When I first started camping on mountains alone, it never occurred to me to be afraid. And when I dutifully considered that perhaps there was good reason for me to feel fear, I still didn't.
Of course, there were times now and then when I heard a noise in the night, and regretted a moment of carelessness in not hanging my food properly. Or when I found myself alone on a mountainside where a mountain lion had been spotted the day before. Or when a rutting bull moose (which I thought was a bear) spent an hour and a half grunting near my campsite in the dark. But it never occurred to me to turn back. Or if it did, it was just my mind running around in circles; the rest of me, the core, the anchor, had already decided.
But the rest of my life has not worked that way. Somewhere, somehow, someone told me I should be afraid. My mind, being diligent, believed them, and passed that experience on to the rest of me.
When I look at this fallen tree, I see how things change depending on how we look at them. This perspective makes the log seem interminable, reaching ahead into the future. Another angle could make its girth seem insurmountably thick. A closeup would make the spurs appear deadly, like the shadowed teeth on the rock. Or these same views can also reveal the detailed beauty of texture, weathering, grain, imperfection--the genuine story of the tree.
Going into the wilderness, for some reason, was the only way I could ever reach a part of me that was bigger than my frightened mind. But it's wilderness, also, which is teaching me that everything we encounter is part of a story--part of our own story. Within that story, we are its perfect witness, its only teller. We have only to allow the story to unravel, beginning to end, root to tip, and to let it be ours.
Monday, September 28, 2009
Saturday, September 19, 2009
disheveled
Have you ever felt that no matter how many details you attend to, parts of you are still sticking out in every direction, wild and frayed and just trying to find the Light?
That's how life has been for me, for a while now. My mind is like a wind I cannot see, coming from every direction. It lifts each carefully tucked corner as soon as I turn away, raises dust storms and questions and shadows, shifts direction to evade understanding. I stand up, and it knocks me down. I choose a path, and it is obliterated. I stay put, and it swirls around me, urging me to action. This is a dance I know well, but somehow have still not mastered.
Of course, the key is to bend, to find true strength in flexibility rather than in resistance. And in the bending, the wind's hold cannot catch us, and we begin to notice the strange harmony of the disheveled world around us.
I was sitting on my third floor balcony this evening when a collection of starlings flocked up and assembled noisily in the large cottonwood tree in front of me. They were a wind in themselves, so many wings and tails, so much commotion, their chatter like an army of squeaky wheels being rolled for oiling. Already they wore their winter plumage, a contentious pattern of black and white speckles, and their beaks were winter black (as opposed to breeding yellow in spring).
But their gregarious activity delighted me. Although each squeaked and whistled its own separate opinion, regardless of all the other voices around it, they were clearly all of the same mind. And when a small gust of breeze kicked up, they all rose from the tree of one accord, the sound of their collective wings a whoosh of feathered wind, a scattered beating of a single heart knowing where it wanted to go.
That's how life has been for me, for a while now. My mind is like a wind I cannot see, coming from every direction. It lifts each carefully tucked corner as soon as I turn away, raises dust storms and questions and shadows, shifts direction to evade understanding. I stand up, and it knocks me down. I choose a path, and it is obliterated. I stay put, and it swirls around me, urging me to action. This is a dance I know well, but somehow have still not mastered.
Of course, the key is to bend, to find true strength in flexibility rather than in resistance. And in the bending, the wind's hold cannot catch us, and we begin to notice the strange harmony of the disheveled world around us.
I was sitting on my third floor balcony this evening when a collection of starlings flocked up and assembled noisily in the large cottonwood tree in front of me. They were a wind in themselves, so many wings and tails, so much commotion, their chatter like an army of squeaky wheels being rolled for oiling. Already they wore their winter plumage, a contentious pattern of black and white speckles, and their beaks were winter black (as opposed to breeding yellow in spring).
But their gregarious activity delighted me. Although each squeaked and whistled its own separate opinion, regardless of all the other voices around it, they were clearly all of the same mind. And when a small gust of breeze kicked up, they all rose from the tree of one accord, the sound of their collective wings a whoosh of feathered wind, a scattered beating of a single heart knowing where it wanted to go.
Friday, July 3, 2009
Stalking frogs
They sound like small dying cows, and they know when you're drawing near, no matter how quiet you are.
But first there was the moose. A large, lumpy brown moose, browsing on the other side of the wetland that sprawls away from a road near where I live. I spotted her during an evening walk, and stepped off the road onto a dirt pullover to watch her for a while.
Then I heard the tired, strained moans, and my other senses became attentive. For a while I convinced myself that perhaps a duck was caught and dying in fishing line, the sound was so hoarse and woeful. I was afraid to look, but couldn't help myself...and I started down a dirt path beside the water to see what I could find.
