With much regret I must announce that after spending two weeks in the wilderness of mid-northern Ontario, I was neither transformed into Henry David Thoreau (as I had previously hoped I might be) nor did I fully let go of existence and discover my true Buddha nature (which would have been a decent showing on my part, I think, as well). I did however get to stand about 30 feet from a truly wild moose and her calf, watching them watch me while they nibbled on some tender lily stalks in a marshy offshoot of a lake. We shared a moment together, accompanied by the occasional slap of a beaver tail in the smooth dark water nearby. It was a lovely few minutes before dinner, as the sun was setting behind the mountains and water dribbled off both their long, stringy beards into the lake.
I came to the lakes to hear myself and the sounds of nature. Perhaps I came to live deliberately, to taste the marrow of life and see if I know it already.
I heard much silence, and I saw much beauty. I saw patience, and felt the cradling of water. I heard myself slowly letting go of some attachment. I heard the loons' hollow, serene and haunting cries in the evening. I saw sunsets that couldn't be anything but beautiful. I felt a world that is fine without people, and mildly tolerant of us during our species' sojourn searching for meaning.
Again I feel a common thread that runs through us and our ecosystems, the air we breathe and the living water we drink, the views we cherish out our windows and the homeless sleeping on tired, dirty pavement, chainsaws and beavers' teeth, love and frenetic action, wood and plastic, electric lights and teakettles on cast-iron stoves. The thread is elusive yet perceptible, fleeting if we stare too hard and too long but always tangible at the periphery while we smile on sunny afternoons with friends. It's feng shui de-mystified and Freud when he wasn't neurotic. It's so much that of course we can't grok it all at once, but it's always there in the brushstrokes that make up our memories.
What can we do to cultivate it, shelter it, draw on it, grow it, spread it? Get out, love life - go to Fairmount Park, Prospect Park, Central Park, Golden Gate Park, People's Park, Hanover Park, Exhibition Park, The Mall, Peers Park, or even better the park of your choice. Walk barefoot in the grass, offer a stranger some home-made food, hold hands with friends, do whatever... The whole universe probably started with a giant, homogeneous explosion, is now divided up into usable elements that make up us, and will likely eventually cool to about 4 degrees Kelvin and slowly pull itself back together in a giant, shrinking disk of energy. Remember where we came from in this tiny slice of cosmic time - we evolved over tens and hundreds of thousands of years of just us and the forests, rivers, lakes, and plains. If we feel down in the earth to explore our roots, there are useful things there to remember, if only vague impressions of a time gone by that we may want to feel again sometime in the future.
Have I gone totally granola hippie-dippie? For a little while :-) but I recommend it every now and then - I always feel like I'm onto something bigger than myself...
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