Recently, two friends and I hiked into the High Sierra and camped for two nights at a beautiful timberline lake, beneath granite cirques rimmed with last winter’s snow. Along the way we spent a long and delightful day rambling across the broad alpine expanse of Humphreys Basin and scrambling up Four Gables peak. From the summit, the views were intoxicating: to the east, the 9,000-foot-deep gulf of Owens Valley and the 14,000-foot-tall White Mountains; to the south, west, and north, “mountains beyond mountains.” The weather was unusually mild for October, the country washed in lambent light. At night the waning moon was brilliant and crystalline, and a clear peace lay over everything. It was a lovely hike, through spectacular and (using John Muir’s favorite adjective) glorious country. My companions were also wonderful—a couple I’ve known for thirty-eight years, good friends with whom I’ve shared many wilderness adventures. And even though we sometimes were silent, our conversations covered a lot of territory, on topics ranging from contemporary politics to medicine and the Irish poet and philosopher, John O’Donohue, whom I mentioned in an earlier post (“Across the Hundredth Meridian”). Talking about O’Donohue got me wondering, once again, about beauty, its qualities and iterations, the ways in which I am moved by those places where I feel most at home. As we walked I thought about the spectacular qualities of the landscapes that have touched me most deeply, from the Antarctic Peninsula to the Himalayas, Grand Canyon, and High Sierra: massive glaciers plunging into ice-choked seas, and penguin colonies numbering in the tens of thousands. Mountains rising to 29,000 feet, through 11,000 feet of ice and rock and snow. That great gulf of time and space that falls away from the South Rim of the Canyon, to the Colorado River—or the great expanse of alpine tundra and sky that grace Humphrey’s Basin. But I realized that I am equally moved by the details of places, by quiet alcoves and tiny seeps, by intricacy and intimacy, by the whisper of a country as much as by its shout—as was the case at Great Basin National Park. Although I was drawn to the vastness of the evening view across the Snake Valley, the empty spatials along the road to Gandy, and the Basin-and-Range sweep of space from the summit of Wheeler Peak (the North Snake Range, Deep Creeks, Fish Spring Range, Schell Creeks, Confusion Range, on and on), one of my favorite places in the park was the little valley that sheltered Pole Creek. On my many walks there I came to love the way the trail first crossed the rush and clatter of Baker Creek, before it climbed away from water, into a dry canyon filled mostly with juniper and pinyon pine. Then came a thin trickle of water, aspens and water birch, a riparian world made more welcome by its almost tentative presence in the narrow canyon, where the sound of falling water was only a murmur. In late September this section of Pole Creek was filled with the rich texture of autumnal colors: the brilliant reds of skunkbush and Rocky Mountain maple, and the bright golds and yellows of aspen and willow, blending with delicate greens of white fir and pinyon. Above the water, the canyon broadened into a lush valley, where soft swaths of basin wildrye lay among the aspens and ponderosa pine. Although Pole Creek is part of my favorite long trail run in the park (up the creek and over the divide to Timber Creek, then the long downhill fall to Baker Creek, past the Grey Cliffs and back to the trailhead), it is best visited leisurely. Travel slowly, and pay attention—to Pole Creek’s details, to the subtle transitions in vegetation and the essence of the place, to the quiet fall of water. Take a pad and find a place upvalley to sit, among the grasses. Accept what the poet Lisel Mueller describes as, “The Need to Hold Still.” If you are with a companion, stay silent. Remain there for an hour or two, before making your way, slowly, down canyon. Think of your stroll as right practice, as what Zen Buddhists term kinhin, or a walking meditation.
There’s a lesson here, I think. So often we yearn for spectacle, whether in beautiful country, entertainment, or (most importantly) our relationships. We are pulled toward what we hope will be intense experiences. In doing so our attention is drawn away from the “unremarkable” details of our lives, those events that form so much of the warp and weft of memory and desire: a lover’s gentle touch, the scent of baby shampoo in a young child’s hair, the morning’s first sip of great coffee (or in my case, tea), some beautiful line of poetry that hangs with you forever, that lovely moment and movement in a favorite song, the perfect dry fly cast on your favorite river—or the trickle of water in Pole Creek, among the aspens and the stillness, where for a few hours everything in the world fits together, almost perfectly.
5 Comments
Curt
10/12/2017 08:48:50 am
Well observed and articulated, HW. We're of the same mind regarding the appreciation of the "micro-environment" around us, as well as our relationship. We’re not much for Spectacle, especially in media and politics..lol Cheers, CS&KS
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Chris
10/12/2017 06:11:04 pm
And WAY too much spectacle these days!
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rhonda
10/13/2017 06:30:49 am
Beautiful writing as always! Safe travels.
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Chris
10/13/2017 07:55:38 am
Thanks Rhonda. Hope that you and Tom are well.
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Ken Kingsley
10/14/2017 08:10:18 pm
It sometimes takes me over an hour to walk half a mile because I'm looking at and photographing insects and flowers. Not great physical fitness work, but good for the soul.
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AuthorI am a professor emeritus of Environmental Science and Ecology at SUNY Brockport. What began in 2017 as a sabbatical blog continues in a haphazard way, as the spirt moves me and time allows. The focus, though, remains the same - the natural world, in all of its complexity and beauty, and our relation to it. Archives
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