My Life - Chapter 13 - Beautiful Places

Vista along the Elroy - Sparta Trail.
10/18/2014 dwm photo

This week's question asks about beautiful places I've visited.  For me, places can be beautiful for many reasons; sometimes the beauty shows the wonder of God's creation; sometimes beauty is in the moment; and sometimes beauty is a feeling.

The first place that comes to mind was a backyard along the Elroy - Sparta Bike Trail.

My best friend and biking partner and I put our bikes in the back of a Datsun station wagon for the drive north to ride what's considered America's first railroad line converted to a bike trail.

It was 1980 and the last summer we did things together before high school graduation.

We drove to Elroy where we unloaded our bikes and headed northwest, intrigued by three railroad tunnels where groundwater dripped on us in while we walked the bikes toward the gleam at the end of the darkness.

It's a 32 mile one-way trip to Sparta where we turned around.  It was near the Sparta trail-head when we came upon a home with a backyard that ran along the path.  There was an old-fashioned pop machine in the yard and a couple benches near a small, clear stream we could easily step across.

One of three railroad tunnels on the
Elroy - Sparta Trail. 10/18/2014 (dwm photo)

  We each bought a bottle of pop and sat next to the creek where we took off our shoes and socks to relax our feet in the cool stream.  There were small pieces of ice floating in my bottle of Pepsi.  

  I don't recall how long we sat and talked, but those moments (even 40 years later) stand out as my most memorable.  We done a lot of riding as friends since we were small, but this was special.

  I repeated the trip in 2014 and stopped for a snack.  It's still in the same family.  I talked the son of the owners who continued the tradition, a memory that makes me rich.

There are a lot of beautiful places, too many to count.  Here are some beautiful memories.

It was unusual during my time as a reporter in South Dakota to travel into the north west corner of the state.  One assignment took me three hours to Lemon on the North Dakota border.  To get there I crossed miles of open land on a ribbon of blacktop.  The road was the only clue it wasn't still 1889.

It was quite the juxtaposition; driving a modern car over the same ground that would have been a 10 day horseback ride.  That's when I noticed something on my right.  There was a large herd of Pronghorn Antelope racing over the prairie at full speed, crossed the highway and disappeared over a hill. 

Twenty years ago I was in the Wisconsin north woods with colleagues in the insurance agency where I worked for a fishing weekend.  Early Saturday, I grabbed my pole and bait to try my luck.  The sun was coming up.  The water was calm.  The only noise was the sound of nature.  A bald eagle circled.  A raft of river otters swam past my boat.

Beauty is around - we just have to look for it.