The sky was blue and the air crisp and clean as we loaded up the car for the drive to the Adirondack Mountains in upstate New York. Our destination was Whiteface Mountain where my husband and older son were looking forward to a full day of skiing.
My younger son, 14-year-old Rodrigo, and I planned on hiking to High Falls Gorge. I’d heard it was beautiful, but what I wanted to see most of all was a moose in the wild. As much as I’d traveled through the Adirondacks and the Berkshire Mountains over the years, the sight of one had always eluded me.
We put on yak-traks (ice cleats) and set off. We meandered along the winding trail, taking in the massive ice formations created by numerous waterfalls frozen onto the granite cliffs. Below us flowed the Ausable River, curling through a landscape of glistening rock, ice and snow. With our yak-traks in place, we clanked up and down icy stairs, over bridges and through woods so dense the light did little to melt the ice and snow.
The only sound on the trail was the occasional gurgling of the river or snow tumbling off the pine boughs. “Amazing!” I said to Rodrigo, as we paused to rest at a lookout point with yet another spectacular view. “What more could you possibly ask from a winter’s walk?
“How about a moose, Mom?” he asked, laughing. “Isn’t that one of your goals in life to see a moose in the great outdoors? What better place to run into one than here? We could pray about it.”
“Okay, I’m game,” I said. Surely God directs our paths, but can he direct the path of moose? I wondered.
Hardly had we uttered “Amen” when we heard a crunching of snow and a crashing of branches along the trail. Could it be that God had answered our prayer so quickly?
We waited breathlessly. Suddenly a group of eight young women, all wearing moose antlers on their heads, burst onto the trail. Turns out they were sorority sisters, out for a day of fun in the wintry woods. I burst out laughing. After we talked to the girls for a minute, we headed on up the trail. “I guess God does provide more abundantly than we can ask or imagine,” Rodrigo said, grinning, the image of the pretty girls having eclipsed any further thoughts of moose.
“Indeed he does,” I said.
