Saturday, Sept 15 – Revisiting
I made a nice pillow out of special pads tucked inside a t-shirt, and slept sanguinely like a baby. There could have been an entire chorus line of bears dancing through my campsite in celebration of the delicacies I had brought to them, but I was blissfully engaged in a dreamless state of processing all the lactic acid from my muscles. I had brought four chair pads about the size of an LP, and they were a courageous buffer against gravity. They weighed almost nothing, and I found dozens of uses for them, other than keeping my butt from scraping on the rocks! I had also brought a tiny mite of a radio to try and get the Giants games that weekend, as they were leading their division in a pennant race. (They went on to win the World Series that year.) I could only get a few stations with that cheap contraption, so I wound up listening to half of the Yreka Miners’ football game in a futile effort to try and hear some scores. I learned way too much about Yreka’s prodigious athletic program, and nothing about the MLB pennant races. Oh well, at least there would be something to look forward to when I got home. The wilderness is sorely lacking in box scores!
My beloved Giants had won the World Series in 2010, which was the pinnacle of my experience as a lifelong baseball connoisseur. I have already related how much fun we’d had up here at the lakes, listening to games that hardly mattered, and now my Giants were embroiled in a race to the playoffs, and I was somewhere in the middle of “nowhere,” frantically adjusting an inferior Chinese gadget to try and capture some news about their fate. Nowadays the airwaves are crowded with radio, wireless, and cellular transmissions of all kinds. We have computer networks sending out howling swarms of data, made up of fragments of images and data miraculously flying through the air, and somehow being reassembled so they make sense on our devices. A dust storm of communication bits and bytes envelops our planet’s lower atmosphere, and even the higher reaches of atmosphere are bisected and pierced by the focused beams of satellites. We ascribe so much importance to the contents of these invisible particles of information, and yet what effect might they have on our bodies as they pass through us on the way to some radio, computer, television, or cell phone? Does wireless data have mass? It must, or else what the hell is it?
As I sat blanketed in the familiar scenery, I planned to revisit all the special places that decorated my memories like keepsake ornaments on a Christmas tree. Without a working camera to “preserve” the remembrances, I decided to try and describe them in words; not pixels. Too often, I think we drive ourselves to technical distraction by trying to capture our memories for an uncertain future, at the expense of living fully in the present moment. We let our digital devices interpret and store the memories for us, and our own magnificent abilities of perception atrophy from disuse.
What I call “Altamira” is an unnamed mountain on the topo map, measuring just over 7,000 feet high. Its peak is pointed and sharp, like the edge of a cracked eggshell. The top is actually set back several yards from the most engaging feature: the complex organic tapestry of the wall closest to the lake. If one looks closely, various rocks in this wall stand out and take on the character of one’s mood. Today I see a rectangular rock that looks like the side of a pitched tent. Is this because of the chilly wind? Following the ridgeline to the south and east, a schoolyard full of happy, young Hemlocks are enjoying recess on the cracks and crevices. There are some good rock-climbing routes up there, too: some more than 50 feet high. The last prominent feature on the rim, over my left shoulder to the east, is a singular large boulder, studded on the ridgeline, and shaped like a pyramid or diamond. This was near the curious bare pad we discovered years ago and speculated about being an alien landing platform. Could this be a crystal navigation beacon to guide them?
Behind my back, the wind is being combed by the same small, tenacious Ponderosa pine that has clung to the top of White Bear Rock since my first visit 35 years ago. It’s really not much bigger now than it was then: only about 12 feet tall. But its steadfastness in such an exposed spot is admirable. It displays more dying than living energy now, with many brown needles and a crust of lichen forming at its top. I can relate. Ah, but there is still some audacious vitality left in that scarred trunk!
Just next to where the Three Amigos made their camp is another familiar acquaintance: another small, twisted Ponderosa audaciously thriving in the crack of a large rock. I made a close examination yesterday, and there didn’t appear to have been much change since I last saw it 12 years ago. The roots perhaps seemed more swollen in their cracks, and the scabby bark was more layered and crusty, but that little tree was going strong. With the strength of love and the persistence of life, it was still powerful enough to break apart a granite mountain. All over these Alps, millions of trees snake their roots deep into cracks, water fills the spaces and expands as ice in the winter, and the cracks are forced apart by the exuberance of change. Someday those trees and rocks will fall, and more trees and plants will grow back. Each generation will wear the mountains down a few more feet, in a powerful partnership with gravity and erosion.
The warm sun was on my back now. It had peaked over the east promontory, where the standing stones remain as sentinels until they, too, will lose their battle with gravity. There was a little faux bee fascinated by me and the white notepad all that time. It was one of those banded flies that can hover miraculously in the air, with properties of flight that seem physically impossible. It had jeweled ruby eyes and yellow & black stripes, and its wings beat so fast they couldn’t be seen – only heard as a mad, keening vibration. If I moved my pen or hand even a fraction, it effortlessly changed its position to see what I was doing. What amazing mobility! What on earth could be its enemy? Everything up here is eaten by everything else, but what could possibly catch this creature? I twitched my finger and he was gone.
