CAUTION: Beautiful Experiences Ahead

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by Lacie Nezbeth

My family and I recently returned from a week long camping trip up the Oregon coast. Four miles from where our lush campground sits, there is a great lookout point for viewing sea lions that gather to sunbathe on the many rocks jutting out from the surf. We knew immediately that we wanted to make the hike.

What we didn’t know at the time was that there were many different trails that lead to the same location. Inadvertently, we chose the longest, steepest route. Sure, we could have walked nice and straight along the road to our destination, a journey that was only two miles, and we would have thought it was a beautiful, pleasant walk.

But, we ended up on a trail that twisted and turned through the thick forest of the Oregon coast, bringing us mere feet from the cliffs that would drop us straight down into the turbulent waves. Our trail was bathed in green from top to bottom. It was as if God himself took a bright green Crayola paintbrush and drenched everything in sight. We hiked through tunnels of foliage wet and dripping from the constant raining, and enjoyed one-of-a-kind vantage points (including a hidden botanical garden) along the way. It was breathtaking! A piece of creation we never would have known about if not for the long hike.

We finally reached the sea lion look-out, and found it to be spectacular, but not more spectacular than our journey there. Both activities were memorable, but it was the journey that we keep talking about, that we took the most pictures of.

Being a writer has many similarities, but the one I want to focus on today is the journey.

We’re all on a different trail.

Some of us get to the “destination” quicker than others, while some seem to be twisting and turning, lost in a forest.

The nugget to hold on to is this: If we can treasure the beautiful experiences along the way (the friends that we’ve made, the craft we’ve improved, the words we’ve written), then the trail won’t be marked by miles, but by precious memories, snapshots of our individual journey that we can look at and say, “I remember that. It was a beautiful experience!”


Lacie Nezbeth is a stay-at-home mom that treasures stories, in any form. Her love of history, traveling and research made her decision to write Historical Romances an obvious and fitting choice. When Lacie isn’t working on one of her stories, she can be found chauffeuring her children to their various activities, talking to herself in the grocery store or plotting ways to get her entire family on another Caribbean cruise.

Comments 0

  1. Lovely post, Lacie! Because of your vivid descriptions, I could envision the scene. What a memorable journey–and a great metaphor for the path to publication. Enjoying each step in the process, letting go of expectations, and living in the moment can be freeing. We can have fun seeing what surprises and delights await us along the way, savoring each one rather than rushing past in dogged pursuit of our destination.

  2. Lacie, What a lovely write up on your trip, glad everyone with you enjoy the great landscape God make for you to see. Keep up the good writing as other persons enjoy the trip thru your eyes, Love you granny and papa.

  3. Your blog post brought back memories of our family’s vacation last summer at Bandon, OR.
    And I so appreciated your positive attitude about the writing journey. You are so right: The trail is marked by precious memories.

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