I find it hard to verbalize the reason some places just reach out and grab my soul, places which make me feel more connected to life than anywhere else. And occasionally I wonder why some places warm my heart while others, including some spectacular places like the Grand Canyon, seem to be merely something to look at like a picture of any tourist attraction. Nice, but cold and a bit out of reach. I don’t mind being able to say, “I’ve been to the Grand Canyon,” but I know I wouldn’t drive fifty miles out of my way to see it again. I hope that doesn’t make me sound narrow minded, but there just wasn’t any spark of life there for me.<\/p>\n
At times there is an aesthetic lure to a place which doesn’t need much explanation. Delintment Lake high in the Ochoco Mountains some forty-five miles West of Burns\/Hines, Oregon is one of those. I have no trouble remembering my first look at the little lake as I rounded the corner of the road. There it was, a pristine blue jewel bordered by tall yellow pine trees. A bit small at sixty acres, but beautiful for all of that.<\/p>\n
I remember my first lunch there in the shade of the pine trees with an old Forest Service friend. It was quiet. Just one party of campers in the camp ground. We sat at an empty picnic table and watch bright silver trout feeding on the surface of the lake. Golden mantle ground squirrels begged for food, and a camp robber stole chunks of the sandwich bread I tossed to the squirrels. I wanted to stay and just soak it in.<\/p>\n
My family and I followed that urge with dozens of camp outs there, and loved every minute of it. Perched as it was on the ridge top, Delintment Lake was harried by summer snow, hail and heavy rains, storms which tried to ruin some of our trips from time to time. But a camp out at Delintment was always worth it, hard weather not withstanding.<\/p>\n
As I approach old age, I’m reminded life seems the sweetest when I revisit those places which feed my soul.<\/p>\n
Rod<\/p>\n
p.s. Stay tuned for more Places of the Heart<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I find it hard to verbalize the reason some places just reach out and grab my soul, places which make me feel more connected to life than anywhere else. And occasionally I wonder why some places warm my heart while others, including some spectacular places like the Grand Canyon, seem to be merely something to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brightworkspress.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1502"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brightworkspress.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brightworkspress.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brightworkspress.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brightworkspress.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1502"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/brightworkspress.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1502\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1572,"href":"https:\/\/brightworkspress.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1502\/revisions\/1572"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brightworkspress.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1502"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brightworkspress.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1502"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brightworkspress.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1502"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}