HIGHER THOUGHTS

Out here in the Wild West, where the mountains are higher, the trees taller, where the sky is bigger and the ground sometimes rumbles—I’ve noticed that the Laws of Nature are more powerful.

As a result, it feels like the power of thoughts is greater. Or maybe it’s not that the thoughts are stronger but, for whatever reason, it seems like they are because they are fresher, clearer and more "right in your face."

I don’t know if this will make sense to anyone—or if anyone has experienced what I’m talking about. But I bet you have! Nothing is new under the sun.

The past few days have been pretty horrible for me. My 17-year old son took off in my new pick-up truck for a ski place high up in the Sierras with five of his friends. I lent him the truck just because he exhibited such great enthusiasm for the idea of snow boarding on powder snow for the first time. Remember, we just moved from the ice-covered slopes of the Northeast.

While they were gone over the weekend the weather was miserably dark and rainy down here in the valley. Where they were, of course, it was snowing. My son called on Sunday morning to say they wouldn’t be able to make it back. The roads were icy and there were 1000-foot cliffs to the sides. I think he also mentioned there were no guard rails—or maybe I just imagined the worst.

My vivid imagination went into high gear. I picked up a pack of cigarettes and started puffing them just to calm my nerves and I don’t smoke!

Anyway, the point is that the depth of the thoughts I had was deep. Today, now that he and the kids are back in town (they rolled in last night after 10:00PM—well, almost rolled in—they ran out of gas about ten miles from here) the new heights of my thinking (the feeling of relief) matches the depths it had sunk to in the past few days.

I wonder, could the relative power of my thoughts be related to the relative power of nature out here? After all, California is home to both the lowest and highest elevations in the continental United States—Death Valley and Mount Whitney.

I am praying to keep my thinking on a higher plane. I have a feeling, that if I can, the power that it is possible to experience out here is fairly unlimited! At the same time (and I want my Higher Power to know this!) I also pray for an easy as possible climb up to my mountain top. I pray this for you too—wherever you are, even if you don’t happen to live in the wild, wild West.