Mountains

Today we went up into the mountains I wrote about earlier.

I was disappointed.
It was not at all what I expected.
They were not as beautiful up close as they appeared from the apartment.

There is evidence of rock slides.
The snow is melting.
Mud, not pristine white slopes.

Many things in life are like that.

We see something far away and it looks beautiful.
We long to be part of that beauty.
We dream of what it will be like.
Sometimes we pay a dear cost to get there,
and when we do, we find out it isn't quite what we expected.
The beauty is a bit tarnished.

The lesson for me today was don't get caught up in illusions.
Be realistic.
There is beauty and there is ugly in just about everything this world offers.
I must choose to look for and enjoy the beauty around me.

There was beauty there, just a different beauty than I anticipated.
The pines, the mountain stream and the majesty of the peak above us were all worth the trip.