Musings on the Hike up White Rocks Mountain. #2. Long Time Passing

Musings on the Hike up White Rocks Mountain. #2. Long Time Passing

I didn't remember the trail up the mountain except for the first part up to the Long Trail, but when we continued downhill from the Cairns area to the cliffs it became familiar, especially as we approached the cliff edge.

I knew I had been up there before, long ago when I was little, with my younger brother, parents, and grandparents. The sun was out that year, all the leaves had turned, and the view was spectacular. My grandparents asked me what I thought of the view, and I said it looked like a bowl of Trix. They were not impressed with my analogy! But though I had never been back up there, I never forgot the view.

Today I looked through my Grandfather's old diaries and found that hike was on Sunday, October 14, 1956. I was eight years old that year. We met my grandparents there for a picnic as it was about halfway between their camp in Rochester, Vermont and our home. We ate lunch and hiked to the cliffs, then a few miles further south on the Long Trail and back. My Grandfather's dog Rudy tangled with a porcupine on the way back and they had to rush him to the picnic area and pull the quills out with pliers. I don't remember that at all. It is strange what children remember and don't remember.

When I finally went back up there this year I was 69, and both my grandparents and parents were long gone from this world. Makes one feel old and lonely!

That will almost certainly be the last time I visit there. I barely made it to the cliffs and back, much less another 4 miles. Certainly I won't be going back in another 60 years!

The world has changed greatly since those days, in some ways for the better, and in some ways for the worse. We got through the problems we feared then and survived, and I expect we will now, too. I do hope so, for the sake of my children and grandchildren. But the modern turning away from and then against God and His Word makes me uncertain. As Galatians 6:7 says, "Be not deceived: God is not mocked, for whatever one sows, that will he also reap."