Like a leaf clings to a tree

Like a leaf clings to a tree
Baby please cling to me
We're creatures of the wind
Wild is the wind

let me fly away with you...

Western Travels: memory photographic

I've added new photos to the Western Travels set.

please take a look, i don't think you'll be disappointed. :)

Silence in nature

"Many people just drive through the park...so for them it's just the visual beauty...when you take the time to enjoy it, the park becomes a part of what you are. It can shape you."

-from Preserving Silence in National Parks by Garret Keizer

The first thing I notice when entering a place of refuge in nature is always the scenery, the landscape. The initial moments of visual splendor usually lull me into a kind of quiet and yet thrilling trance. I'm too happy to notice anything else in the midst of such beauty and (human) emptiness. I take a few steps on the trail still enamored with my surroundings, so much so that the rest of the world melts into the background. And then eventually, as if my meditative surroundings are a disintegrating dream, I hear it; the distant hum of car engines or the quaking sound of a boat engine. Recently during a night spent on a small island in Voyageurs National Park, my camping neighbors across the bay thought this pristine wilderness would be the perfect place to blast country songs from their stereo. The steel guitars and twang competed full force with the sounding loons of the north. These man-made sounds tend to invade my experience in nature, leaving it slightly tarnished. Though when faced with such noise I try to remain positive. Without considering the implications of man-made sound in nature, I try to remember something Thich Nhat Hanh said...that every sound can be turned into the sound of a bell - calling us back to the present moment. We must learn to meditate in chaos, because silence is not always a given. That doesn't mean I believe we should shrug our shoulders and accept that the peripheral noise that we have all had a part in creating, is a given when entering the temple of nature.

"If we were not so single-minded
about keeping our lives moving
and for once could do nothing,
perhaps a huge silence
might interrupt this sadness
of never understanding ourselves
and of threatening ourselves with death
Perhaps the world can teach us
as when everything seems dead
but later proves to be alive"
— Pablo Neruda

Little bells: an introduction

Several years ago (seven to be exact), I found myself in the California coastal region of Big Sur. For a few glorious days I existed on these cliffs cradled between the Santa Lucia mountains and the pacific ocean. I say that I "found myself" as if I had just wandered into California, so many miles from home. This trip however, was well planned. So I say I "found myself," when what I mean to say is: I found a woman. Her campsite was a few feet from our campsite. I should mention here that I wasn't alone on this trip up the coast. I noticed first that she was alone, that she had a small dog and what appeared to be a journal she had set aside to write in later. As I walked on the path between the campsites and the cliffs of the beach, I watched her briefly as she sat in her open tent hanging a string of little bells on one of the interior sides of her four nylon walls. The image of this woman with her bells and journal, camping alone has always stayed in my mind. The minute I saw her, I thought to myself "I want to be like her someday" At the time I don't think I fully understood my intrigue with this woman. I thought only of the fact that she was traveling alone and how I found that appealing as a source of self reliance. Though now, after so many years I'm beginning to understand why I was so intrigued. I saw in her, my desire to connect with myself and my surroundings. To commune, if you will, with the universe in its entirity. To give something to myself more precious than self reliance. A quiet mind, inner sight and outwardly vision, compassion and an open heart able to receive and give. Love. I know I could be wrong in my assumptions of this woman, a fellow traveler. But whether or not she is who I assume her to be doesn't matter. Because in finding her, I found myself...there on the California coast where the Santa Lucia mountains mirrored the sunset in golden and rose colored tones, and the grass was so soft under the thin layer of tent fabric that I've yet to find a more comfortable bed where I could rest and dream. I have my own string of bells now. They hang in my doorway and when I hear their little ringing chorus like laughter I'm reminded of the woman I hope to always recognize as me.