I have reflected before on returning to the food chain in the wilderness, but always with a dramatic predator in the predominant link, such as a bear or lion. My actual nemeses are decidedly less glamorous. A little at a time, the mosquitoes and other wee bloodsucking beasties were feasting on the conveniently packaged protein I had delivered to their doorstep. Thankfully there weren’t many insects up here this late in the year. Large, clumsy ants lumbered blindly all over the area, picking up crumbs of decaying plant life and other morsels, but I was not decomposing yet, and had nothing to worry about. Even while alive, smaller mites and multitudinous tiny creatures were very likely enjoying the banquet of my dead skin as it fell to the forest floor. Not to mention the horrific, miniscule multitudes that maintain permanent residence on my skin, hair, and even my eyelashes! I felt like a taco truck at halftime of a football game. That morning I had buried a veritable king’s feast for the creepy crawlies that inhabited the forest floor, but we won’t talk about that…
Why is it, in all the thousands of adventure stories describing intrepid heroes and conquerors who assert their brawny wills on the wilderness, we never hear about any of these guys taking a dump? I mean, it’s the most natural experience that’s unquestionably common to emperors and savages alike, but we never hear it mentioned – denying the rest of us any details from which we might learn. Did Lewis & Clark just drop road apples in a line, like a mule train, without stopping? Did John Muir wrap his scat in forest leaves and carry it home so as to not defile the cathedral glades? I don’t even want to think about Paul Bunyan. There is truly a pile of questions to ponder; with no help from the collected literature. Our race will live and die with too much said about what goes in our biological recycling centers, and not nearly enough about what comes out. The entire intellectual lexicon describing the organic substance of which we produce the greatest volume in our lifetimes is contained in one bumper sticker: shit happens.
The shadows had been changing subtly on Altamira as I pondered my poo (and other disposable thoughts). Parts of the wall appeared squared off like the buttresses of a cathedral or castle, and cast deep, angular shadows. The softer rock was eroded more in places, producing a bubbly, whipped foam texture. The attractive mixture of gray and white was highlighted everywhere by profuse vegetation. Scrub manzanita blazed resplendent in gold, green, and red autumn hues. Mountain alders of orange and ochre tones were scattered in the moist places, and everywhere I looked, the beautiful emerald evergreens lounged about demurely with their adorable, curved tips. They all had the delightfully playful character of Dr. Seuss cartoons. From bonsai sized specimens to perfect Christmas trees, on up to weathered giants that have stood watch over the lake for hundreds of years… Those trees were the collective soul of Little Bear Lake. The ethereal song of the gentle morning breezes through their branches crooned of a presence that was beyond time or place.
I had come up here hoping to be alone, bringing Dante as almost an afterthought. Only recently had I emerged from years of stifling blackness into the dawn of a new understanding of myself, and I wanted to test this new comprehension in the ultimate proving grounds, where my perception was not tainted by the complex rules or judgment of society. I soon recognized that the naturally sacred setting made it easy to converse amiably with these three typical American guys: John, Aaron, and Doug. It was a kind of beta test of new programming my brain was working out; to replace the dysfunctional, antisocial patterns of many years. I could have been anyone I wanted to portray – I didn’t even have to tell them my real name (but I did anyway, if only to authenticate the experiment).
We made our introductions in that polite but guarded way of strangers, and I could tell within a few minutes that these were not the kind of gentlemen with whom I would normally choose to associate. Their conversation leaned towards guns, hunting, and drinking (not necessarily in that order), and they had brought the implements to promulgate their masculine agendas. I was quite friendly and agreeable without letting on that bringing a gun into a federally designated wilderness area was prohibited by law, if not an outright sacrilege. They showed me their incongruous weapons before they had even eaten breakfast, which caused me to wonder about their priorities, and their sense of security in the world. In my marvelously mellow mood, brought about by communing with the stillness of the lake for hours before they had awakened from their fitful dreams of conquest, I could simply embrace their delusions, and project my inner calmness with strength and confidence. I was interested to discover that after only about 15 minutes, their macho posturing melted away from my persistent, mitigating acceptance, and a new dimension of communication opened up.
Here we were, miles from nowhere, four souls far removed from the barriers and predispositions of society, and we opened up to one another like brothers. John told me of his baby boy, who was born 4 months premature earlier that summer weighing only 18 ounces, and was still struggling to overcome his tiny, poorly developed body. For the haggard dad, this backpacking trip was a badly-needed escape from the constant stress and drama of the industrial medical complex back home. Aaron confided that his business was failing, and he was pondering a major career decision that could cost him his home. Doug was less forthcoming than his companions, but indicated that he had been looking for a job all summer. I did my part to share in the impromptu confessional by disclosing that my life had recently become a train wreck, and I was taking a break from working hard to repair the damage. They didn’t ask what had derailed me, and I didn’t offer details. It was enough to share the communal suffering of existence.
Life’s troubles are so much harder to reconcile when they are locked inside like a misbehaving child. The pouting, self-defeating tapes run in an endless loop inside the brain, until they become distorted by their own despair. Sharing our miseries with others is an oddly comforting release from a prison of our own making – if only to be reminded that we are all struggling towards the light, and that none of us are ever completely free from the darkness.
“Life is worth nothing if it is not a continuous overcoming of problems. Each problem that waits for a solution at your hand is a religious duty imposed upon you by life itself. Any escape from problems, physical or mental, is an escape from life, as there can be no life that is not full of problems.”
— Paramahansa Yogananda