I visited the special few hiking trails on the first mountain love of my life in early autumn, a year after I had moved to the village in San Antonio Canyon. I was struck forcefully with how much the change of seasons altered the look of those trails I had come to love, on which I had spent many hours in meditation and contemplation. The now-yellowed, seed-heavy grasses along Don Olson's trail, the new crop of pine cones weighing down the pine branches above my head, and the now dying yucca, Christ's Candle, along the path I had named Hummingbird Trail all vividly illustrated endings and new beginnings.

For many people the turn of the calendar year is the time of new beginnings, whether that year be based on the Gregorian calendar, the several Oriental traditions or the Jewish year beginning with Rosh Hashanah in our Northern Hemispherical fall. We all measure time and passages with these calendars; indeed, calendars can control our lives. Witness the plethora of leather-bound organizers and the wealth of computer programs and internet server offerings designed to order our days and hours efficiently, to keep us knowing where we are going and whom we shall be seeing when we get there.

It has always seemed somewhat strange to me how our Western traditions observe the year beginning in the dead of winter when everything sleeps and awaits more light, longer days and increasing warmth. Many of us can debate at length concerning beginnings, how to define when each new cycle commences. In the end, it bears no significance to any other person when any of us chooses to mark our own beginning times.

The year I mark began, in essence, with my loss of an administrative position in pharmaceutical contracting for a subsidiary of one of the world's largest health product companies. The parent company sold the business unit and the season of my involvement with another facet of corporate America ended. Significant, ongoing, major change had already become the hallmark of my life; and I sought a time to let the dust settle from all the turmoil of the outwardly amicable ending of a marriage as well as the loss of much-enjoyed position. I wanted to freedom to think, to hike the mountain trails in silence, to heal from the still unresolved pain of old wounds, to await the new direction I knew was just beyond my vision. Severance pay ensured at least a few months of much needed rest, as well as time to look towards the future certain to bring an entirely new style of living.

I spent twenty of my adult years living on the Gulf Coast of Louisiana and Texas. The climate, often almost sub-tropical, and less obvious changes in seasons, had blunted my awareness of how the cycles of life are more vivid in geographical areas where winter rules more strongly. Since it was not unusual to have roses blooming during holiday seasons, even into January, and since the gigantic oaks seemed never to lose their verdant dress, changing seasons were not as apparent. There was one unusual December week in southeast Texas, though, when the thermometer never rose above freezing and the sleety rain killed hundreds of royal palms on Galveston Island, reminding all of us there are seasons, even in the South.

The day, in mid-October, when I first climbed Sunset Peak is the day I selected to define the beginning of my life on the mountain. I had been hiking various trails around the area daily for several weeks, and I longed to find a little place to live on the mountain, a place of peace where I could begin the new life I heard calling me with gentle determination. That almost silent voice renewed the desire I had long held secret for time to be the contemplative, prayerful writer. I had doubts I would find a place to live on the mountain because there was almost no available, affordable housing. Most of the area is Forest Service land, and the cabins otherwise possibly available were not because leases with the USFS preclude subleasing the dwellings. However, a thirty-year effort to conduct a land exchange between the Forest Service and portion of the village in San Bernardino County had just ended successfully. I had hope there might be a tiny cabin available now that all the village lay in private owner hands. It was with these thoughts in mind I asked Rick, the bartender in the Lodge, if he knew of any attainable housing.

Before an hour passed I had a new home, a small cabin behind the lodge. In other days I might have hesitated over moving into less than 500 square feet of living space with what was only a laugh of a kitchen, not much more of a bedroom and just a possibility of reliable heat for the coming winter. However, the living room, comprising half the cabin and carpeted in a thick, forest-green plush boasted a large stone fireplace covering half the wall. There was a sense of peace in this poky, old cabin under a huge oak tree, sitting off by itself from the rest of the lodge cabins. It said "home" and the rent was manageable.

