Click Here for more photos from my time in Rocky Mountain National Park:

Our goal should be to live life in radical amazement…
get up in the morning and look at the world
in a way that takes nothing for granted.
Everything is phenomenal, everything is incredible; never treat life casually.
To be spiritual is to be amazed.
– Abraham Joshua Heschel

On a recent camping trip to Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado I woke up early (because it’s what I do) to find the meadow below our campsite shrouded in fog. I took off for a sauntering coddiwomple sort of hike. (Coddiwomple (isn’t that a great word!) – to travel in a purposeful manner towards an as-yet-unknown destination. And Saunter – to travel reverently toward (or through) a holy place.) And I found myself smiling almost uncontrollably, and occasionally simply laughing out loud at the sheer delight of being immersed in the overwhelming beauty of the moment. There was fog, the sunrise painted horizon, a flowing stream, elk (lots of elk) grazing in the meadow (including a newborn calf), the occasional sound of the elk bugling, snow-capped peaks, and the ineffable and mysterious “something more” that swirled in and through all of it. Such experiences are almost always fleeting, and yet they are also available just around the next corner. I invite you to heed Heschel’s advice (in the quote above) – live life in radical amazement.