Fairweather Mountain Range - Alaska

We were running low on fuel, and still the fog refused to lift. Icy Straight spread out below us, beautiful and threatening. I've always loved the ocean, the wilder the better. But clearly, this was no place to run out of gas.

If by chance we survived ditching the small plane, we'd last about seven minutes in those waters. The nearest chance at rescue lived more than forty minutes away.

"Great. This is just how it happens, I thought. We'll make Readers Digest. Family on vacation lost in fatal crash."

Rain and mist smeared the windshield as we strained our eyes ahead, searching for a break in the clouds. There's no radar in these planes; bush pilots fly VFR--visual flight restrictions. If you can't see where you're going, well, then, mister, you can't go there. And you can't keep trying forever, either; the clock that's running is the fuel gauge. Three more minutes, and we'll have to turn back.

"We'll give it one more pass."

"Fairweather Mountain" is a total misnomer. With a name like that, don't you picture some lovely place in Hawaii or maybe Costa Rica--balmy breezes, gentle green slopes, the weather always, well,fair? These mountains explode 15,000 feet or more above sea level, right off the coast of southeastern Alaska, sheer cliffs and foreboding glaciers.

Some of the world's worst weather hangs out here. The pilot was yelling above the drone of the engine, "They get their name 'cause you can only see 'em in fair weather."

How cute. What idiot came up with that cleverness? Fear had swallowed my sense of humor whole. They ought to have named them the Peaks of Frozen Death or the Don't Even Think About It Mountains. Fair weather? Around here, that means maybe twenty days a year--if you're lucky.

We got lucky.

And I have never seen anything more breathtaking in all my life. We banked along vertical granite
walls that rose and fell thousands of feet on either side, like a sparrow gliding among the Himalayas.
"Are those waterfalls?" I asked, pointing to several cascades of white falling through thin air over the black cliffs. "Avalanches. It must be warm up here today."

Massive crevasses in the glaciers below held pools of clear water--a color I never knew existed, something between azure and cerulean blue. "Those cracks are so big we could fly right down 'em."

I pretended not to hear. I felt we'd slipped through Death's grasp, and I didn't want to give him another swipe. The beauty that now engulfed us was enough.

In Desperate Need of Clarity 

Twenty clear days a year--that sounds about like my life. I think I see what's really going on about that often. The rest of the time, it feels like fog, like the bathroom mirror after a hot shower.

You know what I mean. What exactly are you perfectly clear on these days? How about your life? Why have things gone the way they have? Where was God in all that? And do you know what you ought to do next, with a deep, settled confidence that it will work out? Neither do I.

Oh, I'd love to wake each morning knowing exactly who I am and where God is taking me. Zeroed in on all my relationships, undaunted in my calling. It's awesome when I do see. But for most of us, life seems more like driving along with a dirty windshield and then turning into the sun. I can sort of make out the shapes ahead, and I think the light is green.