COMING ROUND THE MOUNTAIN

There are certain risks I'm willing to take and they usually involve me in my car going down an unknown road. The west is full of roads that just come to an end and there's something about going to the end of a narrow track that more than appeals to me. A while ago, in between two heavy duty health treatments, I gave myself three days in Sequoia National Park. The first day into the park I passed a small sign with an arrow that said Mineral King.  I thought I remembered hearing that name in weather reports, but maybe not. I was intrigued, though, and on the second day I turned on to the road. There were houses along it for the first quarter mile, but when I left them behind the road narrowed down to little more than a single lane of rough, potholed asphalt. If a car came the other way I thought we'd manage somehow to pass, but I would definitely be happier if it didn't come to that.
     The road followed the curve of the mountain and I could see straight ahead a line of mountains that seemed to go on forever. To my right, just past the passenger door, the pavement fell away into a very steep canyon with walls completely covered with tall pine trees. I rounded another curve and there was what seemed the same number of mountains stretching to infinity and saw the road was carved into every one of them. At one point, the road suddenly went down to a narrow river.  There was a bridge over it which I could tell was built by the WPA. Someone had tied a teddy bear and some flowers to one of its rails and as the road climbed up again on the other side of the water I tried not to think that someone had died there.
     The road went up for a very long time and the pines and other trees gave way to redwoods which in turn gave way to the pines. I stopped at one point and got out of the car to take a look down into the canyon.  I couldn't see its bottom and I had to reach behind me to feel the car to anchor me. When I drove on, I don't think I've ever been more exhilarated - to be on this track that people had laid down a long time ago in a landscape unchanged for thousands of years, to be alone following the curve of mountain after mountain, to have no idea where I was heading. I felt completely free.
     After almost ten miles, the road finally did come to an end, at Mineral King which turned out to be nothing more than a Park Ranger's cabin. It was locked up and that gave me pause because coming around those mountains I had thought if the car broke down a ranger would come along and we'd figure out what to do. I sat by a nearby brook for a while, listened to the birds, then turned the car around. The ride back wasn't as exciting as the one out but I didn't think once about the car breaking down. I had what I'd come to Sequoia for, a rush of intense life and the transcendence of stunning beauty.
     

     
     

GRACKLES

Years ago, every once in a while I would stumble into a feeling I called "on the verge."  It usually happened when I saw a beautiful sunset or sat in the silence of the redwood trees, or let myself connect with the beauty of Nature. It had happened once when I had spent a few days at Zion National Park.  I'd been disappointed at how crowded the park was and on the morning I was driving out, I happened to be stopped by a road crew so that traffic heading in my direction could pass.  I happened to be the first car in the line and the flagman, who happened to be a woman, was standing very near my window. As we waited, I asked her if there were back roads in the park where tourists didn't go.  She said she and her husband went camping off a road up ahead, she told me where and when it was my turn, I thanked her and drove on.

     I found the turnoff easily.  The moment I turned right, the car and I started to climb. Parts of Zion reach over 8500 feet elevation.  I don't how how high I was but I was definitely going higher.  The sky was bright blue, the sunlight sharp, the aspens had already turned and were very bright yellow.  I was amazed when the trees gave way to an alpine meadow and there was a farm just beyond it.  One farm, all the way up here.  

     Eventually the pavement ran out and I continued on a dirt road, still going up.  The air was so clear and all the colors, the hundred different shades of green, the glinting granite of rocks in the distance, the brown dirt -- everything was clean and hard edged, beautiful.  I didn't see another car or person.  It was just what I wanted.

     Then the dirt road petered out, ended.  I got out of the car and started walking straight ahead, through some bushes and heavy growth.  I don't know what instinct told me to walk in that direction, but suddenly the undergrowth ended and I found myself on the top of a cliff with a very deep steep sided canyon below.  It was breathtaking.  There were miles of mountains falling away whichever way I looked, the wind was the only sound except for the cries of three or four huge blackbirds flying circles in the canyon. ( I looked them up in my bird book when I got home and I think they were grackles.)  I felt myself flying on the backs of those birds, circling lazily on currents of air. I closed my eyes and took deep breaths. That all that wildness and grandeur existed whether I or anyone was here to see it, was somehow comforting. When I opened my eyes, I felt again that sense if being on the verge. On the verge of what? I couldn't say but it was a big feeling, the biggest I'd felt, set off by the beauty of the world around me.

     I've thought of that feeling many times over the years.  I understand it now.  It was the yearning deep inside me to connect with the world, to be right-sized in it, to give myself over to the great mystery at the center of the world.  I saw myself laughing, wanting to pull long beautiful ribbons out of my chest and throw them in the air so the sun could shine on them. Joy. I didn't know it then but I was on the verge of joy. Years would go by before I was no longer on the verge, but opened fully, ready to walk through the door into Spirit.