My wife, Laurel, and I were returning one summer afternoon from a short driving trip to explore the Northeast Kingdom in Vermont, a remarkable region of rich, vast, and flowing farmlands. As we headed home, we were silent for some time, except for a few moments when she and I recollected and then savored that experience. We were traveling east in New Hampshire, toward our old farmhouse in southwestern Maine. Those moments of contentment, watching the road ahead, were, for me, a kind of warm, gentle blur.
Halfway home, our car crested at the top of a small hill, and we were shocked with what I can only call a transcendental vision. All at once, on that clear blue day, the magnificent snow-capped Presidential Mountains of New Hampshire came into view ahead of us, foremost among them Mt. Washington, the highest peak in the eastern U.S., and Mount Adams and Mt. Jefferson, too.
We drove on for a short distance, awestruck, and then quickly found a way to turn around to make our way back to the place along the road where we had first seen that vision. During the short time that it took us to return, dozens of other ordinary travelers had stopped, climbed out of their vehicles, and were then standing there silentl, their eyes fixed on the eastern horizon, already contemplating all that transcendental mountain glory.
Had that biblical visionary in the Book of Revelation, John, who had announced the ultimate coming of a transfigured New Earth in the End Times, as well as the arrival of a glorious New Heavens, ever seen anything like what Laurel and I then contemplated as we stared awestruck at the Presidentials? Probably, I think, yes.
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