A World Removed (thoughts on glacier)...

Crown of the Continent.
It's another name for Glacier National Park in Montana.

It's all kind of weird. I think that I had just come to an exuberant love of the city (more specifically - Philadelphia). I love the fact that there are people everywhere. I kind of half expect life with Jesus to be like that (what, with one glorious city and all). I love the fact that I can take my bike onto the train to ride to work. I love the fact that I can walk down the street to buy the sandwich.

Montana was something different though. It wasn't just rural...it was wild. Literally, Glacier is said to have some of the most pristine and still untouched wilderness on our continent. There has not been a place that has gripped my core like Montana did, and it has really been hard to get over the experience of just being there.

We visited a few places - we stuck it out in Kalispell while waiting for Laura's folks (unfortunately, they had a 12 hour flight delay). We checked out Whitefish, which was more or less a touristy ski town. We bought groceries in Columbia Falls.

Nothing, however, matched the view we had when we awoke in the morning. The view on the top of this blog is Lake McDonald. The time is around 4:30 in the morning - we were on our way home.

The sun didn't set until after 11:00 pm.

Most mornings, by the time I was out of bed, it was already impossibly bright outside. I would step out into the crisp June air (this isn't a typo or a misplaced colloquialism - it snowed in Montana the day before we arrived in Montana) and took in a deep breath of mountain, spruce, wildflower and glacier. The abundance of wildlife was incredible (to include flora). I've never seen so many deer in my collective life as I did while just hiking the park.

Glacier didn't have the highest peaks I've ever seen.
She didn't have the deepest rivers.
But she was a breathtaking view of unkempt wild.

When I board the train to go to work...I close my eyes and imagine being there again. I know that the unfortunate fact is that a place like that is just not where I'm supposed to be. I don't know if a place like that is where anyone is supposed to be permanently. There's a sort of wreaking of havoc going on when the desire of man to obtain beauty destroys that which it is trying to contain.

If you'd like to see it, go soon - they say at this rate, the glaciers will melt by 2030...

And, for those of you wondering - My love for the city is still there, it's just that something else is trying to crowd for space.