An Unconventional Thanksgiving

We do it every year - eat and eat and drink until we've stuffed ourselves sick. It's a Thanksgiving tradition. This year, however, we decided to do something a little different. We cancelled our brunch reservations, and headed with D.'s mom into the mountains for a weekend of communing with nature.

First stop was Kartchner Caverns, about an hour south of Tucson. We've been wanting to go for ages, but tickets (and time) have proven elusive until now. Thanksgiving morning dawned cold and clear, and made for perfect driving weather. Touring the caverns was an incredible experience. It truly makes you think about the passage of time, and how small a blip we are in the cosmic scheme of things.

Our next stop was Mount Lemmon, which tops out at 9,000 feet, and offers a welcome respite from the desert heat. The drive up the mountain is truly beautiful - saguaro cactus at the bottom give way to aspens and pines as the elevation changes. The leaves have started to change colors, and it finally felt like fall in the crisp air.

Normally, it's about 20 degrees cooler on the top of Mount Lemmon than it is in the city. We were expecting it to be about 50 degrees up there, and dressed accordingly. Much to our surprise, it actually was 36 degrees on the top with a hefty breeze, and we froze. I'm so thankful that I had stuffed a hat into the truck (a leftover freebie from a hockey game), otherwise my ears would have frozen off. Nonetheless, we had fun hiking and taking lots of pictures of the scenery. It was a great day.

Somehow, spending Thanksgiving in nature (or really, any day in nature) breeds contemplation in me. I guess I feel small when faced with splendor all around me. I want to share all that this beautiful earth has to offer with our daughter. I want to see her dunk her fingers in a mountain stream and marvel at how cold snow runoff can be. I want to see her climb a boulder and beam proudly when she reaches the top. Somehow, this Thanksgiving, the wait for referral seemed possible. Nature takes her own sweet time, but the results can be spectacular.