First Snow on the Mountains

August 30, 2010  This morning it rained here in Logan.  This afternoon the clouds lifted and revealed a definite dusting of white on the mountain tops.  Can winter be far behind?

With Ryan Fly Fishing

Ryan called this afternoon  and wanted me to go with him fly fishing up on the Logan River.  I went and spent some good time with my youngest.  He enjoys nature like his father but is a much better fisherman.  I was more or less the official photographer.  We had a good time together. I hope to do it again many times.

From the above photo you can see that Ryan is just as intense when fly fishing as he is with most other things.

First cast was a strike and Ryan landed a small brown trout.  Beautiful fish this time of year.

Fishing in the mountains can be very relaxing even for one as intense as Ryan is.  Maybe fly fishing was made for just such people.  Someone once told me that for every day you spend fishing in your life your life is extended an extra week.  Maybe we had all ought to spend a little more time out on a stream with a rod in our hand.  Just a thought.

Famous Bear Lake Raspberries

Saturday afternoon my brother Reed, called from Laketown.  He said he was sitting in his raspberry patch and that he had raspberries coming out of his ears.  I'm not sure he meant that literally, but he said he had more raspberries than he knew what to do with, more than he could get picked and more than he had a market for, and said he didn't wan any more of them to go to waste than need be.  He said I could come over and pic what I wanted to on Monday, so I rolled out of bed early and headed over the hill to pick some of those famous Bear Lake Raspberries.  There were lots of berries and I picked for about six hours and came home with enough for at least a few good raspberry desserts and shakes throughout the year.  I enjoyed the solitude and it was good to see that the raspberry industry in Bear Lake has not totally disappeared and that it has a little more basis than just a crazy celebration in Garden City the first week of August every year.  I saw a bumper sticker a while back which read:  "If it's tourist season, how come we can't shoot them."  I think there are some of the natives of that part of the country who'd gladly display a bumper sticker like that.

Yummy, famous, Bear Lake Raspberries.

Waiting to be picked and put into a delicious raspberry shake.

Reed has about four acres of raspberries on his place near the cemetery in Laketown.  That comes to about a mile of row similar to the ones in this picture.  This picture was taken just before the sun came up on the raspberry patch.  Reed has Travis, his youngest son and his wife Linzee, running the raspberry patch.  He teaches school in Providence, and the berries are a little later this year so school is starting up before he is really ready and finished with the raspberry harvest.  They get a lot of people, mostly from Logan, to come over and pick the berries.  Some seem to have had a lot of practice picking.  One lady told me she has picked as many as 18 cases in a day.  Not bad at eight  dollars a case.

When you come around don't be shy about asking us to make you a raspberry shake.  We may have to make a quick run to Smith's for the ice cream, but we'll have the berries

Whose House This Is, I Think I Know......

    One of my favorite poems is Robert Frost's Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening.  I always loved his special gift with words.  Today, as I went to the Logan Temple to do some work for our kindred dead and also to help others in a like cause, his words, with just a slight modification, entered my mind.  I was impressed by the beauty of that sacred edifice, built at so great a sacrifice and with so much pure love, I was reminded of the word's of Frost's poem with just a little twist of great and earth-changing significance to me and to all who enter it in the right spirit and frame of mind.  I love the Logan Temple and all of the dedicated temples of the Church, but especially the Logan Temple, because this is where I was sealed to my eternal companion and where sacred covenants were made between us and the Lord, which, if we do our part, seal my loved ones and us in the eternities.  In my view, there is no greater blessing than to be with the ones I love in all of eternity.  I am so grateful to live close to this sacred edifice, and to be able to enter it as often as I do, and to worship, to learn, and to serve there.  Words fail me in expressing my love for all of you, and also the holy Temple where our family was sealed together, based on our faithfulness, for time and all eternity.

     Below are just a few of the pictures I have taken of the Logan Temple since we moved to Logan nearly two years ago.

 

"How Beautiful Thy Temples Lord, Each One a Sacred Shrine...."

Picking and Pondering in the Huckleberry Patch

I remember going up in the mountains even as a child and picking huckleberries with my Dad and Mom and the family.  The fruit was free and best of all it was delicious.  Sometimes it was rather plentiful and sometimes the berries were few and far between.  Under the best of circumstances a good picker could get about a gallon in four hours.  There are many who would say that no matter how good they are, they are not worth picking at that rate.  They do not grow in clusters and the berries are really quite small, but to me it became a chance to get out into nature and the mountains that I love and listen to the breeze in the trees and contemplate the beauties of of nature, give thanks, and enjoy a little solitude.  The berries were less the goal than the byproduct of these outings into the August woods.  This year I decided to go and check them out a week ago.  As I walked into the woods and began to come on to the huckleberry bushes, they were mostly green, but being the veteran that I have become, I thought of a particular spot on the hill that had been logged out several years ago and was now a little more open to the the sunlight.  I made my way further up the hill and was soon rewarded with huckleberries, mostly ripe, by the millions.  I sat down with the two buckets I had brought with me and began to pick.  Seven hours later I walked down the hill feeling highly rewarded and determined to come back again the next day,which I did, and got another two gallons.  I felt really good about this.  I was telling Reed, my bother, about it and he said he'd like to go and get some, so I volunteered to pick him up and take him to my special spot in the mountains.  We spent the day there and got the expected amount of huckleberries, but even better than that, we go to sit and an talk and philosophize for about eight hours.  Truly, this was one of the best days I have spent in a long, long time.  It's interesting how those youthful arguments have progressed more into a mutual probing of one another's minds and then a listening for the Spirit to direct our thoughts and our words as we discuss the important truths as they are revealed in the quiet solitude of the the woods and the huckleberry patch.  I felt a closeness,not only of our Father in Heaven, but also of our own earthly Mother and Father who undoubtedly were looking down upon us on Tuesday as we picked an pondered in the huckleberry patch.