“It is a commonplace of all religious thought, even the most primitive, that the man seeking
visions and insight must go apart from his fellows and live for a time in the wilderness.
If he is of the proper sort, he will return with a message. It may not be a message from the god
he set out to seek, but even if he has failed in that particular, he will have had a vision
or seen a marvel, and these are always worth listening to and thinking about.”
— Loren Eiseley
I made it down the trail in about five hours, with plenty of rests. I found it easier going over Dis Butte and staying above the worst spots, but the traverse is tricky and rugged no matter how you try it. When hiking alone, the danger is increased immeasurably. There are so many different routes where the chances of being found after an injury are drastically reduced – even on a holiday! I found many more sweet little gardens tended by the local gnomes and brownies. Vibrant displays of exotic-looking wildflowers were tucked into mossy crevices and crannies where seeps stained the white granite.
At the pools I took a pack off rest to get some videos of the rushing water, which was still captivating in its vigor. Then I filled my water bottle for what felt like the hundredth time, and hit the dusty trail again. I met a trail-shocked couple in the stifling hot, brush-choked part of the trail just below the lake, and tried to give them some encouragement. The exasperated young woman looked like she wanted to kill her boyfriend, and he stared at me pleadingly, as if I might provide some word or validation that would save him. I mumbled a few reassuring platitudes about being “almost there,” and tactfully moved on to avoid becoming collateral damage.
Again I took it very slow and careful, watching where I put my feet and using my walking stick to absorb as much of the downhill strain as possible. I paused often in the many beautiful glades, to enjoy them from a different angle. From time to time, I’d gaze wistfully over my shoulder at The Altar and the Beater Cedar, 1,000 feet above me to the southwest, and wished I was still up there. My sense of loss had begun as soon as I had left, and was already acute. Soon they disappeared from view, and I was committed to returning to “normal” life. Sigh.
I took another pack off rest at the Two Towers, then continued my walking wounded, barely controlled staggering back to the car. Funny how the pace was always faster going downhill, no matter how much I tried to take it easy. I blew past the bridge like a broken down wind-up toy, and headed straight for the car. Even with no watch, I felt I made it in record time. To my utter disappointment, my cold drinks were missing from the creek where I had cached them! A torn Ziploc bag indicated the culprit was a bear, and sure enough, I found the cans nearby, still inside the second bag, totally crushed and chewed open by powerful jaws. How in the world did he smell them underneath the water? I picked up the garbage and rubbed my dry, resentful lips.
The last 100 yards up the creek bank to the car were brutal. Just 50 feet from the parking area, another young rattlesnake buzzed at me irritably as it crawled across the trail to get out of my way. That would have been awful, to nearly make it back to the car safely, only to be bitten in the last few yards of the trail! I shucked my pack and washed up as best I could in the hot, dusty scraps of shade around the car. Huge green pines, spoiled with abundant water but covered with dust, crowded the trailhead clearing. Then I put on the clean clothes I had stashed in the trunk, and headed for home.
I had to battle Fourth of July drunken drivers all the way home. When it got dark, it was disturbingly surreal, like driving through Apocalypse Now, with fireworks bursting in my peripheral vision as I passed the many small towns along Highway 5. Just before getting home, two yahoos in pickup trucks tried to pass several cars on the right, and then another one zoomed past me at high speed – over the double yellow line! I was mentally exhausted, and glad to get home… at 10:30 pm. In the course of one day, I had returned 6,500 feet down the mountains; all the way to my sea-level home near the mouth of the Petaluma River where it flows into San Pablo Bay. What a change to descend from the crowning experience of The Altar, to the heel of Marin County. A distance of just 225 miles, but millions of light years away.
Epilogue ~ Notes from Home
The next day, I am sore all over my body – in tendons and muscles I didn’t even know I had! I am supposed to work all day, so I sit in my office chair and slowly petrify, as various joints that used to bend easily become stiff and inflexible. When I get up to go pee, my body is locked in a sitting position, which might be very comical to watch, but it hurts like hell!
I notice that my senses are extremely heightened. I can discern every nuance of sound – even outside the house – as birds sing, and the trash man clatters. I can hear the soft scrabbling of mice in the attic. Deferring to my disabilities, I move slowly through the house. I behave as if I am walking a familiar trail; stopping often to stretch and savor my indoor surroundings as if they are part of the landscape. I try to plan my movements in advance, and waste as little motion as possible. I still have to mind my foot placement on the carpet, because all my leg muscles and tendons are in absolute agony, and even small scuffs or balance checks are excruciating.
In addition to the physical challenges, I am agitated and assaulted by the unseen waves all around me. Radio signals, cellular transmissions, wireless devices, and EMFs… I can feel the invisible web of civilization ensnaring me, wrapping itself tighter and tighter as I struggle. The insidious wavelengths of a false reality are slowly but surely permeating my brain and body; altering its natural currents. I naturally resist, but it is pointless, because I am now becoming part of the snare that binds me.
I feel hunger again. There must be a corollary with being back in my regular routine, in a sheltered environment. Finding the relation could be an important weight loss technique! I can’t think of any fat people who live outdoors in the natural world. I have craved much more water since my return, being highly attuned to dehydration and its many debilitating effects.
It has now been a week, and I’m in that peculiar state of doldrums that follows the ecstasy of a Bear Lakes trip. It’s more than just fatigue, or healing sore leg muscles. It’s not just the readjustment to the lower altitude, either, or the subdued vibrations of life in general here in “society.” I can still close my eyes and be back at The Altar, with the holy wind blowing gently through my hair, but the memories are melting away like prayer candles. The ecstatic emptiness is being filled in with a million trivial details. Every trip has changed my life to some degree, and the cumulative effect is an increasing intolerance for trivia and falsehood of any kind. It gets harder and harder to adjust with each return, and my soul resists becoming reacquainted with irrelevant minutiae.
When I am working on something back home (which is nearly all my waking hours), it’s as if there is a little sphere in my head that contracts to focus on the task at hand. I literally forget myself for hours, lost in the abstract anonymity of computer programming. When I catch a glimpse of a beautiful sunset from my window, or do some yard work outside, I feel the little sphere expand a bit. When I really get outside, long enough to take a walk in the wetlands, I can see for a radius of about 25 miles across half the North Bay. The “wide open spaces” cause the little sphere to expand beyond the confines of my head, and I recognize it as myself. I can feel the expanded consciousness reaching out, through and beyond the constrictions of my self-awareness, making the sphere as open as the sky. In the wilderness I lose even the sense of feeling the boundaries of the sphere, as it expands throughout the universe, and into infinity. In my office, I am the yolk of an egg that’s yearning for the light.
Even two weeks later, I am still irritable and rebellious about resuming my servitude to a lifestyle that I find so stultifying and repressive to the spirit. My sense of being in harmony with my surroundings is sadly dissipating, as it is replaced by a familiar but unwanted sense of not belonging. This is a chronic condition exacerbated by irritants. Is there some way I might instill in my mind a minute trace of the essence of the wilderness, as a sort of homeopathic treatment against the diseases of civilization?
Three months later, I have lost the sense of wonderment almost entirely. The heartless irony of trading my living hours for money so I can “make a living” has regained control of my existence. All the myriad particulars of society now tyrannize each day, in the inexorable way that gravity rules a river. I am pulled helplessly along its course, and sometimes flounder in the rapids, but the eyes of my soul are ever on the misty mountains.
in order to realise true selfhood in the universal sense.”