Frogs. I finally realized they were frogs, and I never did manage to see one (the photo is from another time and place altogether). But they really do sound dreadful, and they led me into a whole world that I might have missed. Because the more I looked and listened in this wetland setting, the more I discovered, until I was swept away with the life that was there. The scent, a sweet fragrance of wild purple phlox in full bloom, and air washed fresh from a June rain; the color, a sky charcoal-yellow with an approaching summer thunderstorm; the sound, the musical chatter of a finch from a tall cottonwood; the movement, an absolute ballet of jumping fish, leaping and twisting and skimming the surface all over the water. With binoculars I spotted an old beaver lodge and a mother duck with her entourage of young. I let myself stalk some frogs, and the next thing I knew, I had an entire National Geographic's worth of nature right under my nose.
I also couldn't help but notice a large new home across the water. A fabulous setting, overlooking this wetland with its moose and peace and wildlife. It had a terraced lawn approaching the water's edge, a hammock strung between two fir trees. A sitting nook with chairs was nestled against a bank below the house; three stories' worth of tall windows reflected beautifully over the marsh; an open second-floor deck awaited company. But the only sign of life I could see there was the flashing picture of a huge flat-screen television inside.
Whose life will we choose to live? The lives we see on TV and the internet, or the life outside that's waiting for us to see it--our own?
But first there was the moose. A large, lumpy brown moose, browsing on the other side of the wetland that sprawls away from a road near where I live. I spotted her during an evening walk, and stepped off the road onto a dirt pullover to watch her for a while.
Then I heard the tired, strained moans, and my other senses became attentive. For a while I convinced myself that perhaps a duck was caught and dying in fishing line, the sound was so hoarse and woeful. I was afraid to look, but couldn't help myself...and I started down a dirt path beside the water to see what I could find.
Frogs. I finally realized they were frogs, and I never did manage to see one (the photo is from another time and place altogether). But they really do sound dreadful, and they led me into a whole world that I might have missed. Because the more I looked and listened in this wetland setting, the more I discovered, until I was swept away with the life that was there. The scent, a sweet fragrance of wild purple phlox in full bloom, and air washed fresh from a June rain; the color, a sky charcoal-yellow with an approaching summer thunderstorm; the sound, the musical chatter of a finch from a tall cottonwood; the movement, an absolute ballet of jumping fish, leaping and twisting and skimming the surface all over the water. With binoculars I spotted an old beaver lodge and a mother duck with her entourage of young. I let myself stalk some frogs, and the next thing I knew, I had an entire National Geographic's worth of nature right under my nose.
I also couldn't help but notice a large new home across the water. A fabulous setting, overlooking this wetland with its moose and peace and wildlife. It had a terraced lawn approaching the water's edge, a hammock strung between two fir trees. A sitting nook with chairs was nestled against a bank below the house; three stories' worth of tall windows reflected beautifully over the marsh; an open second-floor deck awaited company. But the only sign of life I could see there was the flashing picture of a huge flat-screen television inside.
Whose life will we choose to live? The lives we see on TV and the internet, or the life outside that's waiting for us to see it--our own?
Friday, June 5, 2009
illumination
This aspen leaf made me think about backwards branching. That is, following all the many roads back to their source, rather than to their ends.
The leaf's backlit veins travel delicately to their outermost boundaries, to the edges. Layer by layer, they split off into perhaps infinitely many smaller networks, performing their work with equal purpose. But they all originate from the stronger center vein down the leaf's middle.
Each leaf also has a stem that reaches back to a branch; the leaves are their own network layer. And each branch anchors to the trunk. In the case of an aspen grove, even the trunks are just extensions of a living root system that comprises one complete organism.
And how much further back can the journey of this leaf's life be traced?
There's a time for us to expand outward, to grow and seek and stretch and find new edges to our limits. And there's also a time to follow that same journey inward, to understand the wholeness that cradles all of our pieces, and that illuminates our multitude of antics here on Earth.
The leaf's backlit veins travel delicately to their outermost boundaries, to the edges. Layer by layer, they split off into perhaps infinitely many smaller networks, performing their work with equal purpose. But they all originate from the stronger center vein down the leaf's middle.
Each leaf also has a stem that reaches back to a branch; the leaves are their own network layer. And each branch anchors to the trunk. In the case of an aspen grove, even the trunks are just extensions of a living root system that comprises one complete organism.
And how much further back can the journey of this leaf's life be traced?
There's a time for us to expand outward, to grow and seek and stretch and find new edges to our limits. And there's also a time to follow that same journey inward, to understand the wholeness that cradles all of our pieces, and that illuminates our multitude of antics here on Earth.
Thursday, April 23, 2009
beginnings
I love beginnings.
I don't feel that I've seen very many of them; I always seem to be trying to wrap up something that went before. The past year has been a real wake-up call to letting go.
