A Wonderful Trip

I'll be honest. I was dreading the trip over the pass. 

After a spring, summer, and fall of daylight trips over the sun-sparkled Cascade Mountains, I fully expected that Snoqualmie Pass in November would present me a complete package of alpine driving challenges. 

Pounding rain 

Turning to heavy snow flurries 

Pitch black pre-dawn skies

Heavy traffic
Construction lane closures

Steep grades 

Tight mountain curves

And that's exactly what I got. 

Oh. Plus intermittent patches of blinding fog. I didn't see that one coming. 

White-knuckling the steering wheel, I held my breath for 45 treacherous miles and held on for dear life, cursing the gods of winter weather and wondering if my family would find my list of passwords after I'd crashed. 

Then several things happened all at once. 

The ground leveled out beneath my wheels. The steeply sloped forests finally fell away and the interstate zipped smoothly along the open and gently rolling Palouse. 

The sun burst out from behind a ridge of clouds and the world was bathed in glorious golden light. 

And my heart, so heavily burdened with gloom, overflowed with lightness and joy. 

Something tells me there's a moral to this story, a lesson learned, a truth to be taken and stored away for future wisdom. 

I don't really care too much about that. 

All I want to tell you is that it turned out to be a wonderful trip after all.