As we now do, we gave Wednesday’s nor’easter a name. Winter Storm Quinn it was who blew through leaving a foot or more of snow, downed trees and branches, and power out throughout the region.

In so many ways Quinn was not a welcome guest for most of us. At best his unbounded energy and its consequence was an inconvenience. For some his disregard for order and the well-being of others has brought hurt and a serious disruption to our lives.

For Becky and me, Quinn’s misbehavior brought not much more than inconvenience, mostly measured in the thirty hours of no electricity at our house.  But even that wasn’t all that bad.

The power went out around 3:30 on Wednesday afternoon and by the time night fell, our candles were ready, the Scrabble board was out, the extra blankets were on the bed, and the lightweight backpacking stove was pulled off the shelf where it belongs, its fuel tank filled with white gas, the pump pumped, and it was ready to be lit.

Becky outscored me by a hundred points or more in the after dinner candlelight Scrabble game. It must have been that tray of seven vowels that did me in, or maybe I was outplayed.

Mostly, though, I am thankful to Quinn for the memories he brought to mind when that little Peak One backpacking stove sprang to life with its bright blue flame and reassuring purr.  Of course, I took a couple of pictures and posted them on social media (oh, the depth or our first world inconveniences).

My guess is that I bought the stove at the REI store in Berkeley, California, 45 years ago.  These days it mostly helps get us through the inconveniences of the named storms that blow along the east coast. In its day it made countless journeys to the high country of the Sierra Nevada of California and the Bitterroots of Idaho and Montana.  As I pumped the Peak One’s pump and lit its burner, my mind was flooded with memories from 11,000 feet and camps made along the streams and beside the lakes of the high country.  And, yes, Craig, Kathy, Ellen, Reed, Christopher, Peter and others who were on those treks so long ago “liked” my post, as I knew they would.  Of course, I thought of Bob.

Memory is more than nostalgia. It is a gift from God. “I will remember the deeds of the Lord; yes, I will remember your wonders of old,” the Psalmist writes (Psalm 77:11). The Peak One was with us when we camped at Cathedral Lake in the Blackcap Basin and when we traversed the icefield above the lake and made our way through the Notch  and down into Blue Canyon. I remember the wonders of the place and the deeds of the Lord when we were there.

Our band of brothers and sisters conquered occasional fear and anxiety, exhaustion and mosquito bites, crossing those ice fields and sometime swollen streams. We played “numbers” to decide who would scrub the cooking pots, and we gathered around the campfire and opened our “Good News for Modern Man” New Testaments for Bible study. “Pass it On” would give way to “Father Abraham” soon enough.

Those best kinds of memories are more than nostalgia.  They remind us of who we are and of the faithfulness of our God.  God who was with us as we made our way across the icefield above Cathedral Lake, through the Notch, and down into Blue Canyon will be with us no matter what tomorrow brings.

So, hey, Quinn, thanks for the memories. More than nostalgia, they are a means of grace.

See you Sunday