Introduction – The Touchstone of All That Is

     I have found my center of the Universe.  My touchstone for all that is eternally real.  For you, there may be a different place, or a memory, or a feeling.  For me, the nexus of the timeless exists in the Trinity Alps of Northern California, and the GPS coordinates are irrelevant because it’s a place you have to locate with your heart; not your body.  There, you will find three mountain lakes so pristine and pure to the eye; mounted lovingly in the most spectacular of settings by the gentle hands of the Master Jeweler herself.  For some, these places might appear to be just pretty, or perhaps ordinary, or even boring.  However, in the subjective, primal perception of my soul, my own opinion is the only one that really matters.
 
      At the time of this writing, I have been backpacking to the same area every few years, (or as often as I can), for as long as I could carry my own gear.  In fact, I have never carried a real backpack on any other overnight trek.  Of course it’s an understatement to say I am obsessed with this small corner of the Earth.  It’s the only place where I’ve ever felt like I belonged.  I am like a conscious actor playing the same role over and over again his entire life; enhancing each performance with the combined experience of all those that went before.  The scenery changes slowly, the player ages and grows into his role, and the script evolves to a higher level as life becomes ever more complicated.  Supporting actors and understudies come and go.  Whole scenes are added and subtracted; rewritten and revised, but the play is the thing – and it just goes on and on.
 
     To me, these supernatural bodies of water are nothing less than the geographic vortex of unconditional love.  I could be perched on the east shore of Wee Bear, floating my mind on the warm updrafts of the ethereal atmosphere.  Or lounging on the stony platforms of Little Bear, conversing with the thousands of spirit faces in the opposite rock wall.  Or grooving next to an echoing fire at Big Bear as the pearly, infinitesimal glow of the Milky Way kisses the cusp of the granite rim on a moonless night.  It really wouldn’t matter where I am in that dreamscape, or in what direction I’m looking, or at what time of day.  For me, it’s the only sight that exists, and all there is to see.
 
     Those concave scars in the earth’s granite crust are natural fonts of wonder where the eternal force of creation bursts forth from deep beneath the planet’s surface.  There is a field of awareness there, without beginning or end, which the sacred landscape reveals.  To my mind, the lakes are vital wellsprings of primary revelation that I revisit over and over again, forsaking all other backpacking and wilderness destinations, struggling against the gravity of a 3,000 foot elevation gain, and fiercely abusing my body to return unerringly to the same spot every time like a beat-up steelhead.  When the mania of owning things and absurd demands of living in the delusional world of society become unbearable, it is here that I detoxify, rehabilitate, and rejuvenate my connection to what I really am.
 
     Why are we drawn out of our comfort zones to the wild, abrasive places that scratch and poke and wear at us?  Perhaps it is our way of scrubbing away the false patina of accumulated misconception that seems to cloud our vision; preventing us from perceiving fully.  Or maybe it’s for the same reason that nearly all of the remarkable, serious myths over thousands of years of our collective human tradition take place in some connection to the earth and its natural elements.  There are no memorable myths about living in the city, commuting, texting, paying taxes, or shopping for clothes.  The things that most of us spend the overwhelming majority of our time worrying about have no place in the realms of legend.  In the central irony of our species, our connections to the essential reality are so profound that we perceive them as myths; as if they do not actually exist.  Our imaginations become warped and hardened away from nature, and we increasingly settle for the mundane.
 
     The wild, untamed reaches are the genesis of our legends.  Most mythology is about people, and some is about animals, but nearly all of it celebrates humans overcoming the natural world.  Myths are often born in the lonely places.  There is usually some epic quest to endure, an obstacle to conquer, or a foe to vanquish.  What our folk tales fail to convey is the role the landscape itself plays in our heroics.  Just being in an untamed, deserted place gets our blood pumping, opens the pores of our skin, triggers the ancient fight-or-flight response, and awakens our oldest genetic memories of survival.  We humans are creatures of our environment like any other evolving animal, and natural selection was not intended to make us better drivers or shoppers.  The actual, physical universe is our freeway, on which we travel in an epic journey to train the mind and spirit; and the body is just the vehicle.  When the hero emerges victorious from his legendary challenges, what matters is not how strong or fast or brave he was, but how much his spirit has evolved.  The essential thing is: how much closer is he to the source of the energy that created him and his surroundings, and inspired him to meet their challenges?
 
