As the calendar page turns, I’m reminded of one of our favorite places, Crystal Peaks Youth Ranch.

CPYR is just 9 acres of rustic buildings, paddocks, barns, horses, and joyous people who work hard and scatter love to the hundreds of visitors like a sower flings seed. It appears similar to small country places scattered across rural America. But Ed and I see it with eyes that reveal it as a miracle. As if by trick photography, we see the current bursting-with-life ranch as superimposed on the image of what it used to be: a barren, scraped raw cinder mine, a scar upon the beautiful land near The Three Sisters Mountains in Oregon. Looking at it through those eyes, the miracles that have transformed blight to hope are Continue reading →