Vedauwoo

I have retained only a handful of the religious hunches of my childhood. This is one of them. ;)

Heaven, if it exists, was created in the image of Vedauwoo.

It was the early 90s. Life in Wyoming was challenging.  Our extended family lived on the other side of the US, primarily in Ohio. Dad juggled minimum-wage jobs at a pizza place and a copy centre to pay the bills and nurtured our newborn church on Sunday mornings. Mom home-schooled Jesse and me, ran a small in-home daycare and later enrolled in college to earn her BS in Nursing. We lived in a trailer park.

We also had Vedauwoo.

I don't remember how we found it or my first thoughts upon visiting this place, although I assume that Dad either spotted it on a map somewhere or drove around until he found something free to visit with us on his day off.

 Vedauwoo was a playground of precariously placed boulders. Dad said that the angels decided to have a little fun stacking them when the earth was created. At seven, eight, nine I believed this the same way that secular children believed in Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny. It didn't quite fit into the ways in which the rest of the world worked, but if that wasn't the way it happened I couldn't imagine what else could have caused it.

We stayed in town for eight or nine months out of the year. One could theoretically drive out on the main roads through the mountains in every season,but fierce blizzards and other storms happened so suddenly and frequently that most people who had lived out west over a winter or two or so didn't make unnecessary trips until late spring or summer.  Even then, one always brought an extra blanket or warm jacket just in case.

So in the Vedauwoo I remember it is always May, June, July, August, or maybe even as late as September if we have a good autumn. There are always leaves on the trees, chipmunks taking a break from foraging to watch us humans walk by on their rocks, raspberry bushes hidden where it was warm and protected enough for them to grow.

Once we invited some of our church members out hiking with us to this park. After spending much of the afternoon crawling around on the rocks we found a cave-like room with a fire-pit between two massive rocks. The grownups started a fire as dusk fell. There may have been roasted marshmallows, too...or maybe that was another trip.

When the fire was burning brightly the adults sang and talked. I listened for a little while, grew bored, went exploring at the back corners of our cave. I didn't find anything of interest, though, just dust, rocks and the dark jagged edges of the coming night. It was fun to wander away and look for whatever might be hiding back there, though. I would not have complained had that been what church was like every week.

(Photo credit.)