From the Canyon to the Garden

Nothing super exciting has been happening this week, but I've been enjoying a few of my more normal weekly activities.  On Monday for FHE, I got to learn some Krav Maga, which was interesting.  We got to practice some kicks and learned how to disarm someone with a gun.  While I kind of got a handle on how to do that, I pretty much would never feel confident enough to actually do it myself in a real-life scenario.  I'm pretty sure trying it would just get me shot!  Still, it was fun to try some of these things out, and we did learn some great self-defense pointers, like to always keep your chin down and only present the top of your head to an attacker, as the lower portion of your face and neck are by far the most vulnerable.

Friday night was pretty fun for me as well.  Right after work, I had planned to go running up Provo Canyon, so I changed at the office.  I also wanted to stop by the Harmon's right near the office where one of my coworkers, Elaine, was doing a product demo for our brand.  I'd only planned to say hi, then leave to continue my run, but I ended up talking to Elaine for about and hour, for better of for worse.  She's really awesome, but I haven't had much opportunity to get to know her very well in the past, so it was nice to have that chance to visit with her.  I found out in the process that she's actually a very near neighbor to me in American Fork for the moment, though she's moving to another part of the town soon.  I felt a little guilty because I thought that I might be distracting her from her demo duties a bit, but she did say that the end of the shift was always much slower than the beginning anyway.  I ended up keeping her company until her demo period was over at 6.

At that point, I was already pretty behind what I had planned for my schedule, especially since I was now further from rather than closer to the canyon.  I dithered a bit about whether to perhaps do a shorter jaunt down the Murdock Canal Trail instead, but I'd sort of had my heart set on the canyon, so I decided to drive up a bit, then do what I could, at any rate.

When I reached the first park in along the trail in the canyon, I was surprised to find a lot of big, empty event tents there.  I tried to determine what was going on, but no one was around.  Later when I got home, I learned that they are probably for the Timpanogos Storytelling Festival going on this week, though it seems they were up a little early for that!

It was a rather stormy looking day, and I was worried that I wasn't going to have time or daylight enough to get very far, but luckily I kept up a decent enough pace to make it all the way to Bridal Veil Falls, which I was originally hoping to get to at least.  Though the weather wasn't the greatest, on the bright side it did cut down on the trail traffic a bit, which I've seen to be pretty heavy even on a Tues in the past.  I enjoyed getting to have a bit of solitude to reflect and enjoy the beauty of the surroundings.

I was glad there were still a few people on the trail as well, though, or it could have felt a lot creepier.  I did have my new pepper spray on me, but I've heard that the canyon has a bit of a reputation for danger, so it was good to have other people around at least a little.  Some of them were apparently associated with some kind of triathlon that was going on that night.  At one point, a triathlon girl came up beside me and asked if I was with the triathlon myself.  She had enough breath to ask a question, but I had to make do with a simple head shake and grunt in the negative.  My thought was,  "do I look like someone who would be in a triathlon?" but I was still pretty flattered that she could even have the misconception.  I'm not in the best shape still, but I'm definitely getting better at the moment.  I'm at the point now that on my 6 mile jaunt up the canyon, I was able to run for about half the time whereas in the past I would have just walked the whole way.

The evening didn't go exactly as I planned, but it all turned out quite well anyway.  In fact, right after I got into my car after finishing, it started to downpour in earnest rather than just the overcastness with a few light sprinkles that had been going on before.  It was another thing I felt grateful for that day in addition to the beauty of the world around me, my physical health, my job, and other things.

I knew that it was supposed to rain on Saturday too, which I was quite bummed about, as I had been planning to go get my exercise that day at Thanksgiving Point Gardens.  I decided this the week before, and thought the idea was going to be spoiled, but fortunately things cleared up nicely after some rain in the morning.  So in the afternoon, I got everything together and made the short trip to Lehi.

Last time I was at the gardens was in the Spring, which is known as the most gorgeous time there, and I was so enchanted with everything partially because it was all brand new as well.  This time, I'd seen all of the layout before,

but was still delighted by seeing the new summer growth.  It overall wasn't  quite as nice as it was in the Spring.  Still, the many flowers were beautiful, and I got to see some things this time that I didn't experience in the Spring.  For instance, last time the rose garden was pretty boring as everything had been cut back from a late frost, but this time the roses were blooming quite nicely.  Also, one of the sections was open this time which was closed off last time I went.  

Lastly, I discovered a new area filled with statues depicting Christ's life that either weren't there last time, or I just missed somehow.  This was my favorite new part.  The statues were all quite lovely, and it was a nice quiet area to reflect and think on gospel topics.  There were a few that I really loved for different reasons.  One was a large statue of Christ with chicks and chickens that hearkened to "I will gather you as a hen gathers her chickens."  I've never seen any art that depicts this before, and I really liked the imagery.  I also of course appreciated the First Vision statue since it was the only one specifically tied to the Restoration.  Probably my favorite of all was the one showing Christ calling Lazarus from the tomb, as it was designed such that every angle revealed unique and interesting perspectives on the scene.  I most appreciated seeing it from Lazarus' perspective, looking out of the tomb to his sisters and the Savior.  I thought about how each of us will have this view at some point, being called by the Lord back from the dead so that we may rejoin our families.

After I did my exercise of a couple miles around the garden paths, I again wanted to spend some time just reading in a nice spot.  Much of the ground was still soggy from the mornings rain, but eventually I found a nice place to lie down.  I've been reading The Secret Garden recently for the first time, and it seemed like it would be a crime not to put in a bit of time reading it in a real garden!  I probably should have read this book when I was a actually a child, because it really does have a lot of delightful lessons as well as enchantment for kids especially.  I love the themes of redemption and personal growth tied symbolically to the growth of the garden.  It was definitely fun to think on those things in the perfect garden setting on a cool and beautiful day.

Having gone to the wild canyon the day before visiting the carefully cultivated gardens made me reflect on how grateful I am for all the various blessings of the Lord.  Both places had their own particular kind of beauty that was not the same as the other area, though both we outdoors and got most of their beauty from the vegetation as well as some kind of water.  I'm glad that there is room for beauty to be found in both manifestations on the Earth.  That untamed beauty crafted by the hand of God can have a home with beauty cared for by the hand of man.  There is a place for both in life, and we can be part of making the world more wonderful as we take both in their time!

That about sums up the more interesting parts of this week.  Hopefully soon I will get the computer stuff sorted and will make more frequent updates! :)

This was written last Sunday.  Finding time to laboriously upload pictures from my phone is causing weeklong delays.