Did you find everything you were looking for?

"Did you find everything you were looking for?" the cashier asked as I laid out various items on the checkout counter. Though I knew it was a routine question, it somehow struck me as odd. I began to wonder if I had indeed found all that I was looking for.
Many of us go into stores with our carefully planned lists in hand. At least I do. Without my list, I feel lost and begin giving in to impulse buys, like 2 for $5.oo bags of candy. But with my list, I can navigate the store with ease, and even pat myself on the back at the checkout when I don't buy a thing that isn't on my list.
Of course, those of us with list type personalities tend to go through life with a similar frame of mind.

• 4.0 GPA at high school graduation - check
• Scholarship to dream university - check
• Graduate with honors from college - check
• Land a great job with excellent benefits - check
• Meet Mr. (Mrs.) Right - check
  
• Have 2 children, one boy, one girl - check
• Live happily ever after - In the process of

All of the things on the list are desirable, and if someone were so lucky as to achieve everything on the list, then she could assume that, yes, she has found everything that she was looking for. But as so often happens in life, it is the things that we are not looking for that enrich our lives and force us to grow.
This past weekend Ted and I ventured along coastal highway 1 to Julia Pfeiffer Burns State Park, looking for an 80 foot waterfall that spills over the side of a redwood covered mountain and crashes to the beach below. About 50 other people were looking for the same thing. Many people oohed and aaghed at the waterfall, remarked on its beauty, and followed the trail back to the car. Some people stayed longer to watch the sun set over the ocean. We all found the waterfall, and saw what we wanted to see - a beautiful and rare sight. However, there was much more to the park than first met the eye.

Ted and I went to the fall twice in one day in order to capture the waterfall in different lights. Upon our first walk down the trail, I commented on an abundance of morning glories growing along the side of the trail and wondered aloud how morning glories came to be growing in this particular spot along the coast. Prior to our second walk, I read the park sign detailing the history of the park. Apparently, Congressman and Mrs. Lathrop and Helen Hooper Brown, best friends of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, owned a home on the property, affectionately named "The Waterfall House." Before she died, Helen Brown donated the land to the state, naming the park after her best friend and late neighbor, Julia Pfeiffer Burns. In 1965, the Waterfall House was razed, and Mrs. Brown's vast English garden was left to grow as wildly as it pleased.

Upon walking along the trail the second time, I noticed a variety of flowers, some species of which I have never seen before. Of particular beauty was a bright pink hanging flower, much like a columbine, but larger, which bloomed from a vine. The vines had grown through the tops of all the trees, providing a hanging pink canopy. Oddly enough, we had not seen these flowers on our first walk because we had been so focused on getting to the waterfall. Nobody else on the waterfall path seemed to notice the flowers either. On the second walk, we also noticed the stone foundation of the house, towering palm trees, and marble verandas. All of this had escaped us the first time. I began to see the property in a different light, and could almost envision the property as it had been many years before. I imagined Helen working diligently to prune the garden, Lathrop walking the paths along the ocean as he pondered new legislation, their children as they ran down to play in the spray of the waterfall along the beach. The world seemed to bloom before my eyes, as I began to really look at my surroundings. I noticed the rich turquise of the ocean, the brilliant pink of the sky as the sun began to set. Both Ted and I stood in amazement as we watched the sun set into the Pacific ocean for the first time, shocked at how quickly the sun moves down towards the line of the horizon. After the rest of the photographers and onlookers left, we were alone to enjoy the final colors of the evening sky and to watch the moon brighten beyond the shadow of a distant palm tree. Ted took the picture included above after all the other professional photographers left, sure there were no better pictures to be had.
As we walked back to our car, arm in arm, I can honestly say that we found everything we were looking for, and so much more.
By: Rebecca
Photo By: Ted (Taken in Julia Pfeiffer Burns State Park, CA)