Mark My Words: Easter Week

I was able to go trail running six days in a row this week. Monday through Thursday, I was on the Wild Rose Trail every day, and I was able to see the leaves on the trees grow over the course of a few days. And the season of arrowleaf balsamroot has begun—I saw my first specimens on Monday, and there were quite a few more by Thursday.

Monday

And here's the same plant on Thursday

These were from Thursday, and I don't recall seeing them in bloom on Monday

Still lots of glacier lilies

On Saturday evening, I went on a six-mile run that I don't do too often, but I have done it before. It has a rather steep portion east of the Bonneville Shoreline Trail from Tunnel Springs Park, and sometimes I will do the steep portion when I have less time so it's a good workout in a short amount of time. But for some reason, it was harder this time, and I had to stop a lot. I did one mile in twenty-three minutes, which is exceedingly slow! But oh well, there are a variety of valid reasons why it was harder for me. I don't have to be at full capacity all the time.

The lighting at this time of day made the Depression-era terraces especially visible

Yesterday, the City of North Salt Lake hosted a community event to purge myrtle spurge from Springhill Geologic Park. Since I use that trail all the time, and I have an intense disdain for invasive plants, I went and participated, which seemed like a fun thing to do on the day before Easter and the Saturday before Earth Day. It was a good turnout, especially since there was a youth mountain biking club there, and they have to get hours maintaining trails. I personally pulled up four bags of spurge, and collectively we volunteers filled up the back up a pickup. But there is so much spurge there that we barely made a dent.

It was fun to be among the igneous rocks, since most rocks around here are sedimentary. All those flowery bright green plants are spurge, which is native to the Mediterranean and takes over the foothills here.

And there were plenty Eastery activities this week—I colored eggs with my family.

These are all the eggs I did. I was first introduced to using regular crayons on eggs in 2010, and I really like doing so.

This is super silly, but I bought some eggnog that came in Easter packaging, mostly because I thought it was funny. I mean, eggs are more associated with Easter than Christmas. And there was a 1965 Easter episode of McHale's Navy that revolved around eggnog—but McHale's Navy was a terrible show that I rate 3/10.

We had Easter dinner with my mom's family. I recently had a dream about chocolate carrot cookies, so I thought it would be fun to make a chocolate carrot cake. My mom found a recipe on Pinterest and sent it to me, so I made and decorated this cake. It was amazing! Carrot cake is my favorite dessert, but I might like this chocolate version even more. The frosting is chocolate cream cheese.

I'm in the choir in my ward, and today we sang the three newly added Easter songs. There were seven women and two men in the choir today, so I was the only tenor. For years, I have loved the song "Were You There?," and I was delighted that they added it. I asked the choir if we could sing it, and during practice, they asked me to sing it so they could hear it. Then they asked me if I would sing a solo for the first verse. So I did! And it went well. It was the first time I've sung a solo. But I didn't sing the "ohh-O-o-ohh . . . tremble" by myself; the choir joined for that part. I think I got the rest of the choir to love the song too. Here's one of my favorite versions of this lovely song.

As I've been on a faith journey over the last three years, in many ways I'm more comfortable with the Jesus aspect of Easter now than I used to be. The messaging I always picked up was "You need to know this is true, and if you don't, then you need to pray harder / study better / do more." But now I think, Of course it's preposterous. Of course it's hard to believe. That's the whole point of faith, and Christians have been practicing faith for nearly two thousand years.

And I have enjoyed my Easter playlist more this year because I made an abridged version in which I took out the terrible songs. Last year I added three albums for Lent/Easter/Pentecost by the Soil and the Seed Project, which have enjoyable Christian songs in a variety of genres. And of course, the newly released soundtrack for It's the Easter Beagle, Charlie Brown has helped too.