I no longer feel distressed about things I can’t change, or about things I can change – what good does that do? Get going on what you can change and let go of the rest. Put your body (and mind) to work, serving others, taking time out now and then to recharge your spiritual batteries.
But the wildness of such places offers a unique opportunity in our face paced lives to slow down and look within. To live one moment at a time without being glued to our devices and schedules. To feel connected with all living and inanimate things. Such an experience enriches one’s life. On my last day, I thought of how much I loved my family, of ways that I could live more authentically, with greater love and awareness. This is why we need to protect wild places like ONP, and visit them from time to time.
Tapping seeds one by one gently from the envelope, I pause to remember internal cultivation in the infinite fields of the mind: May all beings pull the destructive roots of ignorance, anger, and greed from within! May they plant positive seeds of kindness, love, compassion, joy, equanimity! May they harvest excellent and tasty crops, in all dimensions of reality – internal and external.
On the descent, I pause to build a cairn as an offering to future wanderers – that they may never lose abandoned trails. Of course, the wind, snow and gravity will knock the cairn to the ground, just as certainly as birth ends in death, gain is followed by loss and the high are brought low.
After diving deep into a new book “An Electronic Silent Spring”, I was especially eager to escape the electro-smog of urban existence. Having scored a precious permit for two nights and three days in the Stuart Lake region of the Enchantments, my only concern as the date drew near remained the epic fires in Eastern Washington – the nearest a mere six miles from the Enchantments.
What is the purpose of life? Perhaps it is just to touch moments of stillness like these, to feel the connection with all living beings, to see the ever changing circle of the seasons and life, the melting of ice lakes and the resilience of small trees that bend and pop back up again on steep slopes, to witness the tragedies and the joys, to both own and transcend them all in an ever expanding heart.
I did not know exactly where the writing would take me (do we ever know where we will end up – whether we depart with a pen, keyboard, paintbrush, or step outside the door of our comfortable hobbit hole? But I knew where to start – in the present moment, the ground under my feet…
As painful and scary as it may seem to face the truth, doing so brings freedom and a wide open heart of fearlessness conducive to immensely powerful action – more power than the splitting of the atom I daresay. I do not subscribe to the fatalistic pronouncements of those who say “we’re doomed”. There is still much of great value that we can do while we breathe even in this very moment. It’s up to each one of us to decide our future now.
There’s a certain freedom – not without obvious risks of course – in being a nameless being in a nameless land. The mind easily enters a state of profound clarity and awareness of interconnectedness with all life, unencumbered by conceptual dust.
1. Healthy children, families, communities, and ecological systems are the true measure of real wealth. 2. Mutual caring and support are the primary currency of healthy families and communities, and community is the key to economic security. (David Korten)
