Mountain Girl

I was born in the Sierra Nevadas of California.  In a little mountain mining town called Sonora.  So there is really no hope.  My course was charted from birth. (;  I'm a mountain girl.

There is nothing more lovely to me than the sunset over hills.  Fall colors rioting over the rise and fall of the land.  Something about the towering presence of the peaks anchors my soul.  I feel rooted in a place that has had time and weather to soften the harsh points around me.  Maybe it's just the visual image of a place enduring all things thrown it's way, with just the rough edges worn off, that comforts me.

The first half of my life was spent in Cochabamba, Bolivia.  A large valley city nestled high in the Andes range of South America.  The Andes are breathtaking.  I am sitting here trying to describe them, and it's like trying describe a work of art that moves you.  Words are inadequate.  Condors fly in and out of the craigs and Native Quechua farmers toil the steep slopes trying to eek a living out of earth.  The breeze is cool up there and you can see for miles.  The first thing I would see in the morning and the last thing I would see at night as a child, were the mountain ranges that circled the city.  We camped in them, hiked them, grew up in and around them. 

Tunari, the highest peak in Cochabamba.

The Hill of San Pedro, with the statue of the Cristo.

The mountains surrounding Cocha.

I love this verse from Psalms.  The picture above is what I think about every time I read it.

As the mountains surround Jerusalem, so the LORD surrounds his people both now and forevermore. Psalm 125:2

Lynchburg, tiny little Virginian town of Lynchburg, I love.  Feels like home to me.  So in this second half of life, as an adult, I am grateful that God has settled me in mountains again.  Hiking up Sharp Top, or enjoying a gloriously hot pink sunset over the hills reminds me every moment, with every breath, that as the mountains surround me, so does my God.