Final Moonwalkers

Genesis 1:1 - In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.

This past Friday was the last outing for my internship churches' Moonwalkers Ministry. The daylight is quickly gaining, just as rapidly as it was lost. We are gaining close to six minuets of daylight each day! That's crazy! With that said by next month it will be too light to embark out into the once darkness to see the moon at our normal Moonwalk time of 7:00pm.

Sunrise/Sunset for the week

For this final moonwalkers, as Murphy's law would have it, there was no moon. It was far too cloudy. The moon was wonderful all week and I luckily got some spectacular pictures earlier in the week, but on this final eve of Moonwalkers there was too much cloud cover to see the moon.

Moon from earlier in the week-yes I did, in fact, take this picture

Moon from earlier in the week

The weather over the past two weeks has reached the warmest temperatures all winter. Temps have been in the mid-30s and even some days of low 40s. While I like the warmer weather the locals dislike it. You read that right, dislike. The fact of the matter is there is far too much winter still to come and the warm spells right now have resulted in horrible ice conditions. The church parking lot is an ice rink. My daily trek out my door to my car is impossible without YakTrax.

Before leaving everyone in the group strapped on their ice cleats or YakTrax, grabbed their ice picks or walking sticks, and turned on their headlamps as we left for the final Moonwalkers of the season. This evenings outing was up the mountain from Vern and Ingrid's. At the top of one of the highest points in Eagle River we could see the lit up skyline below. The lights along the Glenn Highway created a snake pattern all the way to the distant lights of Anchorage. It was man-made but beautiful in it's own way.

Eagle river with the weaving Glen Highway leading to distant Anchorage.

Lights from homes on the mountain side

Mountain at night...notice the lights from houses that light the path all the way up.

View from the absolute top

Headlamps are a must.

I have long been a student of nature and creation. Working at camp for two summers as a High Adventure Counselor I took students on canoe trips down the river or into Minnesota's beautiful Boundary Waters. I always enjoy the vastness of space with its innumerable stars flung in the heavens for us to watch. When I lived back at home I would often climb up one of our grain bins and just sit and talk with God. It was, and remains to be one of my favorite places, 40 feet up gazing at the stars, just God and I. I love to observe the smallest creatures that live just beneath the soil -- the "creepy-crawlies", as I call them. I have never been one to get squeamish at these creatures although I could do without the mosquitoes.

I love to count the rings found in a slice of tree trunk, showing how many years it has stood before it was cut down. As a child, I used to lie on the ground on a warm summer day and watch ants at work. It amazes me that they "follow the leader" and that they, being so tiny, can still carry an object much larger than themselves. Then I think of giant mountains and the majestic seas. Such a contrast there is in nature!

Marvels are all around us, if we will but look for them. One of the greatest creations, of course, is the human being, who is wonderfully made by God in His own likeness.

While these are all great things of God, the grandest marvel of all, I believe, is knowing The One to thank. It brings us to the realization, once again, that He loves us because He brought us into being. We are each as a speck of sand in the vastness of His creation, but He loves us. God, the master of the whole universe, the creator of all things, loves us!

I will miss the Moonwalker outings with good people among God's creation but perhaps at my next church I can start up a Moonwalkers of my own. If not I always know where to retreat; On the Saturday nearest the full moon it's Chugiak, AK. I love this internship!