A few years ago, Hubby and I took a trip to Glacier National Park with our college friends. You should go! I highly recommend it, but be prepared to get tired of saying, “Oh, my gosh! Look at that!”
One thing I won’t recommend – unless you are a glutton for punishment like we are – is the Highline Trail. It requires about eight miles of walking on a very narrow trail, with a mountain rising on your right and dropping away on your left. At the start of the trail, it is so narrow that you need to hold on to a cable. And you either have to walk back eight miles on the same trail or four miles down the rocky, barren side of the mountain.
Needless to say, passing other hikers or having them pass you requires a tad bit of coordination and a whole lot of consideration! To let someone pass, we had to lean into the mountain and hope their packs didn’t knock us. And vice versa. Eight miles of this hiking dance on a very narrow trail.
What struck me was how friendly everyone was. Strangers would say, “Please” and “Thank you.” Strangers would ask where we were from. We would ask strangers where they were from. Strangers would encourage each other. Strangers wearing shirts with slogans that might suggest we didn’t share core beliefs were kind and considerate.
People would alert us to wildlife. Total strangers would let us know they had seen bighorn sheep, bears, elk, and moose. They would point them out. We would point them out. I may have even made Hubby share his binoculars with a total stranger. Okay, no “maybe” about it. I did that.
It’s like everyone wanted to share in the joy!
The mountain seemed to be the equalizer. My friend and I talked about whether people nuts enough to hike along the side of the mountain are different from the rest of the world. Maybe. Or is it that everyone is on vacation and more relaxed? Maybe. Or is everyone so focused on getting to the end of the trail without falling off the side of the mountain that they are nice? Maybe.
But I don’t think so.
And it happened again.
A few weeks ago, the same friends joined Hubby and me for some hiking in the Grand Tetons and Yellowstone. And we met the same people. Nice, kind, courteous, encouraging, and friendly people. People sharing stories about what wildlife they had seen where. One place we stopped to scout for bears, our men scampered off to look over a valley, and a total stranger shared her marked-up map of where she had been told certain wildlife was.
On one of our hikes, a mom was struggling up the side of the mountain, and her baby was unhappy, letting us know with his cries. She told her husband she thought they should go back to the car because she didn’t want to bother people on the trail. We told her it was fine and encouraged them to keep trekking. Later, we saw that little guy out playing with sticks by the lake. They were glad they kept going.
We met a young couple on a trail looking for a lake. We stopped, looked at the map, and tried to figure out the best route.
We offered to take pictures of people, and they responded in kind.
Again, I wondered about the kindness and consideration we experienced on the trail. Maybe it is my “glass half full” life philosophy, but I don’t believe hikers are different from the rest of humanity. Sometimes it’s the noise of life.
I’m not ignorant of rude, hateful people. In fact, I ran into a rude DoorDash delivery guy just last week. My social media algorithms are full of nasty people. I don’t seek those out, but they find me. Some evil force pushes them my way. Now, cute puppy videos? Those, I seek out.
Back to my point, I’m a firm believer that what we focus on becomes our focus. I know that seems elementary. If I focus on the negative, I see the negative. If I focus on the good, I see the good.
Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable – if anything is excellent or praiseworthy -think about such things. Philippians 4:8
Just the other day, a friend was telling me about a situation and she commented, “The world overall has a lot of ugly.”
My response was, “There is plenty of good. The ugly are just louder. Tune them out.”
See verse above!
When I was younger, we had a saying we used when we were annoyed with someone. “Take a hike.” Maybe the originator of that saying knew something.
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