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One of the first lessons we have to learn about faith is that if you want to build your faith, then, “go where faith is.”
This past week we did just that: Or—perhaps better said—we went where it is very easy to build your faith: On an epic journey up to Isabelle Glacier in Colorado’s Indian Peaks Wilderness, an hour southwest of Denver.
The faith journey—it's fitting to call it that—starts at the Long Lake Trailhead and is an 8.4-mile round trip with a 1653’ elevation gain up to almost 12,000’. Faith-building, I can assure you, will start early in this part of God’s creation. Leaving before five a.m., the drive east to the trailhead put us face-to-face with the glorious fiery panorama of the burnt orange sky.
Even my Oklahoman friends would have to approve of that burnt orange.
You cannot help but think, as says the psalmist, “God’s glory is on tour in the skies.”
The journey up to Isabelle Glacier is a nine-hour hike, a 4.2-mile journey up the steep mountain, and twice as far back down, or so it seems. Every time I return home from these excursions, I'm unsure how I made it. Walking eight-and-a-half miles on flat ground is enough, but to do so, going uphill—climbing over rocks, stepping over a million roots and rocks, and crossing streams—is something else.
The downhill trip is almost as difficult as the uphill because it is so treacherous. You must be extremely vigilant with your footing after hours of climbing the mountain. You can begin to lose your concentration a bit because of fatigue, and your footwork gets a little sloppier. I was thinking how beneficial my basketball-playing footwork was, but then a turned ankle and a skinned elbow humbled me quickly. Mere dark-blue badges of courage. Right?
But the beauty of God’s glory drives you on, with its landscape flashing a thousand pictures before you at every glimpse. I stopped and took pictures whenever my heart rate crescendo-ed, which it did a few hundred times. The music was the flowing of a mountain stream or the roar of a nearby waterfall.
You keep going at such times because—well, you really have no choice. You can't spend the night up on the Glacier. At some point in life, we all learn that the best motivator is having no choice.
My hiking buddy Todd and I reached the Glacier around 11 a.m. before starting the steady journey back down. But, before heading down, I took one more picture:
My first-ever picture standing high up in the snow in September.
But, yes, in case you wonder: Climbing and descending the mountain for eight miles is as grueling as it sounds, and more. I could not describe it. But, even with the sore muscles, bumps, and bruises, when you stand on top and look down—or stand at the bottom and look up at where you’ve been—there is no doubt that on that day, you have gone where the easiest thing to do is build your faith.
You've gone where faith is.
You understand.
It wasn’t until I got home that I realized that our twelve-thousand feet ascent was the highest I’ve ever climbed.
***Continued after the picture
could not help but think of the old hymn, “I’m pressing on the upward way, new heights I’m gaining ev’ry day; Still praying as I onward bound, ‘Lord, plant my feet on higher ground.”
Indeed.
On September 10, 2024, I rested my feet on higher ground, for sure—twelve-thousand feet high.
Up on Snowy Isabelle.
P.S. Go to our Facebook page at Steven Ray Bowen and enjoy the beautiful pictures of the journey.)
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