As I left the village a little while later I detoured up Glendora Ridge Road to the West, rather than driving down the canyon towards the valley. About a mile up were Cow Canyon Saddle and the old fire road up Sunset Peak. I had checked out the length of the easy hike up and knew, with the exception of the last push up the old, unused trail to the east-facing side of the peak, it would be a relaxing walk of, perhaps, three miles with a gain of only about 1600'. It was time, in this momentous day of new beginnings, for my first mountain peak.

I commenced my walk with enormous energy at a pace, with the extra pounds I had begun to shed and the gradually increasing altitude of the trail, I could not maintain and still breathe. After perhaps a quarter of an hour, I began to slow slightly to a more relaxed pace, thus giving myself the ability to reflect without needing to concentrate on whether I would be inhaling and exhaling normally much longer. I stopped often to gaze at the rocky mountain, much of it apparently limestone, some conglomerate and some granite rising steeply on my left and falling just as precipitously away on my right. It was a warm day, normal for a southern California fall day, but pleasant on the shaded fire road that began at 4500 feet

The exhilaration I felt at realizing my dream of living on the mountain would soon be true carried me up the three miles in a little less than an hour. Although I easily could have continued on the fire road to the flat mountaintop facing the south and west, I wanted the challenge of the old trail to a rocky outcrop on the east side of the peak. New beginnings have new challenges; this climb was as symbolic as it was physical.

The trail was easy enough to see and only about 100 yards up to the place where I would have to weave through the rocks to my goal. However, within the first third of the way up, it became quite steep and my hiking stick was of little use. Indeed, it was almost a hindrance on an incline requiring the use of both hands and feet. I was alone on this venture, as I usually was during my hiking forays, and I began to doubt I had any claim to sanity at all when I realized how precarious these few yards had become. I stopped, perching on a small rock with my feet braced against the rocks below me, to catch my breath and to rest for a few moments, wondering if I would be able to complete the climb. Increasingly, I was aware of the weakness in my left foot, result of a severe injury several years before.

As I gazed around the canyon below me, Ontario Peak to the East, Mt Baldy to the North with several smaller peaks in between, I considered the events paving my way to this place. The physical challenge was minor, even in dealing with the results of the gunshot wounds I had suffered several years before leaving my ability to walk in question. The major demands of my life through which I had learned to manage with hardheaded practicality, total honesty and self-knowledge had exacted much more from me than the present moment of physical tiredness. However, the reality of physical weakness made me pause.

For the third time in the years since I had begun college I was alone, on my own and facing employment challenges seeming never to improve in terms of reliability. The business world and its continuing focus on down-sizing had again caught me in its vise at the usual, never opportune time. The last fifty yards up the mountain seemed insignificant considering how much I had already faced through my life. Of course, I could make it. Almost as if in agreement, my totem, my sister spirit, a golden eagle appeared beside me, flying close over my head as she crested the peak and continued on higher over the canyons to the West.

Later, as I returned down the fire road, physically tiring now from a six-mile jaunt at an altitude to which, as yet, I was not accustomed, I reflected more deliberately on this beginning. I considered the fact my life had become one very clearly characterized by the ability to accept and to work creatively through the unexpected. No longer, I realized almost with a jolt, would I find a permanent place at the table of that world of corporate America. Perhaps, I would be there for periods of time, but my world would never again join with any permanence to the one from which I had just parted. I had begun, in the few weeks of solitary hiking since my severance, to see where my trail was leading. It beckoned me so gently with such inescapable beauty, suffused with the love who is Creator Spirit, Shekinah, and I knew I would never again accept less.

The obvious question, uppermost in my mind when I paused to think of it, was one everyone I knew who cared about my well-being asked. Would I have means to support myself? I had skills and experience to function successfully in the business world; that had never been in doubt. However, my motivation and desire had changed dramatically, the ambition waning to prevail in the world where I had begun to know some small successes. The process of learning to live in the moment, begun so many years before with the realization of how life can end with the flash of a weapon in someone's hand, had taught me the moment is all any of us truly has. To live it well and in confidence knowing the next will come as it will to be lived well, had become my definition of success.

