Finding Clarity in the Fog: A Soulful Morning at Pikes Peak

Lori Chown
Jun 2, 2025
3 min read

Updated: Jan 3

Big Water, Big Knowing

Big water has always moved me. Since the first time I stood along the shores of Lake Michigan, I was hooked. I still remember that day vividly ~ the water stretching toward the sky, blurring the boundary between lake and horizon. The waves crashed in rhythmic pulses, like echoes of my own heartbeat. I felt it deep in my chest.

In that moment, everything felt connected ~ me, the water, the sky. There was no separation. We were one.

That feeling never left me.

The Power of Unity: A Lifelong Knowing

The idea of unity has stayed with me my entire life. I haven’t always understood it, but it has been as constant as my faith. Just as surely as I believe in a higher power and a greater purpose, I know we are all one.

We are connected by the same life force ~ the same sacred energy that makes us both beautifully unique and deeply the same. It has never been about religion, just Faith. I rarely have a name for it. It’s simply something I’ve always known.

Over time, that knowing has deepened. It has shifted from a feeling into something steadier, something rooted.

Awe from Above: Pikes Peak State Park Overlook

The first time we visited the Pikes Peak overlook in Iowa, I was captivated. It only took one visit to fall in love.

Looking out across the mighty Mississippi River, it’s impossible not to feel something. The bluffs rise effortlessly above the water, and the man-made structure at the overlook feels rooted in the land itself ~ growing with the peak rather than disrupting it.

Standing there, gazing into the river’s vastness, I felt the same way I once did at Lake Michigan: so small, and yet somehow part of something immense. Alone, and yet completely whole.

It was there, at the overlook, that my lifelong belief in unity grew quieter ~ and stronger. Once again, I knew it: we are all connected.

Go With the Flow: Lessons in Healing and Trust

That morning, surrounded by the stillness of fog, life felt as though it had come full circle.

The last few years brought grief, trauma, and challenges.Losing Danny. Being hospitalized. Losing pieces of me along the way.

All of it could have broken me.Instead, it brought me back to oneness.

I no longer search endlessly for clarity or demand answers to questions that don’t matter.I trust what unfolds, even when it arrives slowly.

In our smallness and our greatness,we are one.

Trust the Process: Clarity Always Returns

We can be a droplet or the whole ocean. A ripple or the rock that creates it. We can transform ~ like the fog that cloaked the river that morning.

As I watched the fog slowly lift from the Mississippi, I was reminded that no matter how thick the uncertainty, clarity always finds its way.

The river was only hidden for a short time ~ covered by fog that will always be part of it. When it cleared, it became even more beautiful. Even more mesmerizing.

Just because we can’t see the path doesn’t mean it’s not there. Trust the process. The light always returns.