But on a single spring evening's bike ride, I found beginnings everywhere. I saw the first ospreys back from winter, calling in whistled chirps from their nesting platform. The orange-white-black flash of a rufous-sided towhee on a pine branch surprised me, and the shrill warning call of killdeer greeted me at the Dover wetland. Each first bird sighting is its own little celebration. The air will never feel as fresh through the year as it does now, damp and new. And on the way back, I caught the very first frog-croak of evening.
Spring is easy to love. It brings back reminders of all the little joys and possibilities we'd forgotten about in winter.
I don't feel that I've seen very many of them; I always seem to be trying to wrap up something that went before. The past year has been a real wake-up call to letting go.
But on a single spring evening's bike ride, I found beginnings everywhere. I saw the first ospreys back from winter, calling in whistled chirps from their nesting platform. The orange-white-black flash of a rufous-sided towhee on a pine branch surprised me, and the shrill warning call of killdeer greeted me at the Dover wetland. Each first bird sighting is its own little celebration. The air will never feel as fresh through the year as it does now, damp and new. And on the way back, I caught the very first frog-croak of evening.
Spring is easy to love. It brings back reminders of all the little joys and possibilities we'd forgotten about in winter.
Sunday, April 19, 2009
the forces that shape us
Walking in the park across the street a few weeks ago, I found this ray of light, seeking something to illuminate. I felt fortunate to capture a moment of its play.
As I look around this spring, I see evidence everywhere of how life is shaped by forces both within and outside of its control. Life and death can be opportunistic, random, necessary, or tragic - like the white bones of two deer I found lying by the railroad track, linked vertebrae and a rib cage neat as erector sets, miraculous even in death. Spring bulbs wake readily to bloom--but it was the freezing sleep that prepared them. Robins arriving in February, tired from their long migration, must wait to eat until winter has finished its work. But when the earthworms rise, a spring rain sends them out onto the park path in search of dry land. They cover the walk like strewn pine needles, and I hopscotch my way around them, smiling. But later, I will see that many of them drowned, never making it back to the grass.
There is so much about our lives that seems unpredictable, and oddly, in this time of new life, it occurs to me just how equal and essential a part of life death is. Not just death, but endurance, struggle, patience, and surrender. All of it, all the faces of the circle, are part of one glorious whole. I have railed against the aspects of my life that I don't like for far too long. I can safely say, with what could be called wisdom if it weren't so obvious, that there is no peace in fighting. Our greatest experience of life, I think, is to embrace it completely. It is from here that we can genuinely enjoy the adventure.
As I look around this spring, I see evidence everywhere of how life is shaped by forces both within and outside of its control. Life and death can be opportunistic, random, necessary, or tragic - like the white bones of two deer I found lying by the railroad track, linked vertebrae and a rib cage neat as erector sets, miraculous even in death. Spring bulbs wake readily to bloom--but it was the freezing sleep that prepared them. Robins arriving in February, tired from their long migration, must wait to eat until winter has finished its work. But when the earthworms rise, a spring rain sends them out onto the park path in search of dry land. They cover the walk like strewn pine needles, and I hopscotch my way around them, smiling. But later, I will see that many of them drowned, never making it back to the grass.
There is so much about our lives that seems unpredictable, and oddly, in this time of new life, it occurs to me just how equal and essential a part of life death is. Not just death, but endurance, struggle, patience, and surrender. All of it, all the faces of the circle, are part of one glorious whole. I have railed against the aspects of my life that I don't like for far too long. I can safely say, with what could be called wisdom if it weren't so obvious, that there is no peace in fighting. Our greatest experience of life, I think, is to embrace it completely. It is from here that we can genuinely enjoy the adventure.
Monday, April 6, 2009
Old and new
A new season doesn't arrive without baggage, all shiny and undented. It grows from what went before. Spring is rife with a chaotic array of fresh and stale, broken and supple, bare truth and sweet promise.
The season's first task is to sort out the old and new, a frenzy of creative reorganization. Last year's frayed bird nests lie naked among the branches, secret havens reduced to bones. Shriveled fruits and bent limbs emerge from melting snow, along with the furry tips of new pussywillow buds. Nearby mountains still bear snowy peaks, but robins' evening songs ring clear.
The one thing that cannot be denied is life's progression. Regardless of trials, losses, dead ends, life's nature is to reach ahead again, to push upward – to find a new place to grow.
The season's first task is to sort out the old and new, a frenzy of creative reorganization. Last year's frayed bird nests lie naked among the branches, secret havens reduced to bones. Shriveled fruits and bent limbs emerge from melting snow, along with the furry tips of new pussywillow buds. Nearby mountains still bear snowy peaks, but robins' evening songs ring clear.
The one thing that cannot be denied is life's progression. Regardless of trials, losses, dead ends, life's nature is to reach ahead again, to push upward – to find a new place to grow.
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