The autumn, with its characteristic closure and harvest of all of life manifesting itself through the summer, with the seeds of the future now stored and saved for the next growing season, was a time of promise for a new future. As the leaves fall from the maples and aspen signifying a time of rest was near, so the sap runs in the maple to bring forth the tasty delights of syrup. The leaves crumble under passing feet, working the crumbled bits into the soil, giving new richness and nourishment for new plants to grow. In the moonlight of a garden in which the deciduous trees are bare, the citrus fruits on their still-green branches ripen with more promise, with fragrance and reminder how life continues even in the midst of endings.

The calendar may well tell us in the northern hemisphere that winter begins in the third week of December, but snow came early to the village, before Thanksgiving, bringing pristine beauty broken for a moment only by the squirrel tracks on my cabin roof. I had finished unpacking the boxes, although just barely, and I had a supply of wood for the big fireplace, thanks to Duncan and the end of a construction project. Eskimo, the Alaskan Malamute, and I settled in the evenings for walks through the village, peaceful music and the stillness unbroken by traffic or other reminders of civilization.

Winter is deceptive. To some, it is the culmination of living, the finality of time. The fruits of the harvest have been laid out, gathered in, stored away, to be taken out as need arises. Witness the abounding analogies of advanced age to the end of the Western calendar. The silence of the long, dark night seems to resemble a sort of death; perhaps, in some respects, it is. However, since my outlook is one where there are rainbows shining over the clouds, I also realized the early beginning of winter, accompanied as it was by the need to find work, was a time of gathering in my past. It was a time to allow the peace and stillness to seep into my soul, opportunity to lay to rest the old pain and of allowing the seeds of new knowledge to grow beneath the white silence.

I think of the roses I so love to grow. Midwinter is the time to prune back the canes, recognizing life has returned to the roots, awaiting new warmth and more light. The winter of my year on the mountain was also time to return to the depths of my being, time to sink into the Love who created me and who was continuing to recreate and renew daily. There is much happening beneath the snow, cloaked by the fog and rain in this world. While the mists distort our vision, life runs deeply, the wellsprings full of promise.

It is in the cold of winter when we experience and celebrate the liturgical season of Advent, preparation for the coming of our Christian Savior. Advent, like winter, is promise of new life, new hope, faith in things we do not see, hope of things to come. While historical fact may prove otherwise for the real time of advent and expectancy, the ecclesiastical traditions are timely when light is dim and fitful, when so many of us wonder of a time of new life will arrive.

The customs by which northern hemispheric cultures celebrate major holidays through the winter months is by deliberate design. We need reminders, it seems, to reinforce for us the reality that life, even in the midst of darkness, pain and uncertainty, has joy and music and laughter and bright color. These days are promise and hope, as is winter itself. There is future even when all life nearly stops on the mountain when the road is closed to traffic after an icy snowstorm, for the fresh snow will bring skiers and "snow stealers" who provide much-needed income for the few businesses. So, too, the time of waiting in the dim quietness, a wintertime of life, bestows moments in which to allow lessons of the autumn harvest of living to begin to open one's soul to new thoughts, new hopes, heightened creativity.

Occasional evenings near the fireplace in the lodge with new friends often warmed and brightened the long, cold nights in the village. I met Dorothy and she drew me into the life of the small community through my ability and willingness to participate in the monthly production of our "Baldy Breeze," a newsletter by, for, and about residents on the mountain. I became acquainted with Michelle, whom my daughter later described as "Hell Hiker." From her I learned more about hiking trails on the mountain, information serving to protect me on my solitary rambles, curtailed now by weather and the snow higher up, and the knowledge gave me ideas for new adventures. On occasion we engaged in giggle fests with Dorothy and Marcie, probably scaring most of the men out of the lodge for a time by our hilarity.

