Random Musings, Dark and Light, Hiking Around Yosemite Valley
Mortgaged and I are staying at the Yosemite cabin this week. Walking through the park and taking in all of the beauty - for even the dryer, stony beauty of October is almost to gorgeous for words - always leads to an odd mélange of musings in my sometimes too busy brain.
Walking up the beautiful trail to Bridalveil Falls - in the middle of its annual dwindling to a trickle down the rock wall before stopping altogether for the winter - I could not help but feel a bit wistful as we passed one set of happy parents with an adorable toddler on the way up and another on the way down. Both families delighted in pointing out all of the new things to children who were already excited and babbling precociously about the huge rocks, sounds of water, squirrels, crows and host of other tantalizing oooo shiny-s. It’s one of the never had them, likely never will moments I am slowly healing away from mourning - bonding lovingly with one’s child over a moment of discovery during a family activity.
…Then again, I have it on excellent - read parental - authority that my sister and I were both absolute demon hellspawn when our parents took us to Yosemite at just either side of that age. Okay, so demon hellspawn were not my parents’ exact words - my words, but absolutely their sentiment. So, there you go. While having children is no doubt always far more rewarding than not, the moment I was mourning was not a moment that even the having of children would have guaranteed. That thought prompted giggles, the end of the darker moment and, oh yes, a return to oooooo shiny-s of my own. Better.