THIS STAND OF Douglas firs felt holy and solemn like we had entered a cathedral or sanctuary
Photo by Matthew Dickerson

Stepping out the front door of the National Park Inn, our eyes were drawn at once to the impressive peak of Mount Rainier straight in front of us. Towering more than 11,500 feet above where we stood, reaching to an elevation of 14,411 feet above sea level, its perennially snow-and-ice-covered summit was bathed in the textured red glow of winter morning light.

My wife Deborah and I had come to Washington for the wedding of our second-oldest son. Cross-country travel being as time-consuming and pricey as it is, we figured that as long as we were spending the time and money to get there, we should stay a few days extra and maybe find one of the West Coast national parks to visit. When we learned that the southwest entrance to Mount Rainier National Park was less than a two-hour drive from our son’s house, and that the historic inn at Longmire was running an off-season half-price two-night lodging special, our decision was made. We booked a stay and arranged for a rental vehicle with available snow chains — a required accessory for winter visitors to the park even at Longmire, which is only a half dozen miles into the park on one of its few lower-elevation stretches of road that is open year-round.

Arriving after dark on the first evening, driving past a trio of elk at dusk just outside the park gate, our initial glimpse of the park’s famous peak was under a bright moonlight which gave it a soft, fairy-tale-like, and almost welcoming appearance as I snapped a few long-exposure photos across a field lined with snow-covered trees and dotted with frosted flowers. The next morning’s view of the intimidating tower of rocks and ice eliminated any illusion of softness, however, and we were quite content to admire it from a distance. An hour after breakfast, we began our first hike along the Wonderland Trail. It took us at once from the inn and visitor center into a thick and quiet old-growth forest of evergreens dominated by majestic Douglas fir, with a scattered mix of red cedar, western hemlock and lodgepole pine. Fresh tracks of black-tailed deer and something else we took to be coyote preceded us along the snowy trail. Bold Douglas squirrels walked out on fallen trunks to watch us pass.

When the trail bent to the right, we found ourselves walking along the Nisqually River with views upriver of the rocky southeastern slope of Rainier. Eventually we turned onto a different trail and crossed the Nisqually on a log bridge made of a massive fallen tree, and into a much narrower cut carved by Paradise River, a tributary of the Nisqually. From there the trail began a steeper ascent a little distance from the river. As our elevation grew, so did the amount of snow on the ground, until we found ourselves looking out as through a frosty windowpane through snow-laden bows of fir and hemlock at the 53-foot drop of Carter Falls.

It may have been the quiet of fresh snow on the ground, or the fact that we had the trail to ourselves, that made the place feel weighty and still. But I think it was the trees themselves. The Douglas firs, which we later learned were many centuries old with some approaching a thousand years in age, felt holy and solemn like we had entered a cathedral or sanctuary. Although the name of the trail at first seemed somewhat pretentious, I indeed quickly found myself raptured by a sense of wonder. Especially with the massive Douglas firs.

And though the snow on the ground was enough to put me in a holiday spirit, it was more than mere snow that had me thinking about Christmas. It was that sense of wonder and delight along a trail called Wonderland. Thanks to a book I’ve been working on that is coming out in a couple months, I have spent much of this year thinking and writing about wonder and delight that comes from spending time in nature. If the Christmas story is true, then the Divine Being who called the Douglas firs into existence, and created a world with the geologic forces of tectonic plates, glaciers and erosion that thrust Mount Rainier toward the sky and then spent eons carving and shaping it — that very Divine Being then entered into that creation as an infant born in a manager in the village of Bethlehem in the first century of what we now refer to as the Common Era. And if this world of mountains, trees, rivers and waterfalls is a place where the Divine came and dwelt, then it is indeed a holy place: a temple or sanctuary or cathedral of sorts.

One of the theological themes of that book I’ve been working on is the oft-repeated Biblical message that the wonder of nature ought to be a pointer to the greatness of its Divine Creator, and that delight in nature can lead to delight in its Maker. The biblical writers from the prophets and psalmist through the first-century apostles and Jesus himself repeatedly invite us to be attentive to nature: from starry heavens, mountain peaks and oceans to birds, flowers, rivers and trees. In the wonder of nature, we are invited to see the wonder of its Divine Creator.

On one hand, there is a weightiness to that belief that nature is not only the creation of a Divine Being, but that it became their dwelling place when the Divine took on human flesh. This should inspire awe and perhaps even a little fear. If the world is the work of a great Artist, then to respect that Artist should call one to respect their art. To defile or desecrate or exploit creation — what we often call nature — is to dishonor the Creator. When our actions destroy that which is full of wonder, we destroy pointers to the Divine.

THE COLUMNISTS SPOTTED these blossoms of frost illuminated in the first morning light  with Mount Rainier looming in the distance.
Photo by Matthew Dickerson

At the same time, however, the wonder of nature can also restore our souls. Christmas is supposed to be a time of wonder and delight, as is often reflected in beloved Christmas carols as well as the festive decorations of the season. Yet for many it is a time of stress, anxiety, and even loneliness. Certainly these past few years have been times of increased anxiety for many.

Taking the time to be attentive to snow-laden hemlocks or the maple sticks scratching the sky; to the winter birds at your feeder or half hidden in the brush along the edge of the field; the call of a barred owl on a cold night or the tracks of deer through the woods and that fleeting glimpse of a black nose before the white flag pops up; to the peaks of our Green Mountain State, or to snowflakes and rivers and waterfalls glistening with frost and ice; any or all of this can begin to restore some of that wonder and peace. Even looking at the stars on a clear and cold winter night, and pondering the infamous star of the wondrous Christmas story that led a company of astrologers from the east on a long journey to Bethlehem where they found the Maker of mountains and maples wrapped in baby’s clothing in a manger.

BRISTOL RESIDENT DEBORAH Dickerson crosses the Nisqually River on a snow-covered log bridge between Longmire and Paradise during a recent trip to the Mount Rainier National Park.
Photo by Matthew Dickerson