent hypothermia after the log snapped in two and dumped me in the creek. Then it started to snow. Eventually, the snow turned to rain and came down in torrents. It didn’t stop. In imminent danger of being stranded by flooding, we bailed and hiked out to Rollinsville to beg a ride home.

The Peak-to-Peak is one of the most popular roads in the state when the aspens turn gold. Signs on the highway warn leaf-lookers that they are not allowed to stop in the middle of the road when taking pictures of the fall colors.

The scenic byway ends at the town of Black Hawk. There aren’t many memories left for me here, though. When I was growing up, Black Hawk and neighboring Central City were practically ghost towns, rich in history but with no economic base to support their residents. The towns sponsored a referendum to allow legalized gambling to create jobs and provide some tax revenue for the county. Now there is an economic base. It seems like a new casino opens up every other week here. The facades of a few of the buildings are all that remain of the old towns.

Although the Peak-to-Peak may not hold as many memories for you as it does me, it is still well worth the travel. Views of the Continental Divide, golden aspen groves, access to wilderness and a host of delightful communities are just a few of the treasures you will find along the way.

Tag: trails

Finding Peace

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