Our first night is overcast but warm. The cloud-cover breaks up in time to see a harvest moon peek over the higher mountains. It is so bright that it turns everything in the campground into black and white. There is no color present to the eye. As you look up you can see clouds moving in front of the moon. You get the strange feeling that you have seen this scene before in an old horror movie.

The next day is a clear sunny day. Just as the sun is rising up over the lake there is a mist covering the top of the water and everything is very quiet as you sit and drink your first cup of coffee for the day. There is nothing like a pot of coffee made outdoors on a crisp cold morning in the woods. The aroma of breakfast being cooked in the outdoors is over powering, and your mouth soon starts watering as you take in the smell of bacon being cooked at other camp sites.

It’s a beautiful place to sit and clear your thoughts, to cleanse the mind so to speak. Something all of us need to do more often, but just never realize it until it’s too late. We forget to enjoy the small things in life.

The silence here is occasionally broken by the sound of a Blue Jay calling out to it’s mate, maybe to let her know that food has been found at an abandoned camp site. There are many squirrels and chipmunks scurrying up and down the trees in search of food. They are busy gathering pine nuts and anything else they can find because they know the winter snows are not far behind.

As I look around I see many types of tall pine trees. They have seen many more years than I have. Sometimes the wind blows through the forest canopy. That is when you could swear you could hear those tall trees speaking to you in whispers. At that moment you look up and it seems to be snowing as the pine needles slowly glide to the ground.

The sun shines through the trees in such a way that you imagine an angel is going to appear through the beams of light at any moment. Then you begin to think that maybe that is really what happened, but only to you. No one else is able to see such a wonderful sight.