‘NOT EVEN THE RAIN HAS SUCH SMALL HANDS …’

A rainy Monday. Took a drive from Whitefish to Glacier National Park, despite the protestations of my friends and pretty much everyone else in Whitefish (including the rental car guy) who knew I was headed in that direction.

“But it’s raining,” they said.
Yah, I know, I said.
“But it’s cloudy,” they said.
Uh-huh, I said.
“It’s foggy and you won’t be able to see all the mountains. It won’t be as good,” they all said.
Wanna make a bet?

In the foggy, cloudy, rainy, overcast moodiness of the early afternoon, the majestic mountain peaks were, indeed, obscured from view, but the park had an ethereal, otherworldly quality that it wouldn’t on an otherwise bright, sunny, perfect day. It felt as if a lady’s hand might rise from the middle of the lake holding Excalibur aloft to summon its rightful owner.

The colors of the park — the fur trees, the brush starting to bloom again, the lake in mid-melt — were muted, as if God had placed one of those Barbara Walters filters over God’s lens. Everything was softer, slightly out of focus, lovelier.

Here are a few snaps for your viewing pleasure (and mine, frankly):

As I drove through the persistent rain along the largely deserted road that wends through the western-most part of the park, KFKD (the radio station that often is on — in Dolby surround-sound — in my head) kept playing one song over and over. Happily it was Canadian singer-songwriter feel-good day at the station and the song was Bruce Cockburn’s “Wondering Where the Lions Are”:

Sun’s up, uh huh, looks okay
The world survives into another day
And I’m thinking about eternity
Some kind of ecstasy got a hold on me

I had another dream about lions at the door
They weren’t half as frightening as they were before
But I’m thinking about eternity
Some kind of ecstasy got a hold on me

Walls windows trees, waves coming through
You be in me and I’ll be in you
Together in eternity
Some kind of ecstasy got a hold on me

Up among the firs where it smells so sweet
Or down in the valley where the river used to be
I got my mind on eternity
Some kind of ecstasy got a hold on me
And I’m wonderin’ where the lions are …