I will post photos when I get home tonight. Also, remember for tomorrow: bring a sleeping bag, overnight stuff, $$$$$, and a change of clothes for a mountain hike on Friday. We'll probably be back relatively early on Friday -- I'd say 2:00 or 2:30.
Well, today was supposed to be the throwaway day, the day where we stayed close to home and didn't wear people out for tomorrow's 10-mile cross country trek. I'd say it was a pretty good throwaway day. We got in a good short hike to a perfect little chill spot pond -- and a couple of hours of hanging out, strumming on the guitar, scrambling up the river, daredevil bouldering (Colin), and walking the ridge line. A nice way to spend 3-4 hours, I'd say.
I've been thinking a lot about some of the central ideas that drive this mini class -- nature, self, solitude, society. No doubt the great appeal of the natural world is a form of escapism -- every step toward nature (for us it's usually east, as Mr. Aiston pointed out) is a step away from responsibility, obligation, work, all of the stuff that we have to do every day to live in the world. But it has to be more than that -- otherwise we would escape only to video games and movies and swimming pools and golf, right? I really enjoyed hearing Andy talk this morning because it's a good reminder that responsibility and nature don't always characterized by dichotomy; often they seem black and white, opposites, but they don't have to me. Clearly he has figured out a way to marry work and nature. .
Here's what I wrote on Tuesday, sitting on my rock, looking back at the beautiful, serene Water of the Woods:
Emerson says, "Nature is a symbol for the spirit." There's a lot there to reflect upon as I sit on this slopey boulder overlooking a field of snow with Jeffrey pines close enough to touch and far enough to form a single monolithic line of green. If nature is a symbol of the spirit, does that mean that hypercivilization, Koyaanisqatsi style, like the ridiculous traffic jam I sat in this morning, is a symbol of the spirit gone bad, the spirit removed from its moorings? My spirit is not a tangible thing, so this becomes a difficult proposition to test, but I do know that when I am in nature, especially in solitude like this, I feel a kind of pureness, openness, a kind of in-the-moment awareness and connectedness that sure feels like what I imagine is the natural state of man.
I liked what Andy quoted from Peter Matthiessen this morning. Paraphrase from memory: 'Mountains are simple, but I'm not simple.' It really seems like being around mountains, which just sit there like big Buddhas, would bring you closer to simple. And sometimes simple is the hardest place to reach.
