I don’t know that I’ll ever get this balanced. Perhaps that shouldn’t be the goal. Either way I’ll continue to try and capture the spirit of the people, the purpose and the place. Enjoy these images from our last trip! (see more at www.facebook.com/lovewalks)

I’ve never been to Belgium but thoroughly enjoyed my time there! Like other parts of Europe I’ve been blessed to spend time in, I was enamored with the history soaked culture of both Belgium and Brugge. From artwork to architecture I’m quickly becoming addicted to exploring cultures like this, each time returning home and noticing a distinct lack of that type of humbling history. The type of history that casts a shadow over the present, not good or bad, but demanding acknowledgement of the past when living in today and planning for tomorrow. I’ll do my best to put my thoughts together to better explain this later.

I wish I had more time to edit images and post them along with the full scoop of our time there, but for now a slide show of some of my favs will have to suffice!

After spending my first day and a half with my brother on the organic farm that he’s been working at, we finally made our way out to glacier on Tuesday night. I really should pause here and preface all of this with two things. First, I love to backpack and have never been to Glacier; second we went at just about the last possible time before winter rolls in. Okay, un-pause. So we got in Wednesday night and the sun was all but set. We wandered around a bit and went over to Lake McDonald. As we walked up to the dock I was overcome by the beauty of the moment. The lake meets you as you enter the park and greets you with a majestic view, taking you visually deep into the park. We spent some time just enjoying the quiet and taking in the scenery.

Eventually we walked back over to the truck and found a campsite for the night. We got a big fire going, my brother pulled out his banjo (actually my dad’s, from whom my brother stole it prior to leaving and has now picked it up pretty well!) and played some tunes.

We woke up the following morning, packed up the tent and went over to the back country office to get our permits. Now the way it works at Glacier is you can’t book your passes in advance. Not that we would have, but that’s basically standard operating procedure for them. So we went into the office and were greeted, well sort of, by two rangers whose demeanor would best be compared to Eeyore, the somber donkey from Winnie the Pooh. After asking question after question and not getting much information we finally settled on the Sperry Trail. We were told anything on the East side of the park would be too high in elevation and most likely get snow, since we hadn’t brought any snow gear, and our tents are 3 season tents, we wanted to avoid that! So we got our passes, went back to my brothers car to grab our bags, and then hit the trail.

The Sperry Trail is pretty steep. You start around the base of Lake McDonald and then travel vertical 3,432 ft over the course of six and a half miles. Along with carrying the tent and the food, and my personal stuff, I also brought my camera and tripod (the tripod is something I’d regret) so I had a decent amount of weight. You won’t see any picture from our hike up due to the fact that it was lightly raining for the first 2,000 or so feet, and then snowing after that! The hike was a beautiful one, but it was exhausting too. It took all I had to get that last stretch finished without throwing my tripod off the side of the mountain (I had brought my tripod to take pictures of the stars at night, but clouds didn’t allow that to happen, hence the regret). Once we finally made it to the top we set our bags down at the site and went over to make dinner. This would be a decision I would regret. You see when I set down my bag I also set down my camera. As I came through the clearing to where we had to prepare our food I walked upon one of the most magnificent views I’ve ever seen. The mountains formed a valley from us all the way to Lake McDonald, framing it in trees, above the lake and upto the edge of the mountain were the clouds, about 500 feet below us, and then the sun was setting right in between the mountains, casting a warm orange glow over the snow caped peaks. It was stunning. I ran back to get my camera but in the 2 minutes it took me I had missed the shot. The clouds rose, the sun was hidden. I missed it! I’d think about that shot for the rest of the trip.

I made my way back to the site and set-up the tent while my brother made dinner. We then ate quickly, it was getting cold fast and the sun was all but gone. We then hung all of our food on the bear pole, something required to protect the bears from us, and us from the bears (I was more concerned with the latter). We had also heard reports of a mother Grizzly with two cubs in the area, so we made sure to hang EVERYTHING that was food or smelled like food. As the sun went down we got into the tent and tried to get warm. We hadn’t planned on snow, especially my brother, but we made due with what we had and even got creative by insulating our layered socks with balls of toilet paper (which worked well). It was a cold night, but we got through it, when I finally woke up and unzipped the tent the ground was covered with snow! Below are a couple of pictures from the morning.

above: you can see the bear pole and our bag on the left and the first view of the morning on the right.
below: notice the pants that are hanging from the tree. They got wet from the rain on the hike up and then froze over night! I hiked down in long johns and my brother in pajama bottoms!

above: want to know how cold it was…the water in my Nalgene froze!
below: the view from our campsite

My brother and I got packed up pretty quick that morning, not wanting to stand around in the cold without much clothing. Since I had the tent I made him carry my tripod on the way down! We were hauling down and did the trek in about 2 1/2 hours (about 4 hours quicker than the hike up). After we got about 1,500 ft down the snow was all but gone and the green again surrounded us. I was pretty happy to have feeling in my toes again

above: you can see the clouds above the mountains as we began down the trail

When we made it back down we jumped in the car and drove around the park for a while. It was an exhausting hike, but worth every second. I’m glad I got to do it, and glad I got to spend some solid time with my brother (even if that meant letting him sleep back to back because he was so cold)! We eventually drove into town and enjoyed some warm pizza. Oh so good. I left the next morning to come back to Phoenix. I leave you with one last image. We didn’t see any Grizzlies on our hike…but this stuffed gent will greet you in the airport.