Crater Lake

I am still blown away by Crater Lake. It was my first time going and from most accounts I’ve heard from people, it’s a place they’d like to go, but haven’t been.

Crater Lake was formed after a huge volcano had a massive eruption and the volcano peak sunk to form a caldera and over the last 7000 years, it has filled with water and snow. (Water leaves every summer due to seepage and evaporation.) You may be thinking, what do you mean by a huge volcano? Estimates have the volcano at 12,000’ pre-eruption. The surrounding volcanoes top out at about 9200’. This would have towered over them. Also, keep in mind that Crater Lake has a diameter of about 5 miles, give or take. If you think about it, you realize how massive the volcano must have been to cover the whole lake.

And then the water is almost an impossible shade of deep dark blue. The whole thing is breathtaking in size and beauty. The pictures I have up here do not do it justice especially since there should be a third picture between the two below. Just know that I sat at one of the overlook sites and just tried to comprehend the whole thing – a volcano that forms over hundreds of thousands of years, blows its top, and then almost instantly (especially when compared to the amount of time it has been around) becomes one of the most beautiful and pristine lakes in the world, just 7000 years ago. And yet everything around it remains in balance.



I’m sure that a wiser man than I could draw deeper meaning from this, but for me where I am now, it illustrates the importance of being willing to change, even catastrophically so. I often approach change gradually – at least in my mind. I am normally comfortable with each step of the way when I make change. I don’t know if I could envision what a Crater Lake type of transformation would look like for me.