Christmas came to the mountain with more snow. I decorated the little cabin with my sad little, artificial tree. Increasingly it was losing its original dubious fullness each time I pulled it out of its box. However, the lights and the ornaments hid the bare places, lending beauty to the scrawny limbs and cheer to the room. This was truly a time when the gift of hope the day symbolizes became even more real to me. There were no children, no gifts, only the music I played; but there was joy because love does not require physical presence for its expression. Christmas, with its own gift of hope and exquisite love, was reminder, even in the night when the soul's pain and darkness seems strongest, there is a new beginning, new light and enhanced beauty because the darkness is so deep from whence it comes.

During the months of a form of hibernation I examined in detail where my living had brought me and towards what direction I seemed to be turning. I had heard the call on the wind to come up this mountain, an unquestioned call. What I asked, though, was why. I loved this mountain long before I called her home. I recognized her beauty, and the enfolding of her arms each time I drove up the canyon gave me such peace and a sense of healing, often it was difficult to drive away each morning to go to work. I recognized, in the monastic traditions long ago woven into my spiritual lifestyle, I had gone into retreat, a time of reflection and preparation. For what, I wondered, was I preparing?

I struggled in pain with the long frustration I had felt in being a woman who loves with as much strength as I gave to everything else I did. Two marriages had taught me significant lessons, but I had not learned how human love can endure, how I could depend upon commitments others made to me. I contended with a continual sense of failure, knowing all the while I had made choices, given the same circumstances, I would make again. Through the long nights in silence I continually heard my name on the wind, calling, loving, waiting. Slowly the mountain, the beauty of her canyons and streams, the clarity of her face, began to heal those hidden places.

Autumn had blown the leaves from the trees and bushes and scattered pine cones along the trails I walked; winter taught me how, in the freedom of losing all the old burdens, I was free to listen to the song on the wind, to follow the whispered call. I began to understand, just as the sap in the trees goes deep to the roots during the cold winter months, all the life force in me was pooling, focusing, centering, gathering strength. During what appeared as a time of silence, waiting, endings, a new life was putting out strong roots, preparing to burst forth when time would open and soften the ground.

One Saturday late in winter, a day warm enough in the sunshine to promise the coming spring, I drove my trusty little car into Barrett Canyon, around the flank of Ontario Peak and towards the upper reaches of the lovely, hidden places where a few hardy folks dwell. The snow had melted from this part of the mountain; the streams tumbled musically, running high with the resulting melt. There was still one emotional issue to resolve from the more recent past, and I wanted to hike where there was less likelihood of other people being present. I had made peace with the pain, the hurt had gone. Yet, there was residual anger I realized I needed to express, to set free before I could go further into the life now beginning to open itself with the promise of spring. Mark, my neighbor in cabin 4, had suggested this trail for its variety, the accessibility of old lapis mines and a forest of sugar pines.

The energy within burned to the point I knew I needed to open myself to whatever awaited me. The life awaiting me demanded I shed baggage, let go of emotional chains, allow myself to soar freely into the sun. I parked the car, walked across another merry stream on a log and headed up the canyon. It was cool under the trees and I was glad of the sweater I wore. Soon enough I came around the mountain into bright, warm sunshine and was much more comfortable when I tied the arms of the sweater around my waist, rather than to wear it any longer. As I walked, I waited to find the place where I could finally drop the old issues down the side of the mountain into some abyss I would never again need to find.

Once I reached the flats I knew the time had come to return down the trail, to let the mountain take my anger, to toss it into the breeze and to release myself. I returned down the trail a little way, stopping at a large rockfall I had skirted earlier. Soon I was hurling the largest, heaviest boulders I could lift down the side of the mountain, throwing with them the anger and the last shreds of pain. At last, I stood in the sun, breathing hard and laughing at myself, thankful there was no other trail below me. I felt free, more so than ever before.

