Garden of the Gods
#10 in the series of non-religious Sunday posts
“I have sent you to the Garden of the Gods and offered you the whole world in which to play.”
―Neale Donald Walsch—
I was seven or eight years old when I visited the Garden of the Gods Park outside Colorado Springs for the first time. At that time, it was possible to drive directly through the center. My father stopped the car so we could get out and stare at the mammoth rock formations around us. I still feel the awe of that young child when I view the rock formations. Fifty years later, I found myself living within walking distance of the Garden of the Gods and called it my backyard.
It is striking how untouched the park has remained—intentionally.
In 1909, Charles Perkins‘ children, knowing their father’s feeling for the Garden of the Gods, conveyed his four-hundred eighty acres to the City of Colorado Springs. It would be known forever as the Garden of the Gods “where it shall remain free to the public, where no intoxicating liquors shall be manufactured, sold, or dispensed, where no building or structure shall be erected except those necessary to properly care for, protect, and maintain the area as a public park.” (Garden of the Gods Visitor Center)
The park has millions of visitors every year, but if I walked during off times, I would often have the paths almost to myself. When I think of my years of healing, these images of the park and surrounding area come to mind.
As I post, my heart aches with the missing of this place of healing. At the same time, I am grateful for the three years that it was ever-present in my life. Scott and I often drove through the park on our way home from running errands. The park is the backdrop for several of the stories in Brave. I will never take for granted the time I enjoyed the beauty.
"You wind among rocks of every conceivable and inconceivable shape and size... all bright red, all motionless and silent, with a strange look of having been just stopped and held back in the very climax of some supernatural catastrophe.”
― Helen Hunt Jackson—
One day, I spotted a tree growing out of the side of the rock (look closely at the lower part of the picture). I named it DETERMINATION. I have felt like that many times over the past ten years and kept this picture as my home screen on my phone for many of those difficult months. That tree and I are both still standing!
