“It has always seemed to me that true natural presence, true wild being, involves no tuning out of anything. It must be absolutely contemplative – openly receptive to all the sights, sounds, smells, tastes, and feelings that exist in each immediate moment. I believe it is civilization, the taming of our nature, that has taught us to focus on a single task and tune out what we consider to be distractions. I acknowledge that we do have to do this to function well in our society – but it just isn’t natural.
By the time we reach adulthood, most of us are so conditioned to focusing attention that the concentrated one-track mind is the only way we have of approaching situations. As we mature, we may be vaguely aware of mission something, but we are too far away from it even to give it a name.
What we are missing is fullness of life. To put it simply, in concentrating on one thing at a time, we miss everything else.”
(Gerald May, The Wisdom of Wilderness, pp. 61, 64)
I often overlook it – the first exhilarating morning stretch; the soft warmth of the blanket and the nest it has helped me create; the early morning quiet before the busy stirring. This morning there is more. Out the window – where?
Misty, dawn-smoke seeping through evergreens on the mountains.
Shallow, white rapids streaming over rocks in the river below.
Curving tracks, each emerging view more compelling than the last.
A lone white plastic chair abandoned on the river bank across the way.
Fingerling waterfalls down the opposite bank, and then near enough to touch. Waterfalls – suddenly a lattice-work of falls.
Patches of remnant snow at the edge of the woods.
Northern California I eventually learn – Dunsmuir.
Over breakfast I overhear that it is typically dark when the train passes through this area. Suddenly I am grateful for the delays that held the experience until dawn. Apparently Mt. Shasta is off to the right, but it is raining gently and the visibility is too limited to see it.
The day has begun, and I intend to tune little out.
1 comment:
Man, Brother Diebel you are living a dream! I'm hopelessly addicted to the daily report, living this trip vicariously through you. The Landscape Architect and the Christian in me have always longed to take a trip like this -- to just behold the marvelous creation, and "hear" what it (or it's Creator) might say to me, "feel" how it would surely move me. That was the ONLY good thing about driving back and forth all of those months between Louisville and Des Moines -- being able to see the landforms change, watch the sunsets, and just be. I can't wait for the next chapter! Ride on, my friend, ride on!
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