Almost at once, then, I looked up just a few feet above my head to see a beautiful golden eagle fly over the mountain and begin to circle above me. She flew away, over the canyon below, returning to circle again. I stood in awe, tears flowing heedlessly, thanking her for the gift of her presence. I realized the unity of our spirits, soaring and free, expressed in the graceful circles of her flight above my head. She flew away towards the canyon below and I turned back to the trail, bemused and inattentive to my surroundings. I walked only a few yards around a bend and stopped once more, amazed because, at the altitude where I stood, with no flowers yet in bloom, a glorious male Anna's hummingbird perched on the end of a dead yucca bract beside the trail. This symbol to our native sisters and brothers of joy, gift of Great Spirit, spoke to me of the joy of living in the love of Creator Spirit.

The long winter ended in the sunshine of that day, again somewhat earlier than the days of the calendar indicated. There would be further reminders that winter is necessary time for the realization of spring; but her grasp was relaxing its cold grasp now.

With the lengthening days, although nights were still cold and snow still carpeted the upper canyons and slopes of the mountain, the promise of the last months began to awaken and to reveal itself as roots pushed up the stalks of new growth. After years of unresolved pain and unexpressed anger, I had worked through the vestiges and let go, at last, of events and issues over which I had no control. Now I was free to look towards the future, understanding more clearly who I was. I felt reborn, recreated, renewed.

Spring is the promise of autumn and winter in action. The seeds, the flower bulbs, the rose bushes and the Scotch Broom that lined the road all the way up San Antonio Canyon all burst forth with the warming sun, reminders that the quiet peace of winter gave birth to the life it had held in its white womb. Although the Scotch Broom is not native to the mountain and was planted as a fire retardant, its riotous yellow everywhere and the heady fragrance will forever remind me of the truth that life can flourish even where it is not expected.

Icehouse Canyon welcomed me again one early spring day with its singing stream and wild beauty. This canyon, one of the loveliest on the upper reaches of the mountain, begins at 5000' and still showed traces of snow. I had missed my frequent visits to my Canyon of Beauty through the winter months, curtailed as they were by the snow and wet weather. As the beauty and peacefulness had spoken to me and had begun the healing process in the autumn, I felt my spirit reawaken to the glory around me and found that my soul had stretched to new places where beauty poured forth in freshened rivers of creativity and joy. This place had long been almost magical to me, that sense increased by the first spring hike that began in chill mist and culminated on the Chapman Trail with fresh snow. I felt that I wore a cloud of stars. The reality of being rather wet brought me back down to the car much earlier than I truly wanted.

Again the world in which I earned my living changed. I had not been happy working in the office in which the temporary agency had placed me but had stayed through the dreary winter months knowing that it was the only choice I had at that time. By mutual consent we parted company and I began helping Ron, my landlord, in his marketing company and with the lodge business. This paid my rent and provided enough more for the minimal expenses of car, insurance and other simple things I needed. I was, at last, able to stay on the mountain every day, going down to the valley only for church and necessary errands. The peace wrapped itself around every fiber within me.

With time and surroundings conducive to maintaining the quiet I still sought, I began to consider the next steps. I had already realized how strongly a life of contemplative prayer called to me. Such is a life very difficult to achieve in the bustle of city traffic, commutes, long hours in a job that does not suit. However, it still beckoned to me, as it had since the year I had spent in a convent during my time in college. I had come to understand and to value much more of myself than ever before; and the part of my nature that sought the solitary paths found welcome freedom through living on the mountain. There seemed no dichotomy with the more gregarious side of me; rather it seemed a good balance.

In the stillness of the lengthening twilight and through the hours of more frequent hikes I continued to give serious consideration to where I wanted to be, not so much in place but in style of living. The long-planted seeds of a contemplative life that had never died, although long smothered by the realities through which I had traveled in living, began to push up new stalks, heavy with the flower buds full of promise. The roots had grown deeper, stronger through the long winter that had held me imprisoned from the spirit sky of freedom.

 Spring in the mountains and canyons of this part of southern California can be cool and prolonged, often foggy and misty. This spring evidenced that tendency rather vividly with late snow and frequent rain, reminder that the grasp of winter can remain determined to protect the new life that longs to burst out in rejoicing. Just as winter continued to hold the reins well into the spring months, I knew that, while I was growing in understanding of where the call on the wind was leading me, it was not yet time for realization of the full scope of understanding. Often, although very much at peace in the waiting, I felt that I was walking through mist and fog, able to see only a few steps on the trail ahead of me.

