Gold Rush

Just returned from a bucket list cruise to Alaska with my beautiful wife, Bonnie, and one of her beloved brothers and her much beloved sister, very likely her best friend, and their spouses.

We had a fantastic cold rain soaked time and adjusted with layers and rain pants and coats as needed.

On a rail line called White Summit Railroad in Skagway, Alaska, famous home to Jack London’s inspiration to Call of The Wild, we marveled at the terrain, elevation, snow and ice, dangers of wolves, moose, and bear the miners faced when the caught gold rush fever and came from all over the world to make their fortunes, or perhaps, lose everything they had, along with their lives.

We rode along beside a steep cliff where men actually hung from ropes on the cliffs above, drilled holes in the walls, stuffed explosives in the walls, then swung away in the nick of time, just to make their trails and then the railway to make the trail and then the railway to get to the precious life changing gold.

I tied to put myself back in their shoes, risking it all, seeking a fortune for their families and themselves, only to arrive back to today and perhaps come back to my senses, and I realized, I already have my Gold. Along with my absolutely beautiful wife, inside and out, and my family, I have the greatest gold in life, my grandkids!

When I say my grandkids, I not only have and mean my Iris, Elsie, Opal, Isla, Asher, Ezra, Jack & Ben, Ava and Eli, whom I refer to as my treasures, my Gold, but I include my newly “adopted” informally in my heart CFUM students who give me remarkable words of wisdom, smiles, high fives and hugs everyday at CFUM.org

They are the current Gold in our society and certainly need to know it as we rush creatively to do all we can to refine and develop our next generation to be all they can be.

I know our entire CFUM.org Board and staff would join me in saying we love these students.

I love our students and their families. Now I have to go dry my eyes as somehow my eyes have been leaking water as I wrote this. Must have been all that h rain in Alaska?