     It’s no coincidence that the word inspiration can mean both spiritual and physical nourishment.  Our sustenance is the cohesiveness that sustains all matter; the creative energy upholding all existence in the universe.  We intrinsically sense that a restless, indefatigable benevolence is breathing with the silent solar wind, and drifting in the endless emptiness between stars.  Is the intelligence inside or outside of our bodies?  We tune in to the same ethereal force pulsating through the fathomless voids that separate the tiniest electrons in our bodies.  This power is most easily recognized in our unspoiled wilderness areas, where pure nature is concentrated in such inspiring magnificence that it uplifts us; seems to flow inside us.  The wilderness draws us to its crucible of creation as a moth to a flame, and there we are purified and made whole.
 
     Perhaps it’s because we don’t go to the wilderness often enough that we have lost our ability to see clearly.  Out there, at the boundary where the illusory domain of materialism diminishes, and the intuition of inter-connectedness rises, our vision is challenged – exercised if you will – so that we can see with clarity.  Usually, we are reluctant to venture out from our soft, safe places lined with all our pack rat stuff, and feel the vigor of exposing ourselves to danger and challenge.  We loathe having our security and comfort compromised in any way, even if our “safety” is only an illusion.  All fear is a lack of knowledge.  Most of us fear what we cannot see, and are afraid to forsake our mastery of falsehood to seek the inconvenient truth.
 
     In the wild places we see the invisible in what is visible.  By clearing our sight of man-made tangles and edifices the picture is simplified; distilled down to its elemental components.  Out there, beyond the roads and bridges, where one makes one’s own path through forest, rock, desert, and field, the Eternal Living Presence emerges from the peripheral exile of false perception and slips quietly into the center of our awareness.  Some know this Presence as God; others call it by a different name, but in the vast emptiness where the only frame of human reference is your Self, there is unquestionably a primary sentience or fundamental energy that sustains all the physical universe.  The recognition of this force leads to the discovery of our own true potential: a richness of fulfillment that is ever waiting for us.  When we see with the eye of this innate energy, we perceive the boundless expanse of eternal, unconditional love that forms the matrix of all physical and spiritual existence.  We are called to be explorers of the inner and outer wildernesses, so that the revelation of ourselves and our world may be expanded to its fullness.  At the farthest reaches of awareness we can see the true reality within us, and recognize it as the One on the outside to which we all belong.
 
     It’s not surprising that the more sophisticated tools we develop to help us see, the more we understand about our role in the universe as human beings.  On both the microscopic-subatomic scale, and the macroscopic-astronomical scale, our knowledge as a species is growing exponentially; and yet, with each new scientific breakthrough comes a realization that there is still so much more beyond the scope of our vision.  The sheer drive of science has resulted in the exhilarating discovery that we are the first human beings in the history of our species to know our true place in the physical universe.  What if we learned to apply our ravenous, inexorable quest for knowledge to the last true frontier: the undiscovered places inside the human soul?  When I am immersed in the natural world, away from all the clamoring, unnecessary distractions, the ability to “see” myself is enhanced to a degree comparable with the world’s most amazing scientific advancements.   Of course this is an entirely subjective sensation, but also paradoxically part of a collective consciousness that binds all humanity together.  We need our wild places in order to see ourselves – and each other – properly.  We need to shed the scales of wanting to see from our eyes and let in the wonders of all that exists beyond seeing.
 
     It is a sublime coincidence that my beloved proving grounds is in a place called the “Trinity” Alps.  That’s why I have been making the same rugged pilgrimage up to these holy bodies of water, over and over again, like the recitation of a prayer or mantra.  All serious attempts at spiritual progress are repetitive.  When I go backpacking in those primitive mountains, I go not just to recharge my batteries, but to nurture and sustain the fundamental energy of which the cells are composed.  I call on the Father to offer me guidance and protection on my journey.  I ask the Son to show me love, and more importantly, how to sacrifice it.  And I solicit the Holy Ghost for the humility to be grateful.  To me, it’s elemental.  In the wildest, purest back country of my soul, I am a Trinitarian.