One Saturday, still early in spring, I threw aside the weather restrictions and decided to hike up Sunset Peak again. There, even if the fog remained unrelenting, the fire road is wide and walking is safe. There were significant issues with which I was wrestling and I needed the physical activity. I chose to hike up Don Olson's trail to Cow Canyon Saddle where the fire road to the peak met the road, rather than to drive up. I cared little that I would probably be rather damp from the fog and threatened rain by adding two or so miles to my stroll. The voice that spoke deep within had begun more clearly to articulate my future and I needed to open the door between those depths and my more conscious awareness. Prolonged physical activity seemed always to do that for me.

I had learned to place no expectations, no restrictions on what could occur during my many hikes around the mountain canyons and trails. Although I often had serious considerations pushing to claim as much of my conscious thought as possible when I began each hike, usually I let the stillness and the beauty around me claim my attention as I concentrated on the uphill walk. This hike, though, was a little different.

There was little of the surrounding mountain peaks, canyons or sky visible through the shifting clouds and fog when I started up Sunset. Where there had been some sunshine in the village at the beginning, now the clouds dropped lower; fog and mist eddied and rolled up the mountainside. The familiar trees assumed an eerie presence in the dim light, but I felt no fear, as I had for many years when in fog. Rather, I felt comforted in the mist and uncanny stillness. There was no birdsong; no other person walked this trail. Even in the chill air I felt at one with life: warm, enervated and unexplainably alive.

It seemed that the gentle touch of the shifting fog softened the shell of years and allowed me to understand and to value my body's response to my surroundings. In some mysterious manner, I became more fully aware of my entirety, soul and body, united with the earth on which I walked, which I touched in my passing. For the first time in my memory I stood, finally, above the fog, in warm sunshine facing the beautiful peak that is Mt Baldy, articulating what I desired, expected and asked of life. I offered the gift of that prayer and of my life, knowing that fullness of being was now mine.

Spring has nothing to do with the months on a calendar or the number of years a person lives. The springtime of life is new growth bursting up from the seeds covered by the dead leaves of autumn and protected by the snows of winter, realization of one's self through the experience of pain, doubt, questions, anxiety, loneliness and faith. Spring is the promise that our past makes with us as it begins to bloom in inexpressible beauty. As that bloom begins to open in the warmth of the coming summer sun, we know that dreams do come true and promises do become reality.

Spring continued chilly and wet into the days of early summer with the gift of several inches of snow on Easter morning during the sunrise service and with another foot of snow in mid-June. Somehow, the spring flowers survived and even flourished; the creeks continued to run high, singing as they splashed and flew over and around rocks and boulders. The bighorn sheep stayed high up, although we did have a persistent visitor wandering up and down the creek at the bottom of the village for several weeks. It was midsummer before the Forest Service finally caught up with a 400 pound bear who had spent his time scavenging nearby.

To watch summer march up the mountain is to observe riots of flowers change from one variety to the next, to bloom below and then above. Summer on the mountains brings hordes of gnats on the lower hiking trails, uncomfortable heat to the village on some days, and mountain bike racing instead of skiing. From long chilly nights around fires in the lodge or various cabins, villagers move outdoors to watch the moonrise and the myriad stars spangle the sky overhead. This summer, after all the rains of winter and spring, even brought rather unwelcome mosquitoes.

Summer is fulfillment, passion for life in action. What the gathering of seeds and harvest in autumn promised, laid to sleep and to germinate through the winter, and birthed in spring now resonated with the joy of full realization. Even as passion expressed leads to a certain temporary somnolence, the long summer days lulled the village to a drowse during the warm afternoons, to be reawakened with the cool of evening.

