On a beautiful autumn day we decided to hike one of the trails branching off from the Ausable Club in Saint Hubert’s, south of Lake Placid. Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote the area around the Ausable Club and the Adirondack high peaks was “where all the sacred mountains drew around us.” The dirt road from the Ausable Club led to the crystal clear Upper and Lower Ausable Lakes. Many of the trails to the high peaks could be reached along the road. However, our walk would be on level terrain.

Before beginning, I glanced at our surroundings. At the uppermost level of a nearby mountain, snow had fallen on the very top. Borrowing binoculars I noticed that there were tracks in the snow, probably from cross country skis. There were two virgin lines on the clean snow.

As my eyes traveled down from the layer of snow they viewed the magnificence of an autumn day when nature painted the landscape in colors ranging from red to yellow and green. These were the colors that welcomed people from all over the country to stand in awe of the changing seasons.

From the splendid colors that nature had painted on her canvas, I returned to ground level. The grass was still green and hosted a man in a pink T-shirt and green slacks, playing golf. Next to the golf course, a doubles match was underway on the tennis courts. The apparel of the players, dressed in white shorts and sweating, seemed to unite them with the tip of the mountain in one panorama of white on white. The overall effect, from the top of the mountain to ground level, reflected the changing seasons.

As I absorbed this view I realized that life also has many levels. Within each one of us, especially now, we feel the cold despondent winter and hope for an eventual rebirth of summer. All of our lives are lived on different levels but with patience we know time will move on. Summer will come.

So wait. Wait for another day. It will come. Surely it will come.

Sheltering