Jewel Lake II

We went on our annual excursion to Jewel Lake last Friday and Saturday. Those who went this year were: Lynda and Jason’s family (Josh and Matt), Di and Sam, Scott and Mary Ann and me. I’d been watching the weather reports and didn’t like the look of it but was talked into going anyway. Big mistake! We spent most of the time in our tents due to the 30% chance of rain that parked over us most of our stay there! 2 out of 3 of the tents proved to be leaky. Scott and Mary Ann’s tent (shared with Di and Sam) was fairly new but they’d failed to read the instructions and hadn’t sealed the seams. Not sure what house Scott grew up in! They had a very wet, miserable time. So the night was spent in card playing and in my case listening to the last 2 episodes of “Everything Creative” on my Ipod. To be totally fair about it, we actually were able to eat dinner and breakfast during the brief times it was dry. We also got in and set up before the storms hit but got in little fishing. We were anxious to get out early in the morning but stuck around due the nice fire I got going. That was another mistake because after getting packed up and starting to head out, we were hit with a snow storm. It even made the nightly news. We almost made the nightly news ourselves due to my arrogance and stupidity! I thought I knew my way out from many years of camping there so failed to follow a compass course even though the landmarks I use for reference weren’t visible. We ended up wandering North of where we should have been and subjected my family to crossing one the many nasty boulder fields in the Uintas. I realized we were lost when things continued to not look right and finally got my compass out. I could have sworn it was reading wrong. It looked like we were going North when I thought we were going East. I asked Jason to get his compass out so I could verify that mine was ok. He couldn’t readily find it and it was snowing so hard he didn’t want to go searching through his pack. About then someone suggested we pray. Sam quickly volunteered. After the prayer I made the decision to head East and trust my compass was right. It wasn’t but a few minutes later I realized the meadow we’d come to was looking mighty familiar. Sure enough it was the meadow on the back side of our favored Jewel Lake camp site, a place I’ve fly fished on the meandering stream that runs through many times. We’d gone in a complete circle and found ourselves back where we started after about an hour of hiking! This time I checked the compass and since the storm was lightening up was able to see land marks and stick close to the mountains to the South. It was nice enough by the time we got back to Ruth Lake that some of us made a few futile casts in an attempt to recoup some of the money spent on fishing licenses. The trail out was full of running water so feet already sodden were made even wetter. …altogether a miserable experience but one that made a lasting impression of the power of prayer. Maybe it won’t be an annual event after all!