Again, demands for the practical necessities of daily living intruded. While I had enjoyed the almost luxurious interlude of working on the mountain for a time, it was not the most comfortable or practical solution to earning an income. There were several and significant issues at play; my desire to live in harmony with my neighbors in the village knew some discomfort by my working there. With the end of spring and the coming of summer, I returned to my daily commute down the canyon to the smoggy city below, although not without some sadness. Fortunately, because I listened with open heart and mind to the mountain, I soon realized how she welcomed me back up her canyons each evening, as with open arms.

What had begun as a quiet whisper in the stillness where was the depth of my being, in the recent years had become a call on the wind. Now it began to escalate into music that stirred the leaves on the trees and wrapped itself around my mind and heart. The symphony of summer played more strongly, more clearly as each day passed.

The autumn had brought me to this mountain, knowing how I needed the peace and the silence of her canyons and streams to provide healing and time to reflect and to pray without distraction. Seeds of the past had filled my autumn, both with the harvest of pain and the promise of new growth and new life. I had allowed the autumn days on many solitary trails up and down the mountain to weave the peace and beauty into my soul and to ease my heart and mind enough to find the completion of resolution and understanding.

Through the long nights of winter, wrapped in afghans by the fireplace, I welcomed the silence as it stilled the pain, at last. While my questions and the challenges I tossed to the Creator Spirit almost combatively continued, the anger and frustration began to revolve into acceptance if not reason. While I had railed at life itself for what seemed to be unrelieved solitary existence, I began to understand that, by opening myself to the Love who recreated me daily, I now entered into humanity more fully than I had ever before. I understood, as I had not before, how God touches us with human hands, how we are interdependent and needful of each other. To express the idea of the Vietnamese Zen Master, Thich Nhat Hanh, we live with interbeing, always connected to the larger world, to the cosmos.

With anger expressed and resolved, old baggage lost down the mountainside with the boulders I had thrown, free of the past finally, spring had come to my heart, my soul and my body. While I entertained no regrets, realizing that I would make the same choices again under the identical circumstances, I could allow myself to recognize and accept that some of the growth in spring was new in my experience. It was new life brought forth from the seeds of the past, mutated by loving acceptance into hardy, new growth that was stronger and more resilient.

The arrival of my youngest daughter for a month-long stay heralded summer, life in full bloom, for me. I had not spent significant time with her for, perhaps, three years; I was ecstatic at the opportunity for long evening gab-fests and quiet times on the hiking trails I longed to show her. She represented the most anguish-filled decisions of my life, decisions that had taken many years to accomplish and even more finally to accept in peace. Yet, she was far more dear to my heart than I dared to express. For a month I could be someone who came about as close as I could to being a normal mom; and she made no secret of her desire to be "mom and daughter" for that time. Finally, I knew full resolution of the intensely painful sense of failure with which I had battled.

Life at full throttle, flower-laden and fruitful as it became during the summer months, bore unexpected bounty. The symphony that had begun as whisper in the stillness, escalating to call on the wind, now played itself in full power, brass resounding, organ at full-stop settings. No longer could I turn and pretend that I did not know or understand that call, that I did not see the vision taking shape in the fog of spring. Now, as with the natural world around me revealed itself in its full glory, I found that I had begun to see myself as Shekinah's beautiful child, created by Love to live out full realization of that power and magnificence that is God's gift of human actuality. I had struggled for many years with issues of self-esteem, a feeling of unworthiness, lack of self-worth. Now I had begun to know the futility and falsity of such difficulties and, although the struggle will probably always attempt to haunt me in some form, I threw such self-destructive beliefs and behavior patterns as far into the chasm of accepting Love as I could.

I began to see more clearly the focus of my life's experiences coupled with my gifts of compassion, prayer, healer of the spirit, writer and musician. For long I had understood how desperately so many of us need the presence of another to listen, to care, with whom to pray and to search. I realized how, without regard to what I did to pay my rent or to buy food, my work and my life must forever be centered in the Love who is Creator Spirit. I knew I must be committed to the dignity and spiritual health of those whom I might meet in living.

