Quote of the Day: “We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope.”
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
Yesterday, Joe, Alex, Taylor and I hiked the Red Pine Trail in Little Cottonwood Canyon. Memory is an interesting thing as I did this hike earlier this year but had totally forgotten how steep it is. We left hoping to summit Pfeifferhorn Peak without really too much knowledge of the peak. Yes, we had read up on it and had a copy of instructions from a hiking book, but really didn’t know how hard it would be to summit. We got to the second lake right before another group of hikers who told us they intended to summit the peak. One had done it before. They instructed us to follow the spine to the ridge and then along the ridge to the peak. Apparently, the peak we had been looking at as we climbed over huge rock boulders to get to the second lake was the “false” peak and behind it was Pfeifferhorn. At the second lake we decided to go no further. We had already been hiking many hours and getting to the top looked risky. I think it was a good call as we got back to the parking lot quite tired having logged eight miles.
A hiking journey is akin to life. I’m always amazed at how your perspective changes as you travel along the trail and if you are looking towards and can actually see your destination, how different that point looks throughout the hike. You always start out optimistic that you’ll reach your destination quickly and then you wind around the mountain because really that’s the only way to get to the peak without going straight up it, which is never possible. And isn’t living so much a matter of trial and error, learning and relearning, making mistakes and repenting for those mistakes, and then going on knowing just what to do now, hindsight, and wondering why you didn’t do that in the first place. And I must say, that I always think I know what’s best for me when time after time I find that I couldn’t really see the whole picture and I really didn’t understand all I thought I did. And then I must acknowledge that the way things turned out really is much better than I understood or imagined.
And so I love the quote for today because, yes, every day we face some finite disappointment but then we get up again tomorrow in hopes that great things will occur and sometimes we don’t even recognize that they have occurred until later. I have a feeling that we should be so incredibly grateful for all the things that happen in our favor everyday but instead we seem to focus on those things that don’t go the way we want.
And I have great people in my life who inquire about my health everyday to which I often remark that each day is a gift and I am so happy to be on this side of 2011. Today, I heard that one American dies every minute due to cancer. That is unacceptable and heartbreaking, too much for me really to wrap my mind around.
Joe in the boulder field
Taylor, Alex and I on a rock in Upper Red Pine Lake
I enjoyed reading about your hike up Red Pine Trail. It reminded me of a book I read recently about a man and his dog that hiked the 48 four-thousand foot White Mountains in New Hampshire. A challenge for sure but a bonding experience for them just as your hikes must be for you, Alex, Taylor and Joe. The book is called FOLLOWING ATTICUS by Tom Ryan and is at the SLCo Lib. I highly recommend it. Loved your pictures, too.