As I continue my mountain travels and consequently not post a blog with any degree of regularity, I pause to send a short set of thoughts before I return to the West once more, this time to the mountains of California.  While roaming through the Sawtooth Mountains of Idaho, I came upon a book, Traplines, John Rember's memoir of growing up in the Sawtooth Valley before it became the relatively well visited region it is today.  It's a beautiful book, insightful, poignant, and deeply reflective, a wonderful package of remembrances about a life in a tiny mountain town.
     Towards the end of his memoir, as he ponders how to measure the meaning of his life, Rember makes this observation:

 "What we can hope for is to glow “What we can hope for is to glow brightly in the moment of our decay, to remember the brightness of others, and to feel the faint heart that remains in the things they touched.”

     These are beautiful words, beautiful indeed.  We will decay, yes, but we will glow and, unless we are afflicted with various diseases of memory, we will remember.  We will remember our glow, we will remember the glow of others, and we will remember the "faint heart" of what we, and they, have contributed to the human adventure.  We will rejoice in the fact of existence.
     I cannot argue with anything Rember has said.  I will, however, add this much, a thought which I draw from the twelfth chapter of Ecclesiastes, namely, "Remember your creator."  Remember and rejoice in this life, yes, remember and revel in what you have experienced, yet remember and rejoice in how you came to be, in how you have found your existence.  Remember your creator.
     Thanks, John.  All the best.