What followed my spreading of the spirit wings I long had ignored in fear was unexpected as much as it was gratifying and confusing at times. While I had articulated that which I believed would express the highest level of human relationship in my life and for which I had longed, I had let it go, not feeling that it was an issue for the time being. In the short succession of, perhaps, three months my ability to ignore this one area of my life faced serious challenge.

For some time I had made my presence available through the electronic world of communications via my computer. While I had developed a few positive acquaintanceships over almost two years of use, I was not seriously concerned with establishing relationships through this means, or any other means, for that matter. The proximity of the mountain to large population centers and the ease of communication brought new possibilities soon demanding consideration. Internet meetings had become, it would seem, the new significant means of establishing friendships, with the faceless safety seeming to allow much more open discussion between basically honest people.

From my computer keyboard talks I had developed two friendships during the year. One could well have become a romantic entanglement of two souls who shared a great deal in spirit and focus. However, during a desert hike we examined the ramifications, at the direction where each of believed we were going, and agreed the transcendent, spiritual friendship would better serve us, would allow us to hear with clarity and honesty, the whispers on the wind speaking our hearts and minds. We became even closer than friends, yet less than lovers; and this summer of realizing accepting, non-demanding agape between us promised long life to the relationship.

One electronic meeting, serendipitous as it seemed at the time, occurred within a day or so of my daughter's arrival. Over the weeks she was with me, she saw the evidence of many who found me online and asked questions, invited discussion of often critical spiritual or emotional issues. That I built no personal relationships from most of these encounters was not unusual. It had become normal for me simply to be present and available for honest, open conversation. This single encounter, begun in the precise way most did, awakened my mind, spirit and heart in ways that had not occurred with one person in all my living.

Summer brings brilliant, copious blooms, fragrant in the warmth of mountain breezes. Summer brought flowering of which I had no experience. The plant that bore this blossom grew in shadow, covered with thorns, surrounded by thickets. Yet the flower on this plant reached out and found its way to me, beckoning to its unique, enchanting environment. I resisted, questioning the wisdom of engaging with a summer bloom so far outside my expectations.

There was no question that our frequent discussions online, telephone calls across hundreds of miles and one evening meeting on the mountain built a bond of honesty, clarity and a growing love requiring serious consideration as summer began to wane. Serious employment issues exacerbated the confusion I felt at this point, issues pressing for resolution for my peace of mind and physical health combined. I spent long hours in prayer searching out the wisdom of this relationship and its meaning for the future in the light of the vision that had begun to stand so clearly before me with respect to my future direction.

Summer's fulmination brought what appeared to be new career opportunity, the offer of unconditional love far exceeding my dreams and the increasingly clear understanding of the reality how my days on the mountain were reaching an end. My involvement in a young, growing community of faith had reached a place where I knew a separation process had begun without apparent deliberate effort from anyone. Every facet of my life reflected a setting sun, a season of change. I sought the counsel of trusted friends and prayed for wisdom, discernment, light on the trail.

The year on the mountain had done its work of healing; the retreat into my wilderness was coming to a close. Autumn had begun to reappear as I hiked once more those trails I dearly loved. Everywhere I looked I saw the unspeakable beauty, felt the gentle spirit of loving acceptance, heard the music of the streams and the wind through the trees and through the canyons. The call to this mountain and to the peace I had discovered had now prepared me to find the next mountain, a larger lady to the North who offered new challenge, new possibility. The seasons had changed fully now, returning to the beginning, yet not the one where I had commenced the year before. In the helix we call living, I had come around to the same place on the compass but on another level.

I said good-bye to beautiful Lady Baldy almost a year exactly to the day I had found my home with her. She stands there still, far to the South, shadowing those people I came to love and the canyons and trails where I found surcease, challenge and opportunity to grow. Dorothy says no one who loves Baldy ever really leaves her, each takes a little piece of the mountain in his heart. Not only do I have Mt Baldy engraved within, I carry three gifts from her, three beautiful reminders of her strength, her loveliness and her lesson in the reality there is beauty in the difficulties of living, seasons of change bring growth and new life.