One of the special rides offered to guests at Lost Valley Ranch this summer was entitled The Revel Ride.  It was a new idea for Lost Valley and it was a ride offered to women one morning while the kids were all enjoying their camp rides.

Of course I said yes and I happily met the other ladies and the wranglers at the corral to head out.

(There was so much good stuff all hidden around the corners on this ride, but I kind of don’t want to share it all because – like a great novel with fantastic plot twists – I don’t want to ruin the experience for anyone else.  And I am hoping to wrangle lots of my readers into living this dream week one day on their own.)

The Revel Ride turned out to be a spiritually enlightening ride for me.  My heart has hung tenaciously to a piece of what I took from that morning spent on the mountainside.

My phone did not accompany me on this jaunt because I didn’t want to be sidetracked by taking photos.  I wanted to live and breathe the whole precious ride in real time.  It was a good decision then.  Less convenient for now, however.  One of the stellar staff members at Lost Valley happens to be a gifted photographer too.  (Actually, several of them are.)  Stephanie generously agreed to let me use her photos so all of the pictures on this post were taken by Stephanie Bernotas and used with her permission.

Revel means “to find delight”.  

Before we began our ride, Brooke talked to us about the word “revel” and its meaning and encouraged us to think about how we find delight – and on what we find delightful.

I wrote this at the ranch after returning to my cozy cabin and probably while enjoying some hot cocoa on the porch.

 

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138,000 acres.

It’s a number too big to imagine.

Trees.  Hills.  An entire wilderness.  A world.

Destroyed.

In a vast and consuming fire.

 

 

Thirteen years later I’m horseback and riding along, my horse Shiloh stepping high and anxiously over fallen trees and narrow trails.

The rock faces are sheer.  High.  Imposing.  Harsh.  Beautiful.  And startlingly clear and visible due to the lack of tall trees.

We cross Goose Creek, water flowing fast.

Trees are down all over.  Signs of the burn are everywhere.  Signs of destruction and death.  Signs of the end of the familiar and the lovely landscape.

But with these downed trees, with the forest burned, the heft of the rocky mountains is visible.  The view is uninhibited.  The grass is growing – green and vibrant.  Tender and young.  You can see for miles and miles.

 

 

The strength of nature is bold and dynamic.

And the fire was brutal.

It was destructive.  It wrecked havoc and brought unspeakable damage.  Homes were destroyed.  The landscape irrevocably altered.  Permanently shifted.

Fire’s ugly hand shaped the entire environment.

You cannot unsee it and in our entire lives you will NEVER see a full forest regrown.

That will never happen in our lifetimes.

But.  This burn reveals a stark and startling new beauty.

It reveals the nearness of the mountain.  The strength of the rocks shaping the space.  Long range, breath taking views of all the beauty that remains.

It’s all so very visible.
So very near.
And so very beautiful.

And.

So very true.
Tangible.

 

 

It’s a beauty you can touch
and
breathe.

A beauty you can wrap around yourself

and spread far and wide

because it’s not a kind of beauty that says “notice me”.

 

 

It’s more enduring than that.

It’s the kind of beauty that we recognize as healing.

And coming from hurt.

The kind of beauty that spills over
unannounced

and secures you to the places you’ve come from

and to the places where you will go.

It’s a living and breathing kind of beauty

that can sneak right up on you
and rescue you
almost before you know

you are lost.

 

 

It’s seldom the type of beauty you pick for yourself.

It isn’t traditional enough.  Or classically lovely.

It’s not the sort of beauty you choose.

It’s the sort of beauty you find in the silence after the storm.

In the quiet hours when you find yourself unexpectedly awake before everyone in your house.

 

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And it’s too obvious not to draw a deep and wide comparison from this revel ride through the burn out area to my own life.

A fire that wrecked havoc and burned away so very much of my life.

And the tremendous and stark beauty – full of fear too – that I end up standing in the middle of after the flames have all been doused.

The beauty that I could not possibly have seen while I was living in the comfortable forest.

The beauty that only exists because of the pain, not in spite of the pain.

The beauty that comes with such a high price tag.

My entire life story, revealed on a horseback ride through the Pike National Forest.

A story filled with things to delight in, shining in small ways in the wasteland that was What Came Before.

A revel ride.

 

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Post Script:: Am I allowed to do this?  Wait.  Of course I am!

My Lost Valley friend Tiffany just texted me these two sweet pictures from our ride that day so I thought I’d add them up here too.  Thank you Tiffany!

 

 

 

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