I was neither designed nor destined for life in the big city; my existence therein relies heavily, it seems, on regular visits to places designed only by the natural passage of time, geologic forces unencumbered by human design, and the cosmic order of chance. This is my therapy, my chapel, my connection to those things greater than myself.
Who appoints where aspens grow? What ordains where rocks fall to slow the descent of water melting from glaciers high above? I don't know and I don't care... only that these places remain for me and those who follow me when my judgment cometh, and that right soon.
My hypocrisy goes only so far though, I suppose-- I drove here in a truck on a road, then a dirt road, leaving my vehicle in a patch of dry earth scraped clear of plants to form a parking lot. I walked the well-established trail a couple miles through chaparral and then pine and aspen forests to arrive at this little basin of water in the Ansel Adams wilderness, nestled below an escarpment carved out of the Sierra Nevada. The signs of humanity and her sins are here-- a few trees bearing the sickening scars of someone's scrawled initials, an occasional wrapper of trash haphazardly dropped or cast to the ground.
But there is beauty here- the silence of space, running water and wind in the pines. The cry of a water bird or a raven in the trees, the scree of a bald eagle hunting the same trout as me, with sharper eyes and hooked talons I can't bear.
Like so many small lakes along the slopes of the eastern Sierra, there is complex beauty in the simplicity of things, a refreshment, a revitalizing tonic for all five senses and all the parts of your heart that have no connection to cardiology. Enjoy the myriad shades of blue in the water-- cobalt and cerulean and aquamarine, juxtaposed against the stark background of green and earth. As the sun falls behind the crest of the Sierras, watch the shadows climb the walls of the canyon on either side. Leave only footprints and your troubles here, and take only photographs and memories.
Because for most of us, a return trip down the trail to the car and the road home and the nuances and nuisances of those things awaits impatiently. You can't stay here forever, even if a part of you never really leaves.
And that is the portion to return to-- a small sacrificial piece of the puzzle that makes the moments between moments and the spaces between places worth revisiting.
It won't be long now. Because as Richard Bach wrote, "If our friendship depends on things like space and time, then when we finally overcome space and time, we've destroyed our own brotherhood! But overcome space, and all we have left is Here. Overcome time, and all we have left is Now."
I sure hope so. read more