Among Giants

The trip in the Olympics was amazing. That is simply it, I was found, in reality, in certain moments, I was found completely.

The time that stands out particularly in my mind, I actually got in trouble for. I had gone off by myself exploring just a little ways and I found a grove of trees up on a very small ridge, overlooking what was probably a pretty large valley. It was so cloudy I couldn't tell. I pushed through some of the very short pines, the seemed to be old men and women that moved very slowly, so slowly. I joined them, and found a spot to sit down. I could see out into the cloud. I could look down the ridge wall and see trees and rocks sticking out. It was like there was a clear bubble about 50 ft in diameter about me and then everything just disappeared into fog.

A few days before I had left, I saw a movie called The Fountain. It is beautiful, to say the absolute least. In one story, a monk carefully removes and eats the bark of a tree he loves and is trying to save. It was intimate. There are not combinations of words that come to mind that could possibly relate how incredible that relationship was, between that tree and that person. I had been looking the entire trip for a place to meditate, and I found it right there. The clouds were moving in front of me and I had reclined into the branches of a few trees. They formed a spingy, supportive cushion for my back and I just opened. I noticed how tight I had become, having to walk with hurting feet and only enough food for a couple days and enjoy it. I was still soft, but I was becoming carved. I asked the trees for them. I sat and sat and thought about God and death and life. I tried to understand the absolutely incredible amount of rocks that I had walked over or seen. Have you noticed? There are a lot of rocks in this world. Why?

I opened my eyes and slowly took the bark off of one of the trees, a small piece, about the thickness of bark and as long as my thumb. I put it in my mouth and chewed it and swallowed it. It was a symbol, a communion. It felt like the tree I took it from was female. But in retrospect, that is what I had/have/was taught to look for. Alone, with nothing but my father and brothers and rocks (which are good things to have, for sure). But maybe I thought I would be "wrong" if I wasn't desperate for some form of motherhood or a mate. Just a thought. Anyway, I felt much more a part of the environment, something certainly separate from these things, as I had human produced chemicals in my body and my clothes were made mostly out of plastics. Heck, even the fact that I had clothes mostly made me separate from my environment. But I felt like a citizen of this Earth. I still do.

I realized on that trip that the human experience is a travel of potential differences. For days we were up in the mountains, among peaks and ridges. For other days, we were down in the lowlands, hiking on trails through woodland. While I was up in the mountains I imagined those who had gone before me. I imagined them as ghosts, or legends, always walking in the snow, always sharing communion with the things around them. But eventually, occasionally they came down. The ones I imagined as the friendliest would take sojourns into the mountains for rejuvenation, but one cannot be rejuvenated forever, by the same thing. It doesn't make sense. I realized that my time here, in school, and my time in the mountains and the time I will hopefully be spending in the plains of America and God only knows where else are all life. They are all existence and they are perpetually changing. I am full, I feel good. I am hungry, I eat, it tastes good. I am weak, I exercise to become strong. I am lazy, I push my self to work hard. I work hard, I exercise, I rest. These are all good changes.

I learned what my dad meant when he said so long ago, in reference to school work, "Sometimes you just have to keep on hiking. It may be a quick, gratifying experience to glissade down a snowfield just off of the trail but ultimately you will have to climb back up and out there, you have to get yourself to your campsite." We had to make it places by nightfall. It got cold and dark, and usually it stayed that way, except for the brief flash of dinner. The second to last day, we had to go 16 miles and there was simply no way faster (perhaps no way at all) except to hike it. That was a very telling feeling. It was a tangible accomplishment. I sung a song.

Another distinct memory I had was just after lunch on that second to last day. We were walking across one of many bridges that spanned these creeks that had cut very steep, intense gullies into the ridge. At the middle of many of these bridges, looking down the gully, 100 ft away it was about 90-120 feet lower. The bridges themselves were usually about 40 feet long and maybe 50-60 feet high. As we walked across this particular bridge, I noticed a tree on the opposit side. Part of its trunk was growing straight out of a rock, before it twisted and the rest of the tree started growing towards the sky. It was like something people don't believe in nowadays, and those sorts of things were all around. Huge stumps, either dry rotten or charred by lightening. The place we camped was a huge bar on the Quinault River, called Wolf Bar (thats how I know it is a bar :D ). There was one main trail that wound through this amazing grove of pine trees, covered in moss and all about 10 feet apart. It was not thick forest. Beyond it, a beach of smooth rocks of all different sizes and sand stretched out ~150 ft to the river. A wind/breeze was constantly blowing down the river (I know because I tried for about 45 min to take a nap on a sandy patch. I got rest but I certainly didn't fall asleep). On the other side of the river, thick pine trees came right down to the bank. Again, our grove and the forest on the opposite side were both delightful, but also the contrast between the two.

It was much warmer, closer to the Earth.

The clarity I gained from that trip was exquisite. It was complemented or enabled by the fact that I didn't have internet (or a decent computer) at my home over the summer. A definite plus.

I have many stories. When I came back, I saw friends, and we talked about trips they had taken and it surprised me how many of my memories had to be "woken up" by their stories and that mostly, I could individually remember only one or twos stories from my 50 miler and Philmont. Of course, I actually thought about many of my trips and recalled more, but it is a little strange that I didn't really value those experiences or something. Honestly, (and if I have kids, they can quote me on this) I think it was so much virtual media, anything from computer games to music on demand to books to televisions. I mean, especially video games. Especially video games. There is just no substitute for real, confident thirsty experience. In the words of Richard Feynman "I have to understand the world, you see." This understanding is possible. You must see and think. You must get wrong answers and take ridiculous risks. Because really all we have is wrong answers, it just happens that some are less wrong and more useful than others. And thank God.

So anyway. There is nothing that cannot be done. There are a lot of derivatives (such as Solomon's "there is nothing that hasn't already been done." which I think is true). There are also a lot of qualifiers such as "you must possess an active uterus to have a child after having sexual intercourse with person with a penis". But those are trivial, almost backwards. It's the wrong way to think about things.

That is what I learned, is that we exist and we have life and it is directed and we have to do things, it just takes time.