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Returning to Newness

Sunday, March 20th, 2011

I’ve hiked the Brice Creek trail for thirty years now. Among the Central Oregon trails near my home, it is home. It’s an exquisite stretch that wends its way along the waters through old growth and new, with elegant color in smooth stones beneath the creek’s clear waters. I know where the river bends are, there are favorite trees I greet. Memories are associated with the flow, stretching over several miles and much of my life. The more I’ve come to know Brice, the more I believe it to be one of Oregon’s most beautiful rivers, equal in color and grace to the Smith River near the coast, although smaller.

Yet every time I see it, I realize I’ve never seen it before. And that’s not just because I still forget sometimes where the trail begins to zigzag up the hillside to parallel the old flume, or because encroaching maturity begins to devil my memory. It’s because the river and I are so different each time we see each other.

You can’t stand in the same river twice. I recall that vintage wisdom (imperfectly). In fact, it echoed in my head repeatedly this past Sunday, as we walked the familiar trail that was different than ever before. A tree fell across it since last visit. The logs in the eddy by the carved rock channel had changed, as had the accumulation of logs downstream from the wide waterfall. The colors in the rocks had shifted with the recent flows, as lichens and other colors in the vegetative pallet blossomed. The light was different—and different again, five minutes later. Winter’s fallen leaves were in their final state of graceful decay, and spring’s new growths had already announced their optimistic efforts. Everywhere I looked I saw something previously unseen, and I saw it with a vision slightly different, informed by new experience. The newness was only heightened by my comfort and familiarity.

I was thinking this, as we watched the clouds part into wispy white and pure blue, remarking on the warmth of the wind and the speed at which the white wisps whipped by. It was a leisurely restorative hike back along the river, playing with foggy lenses as we crossed the bridge back to the car. Just a few gentle drops caressed us, from the newly returning grey. We enclosed ourselves in the machine, restored and enlivened by the new familiar creek.

Then it hit. A wall of wind and water came from the sky with a suddenness and edge I’ve never experienced. In a matter of moments, torrents of rain and 70 m.p.h. winds hit, ripping huge branches from the trees of the grove we were driving through, crashing around us as I punched it and slalomed through. If a full tree toppled, we were doomed.

We were lucky. We escaped with just one tiny dent on my hood I discovered later. We made it through to the next sudden road blockage, where several of us then had to get out to clear fallen trees and branches to continue. That got us to the next place down the line, the epicenter, where a massive tree had uprooted and come down across the road, thankfully killing no one but the fence on the other side. Three or four men with chainsaws were already there, cutting rounds out of it to make it possible to get through. The sudden wind already past, we threaded our way through a carpet of branches across most of the miles home. We made it… until a hundred yards from the house, where a century-old maple had come down across the road. Even the upper branches were an impenetrable wall. It would take neighbors and chain saws to get us through—and since the power was now out for the foreseeable future, our electric chainsaw was just another useless ornament. (These are the times when the myth of independence shows its illusions.) We are fortunate to have those neighbors. We are fortunate to have these memories.

Indeed, everywhere I looked I saw something previously unseen, especially in the moments after I thought I’d finished looking. You can’t stand in the same windstorm twice. In the twenty minutes since we’d left it, Brice Creek had undoubtedly shifted into another form, with fallen trees as new natural sculpture, transitioning from standing to laying down to nurture the soil. I can’t wait to go back, and see again what I’ve never seen before.

Posted in Liquid, Part of the Wind, The Beauty of Doubt, The Sun on Your Face, Wild Grace | No Comments »

Divine Light

Tuesday, December 7th, 2010

IMGP9016 300x200 Divine LightLight has no mass, no home, no lover, no identity as distinct as our own names. Yet it’s one of the most fundamental forces in the universe, illuminating our entire perception of reality. It’s one of the most powerful creatures in the universe, as alive as anything, nearly omnipotent in how it sheds light on all, though it may not see what it illuminates. It’s as much a part of nature as a moose or a mosquito, and as divine as any spirit I’ve encountered.

Thus, when I took a few brief minutes to photograph my newly-installed Christmas lights last night, I felt I was photographing both nature and spirit. It was another realization of always being a part of nature, no matter how much illusion tempts me to believe in separateness.

This is what I saw in my living room, as sacred and wild as any mystic’s vision. It was totally beyond me—I just found it. It was also as psychedelic as any trip, reminding me of the stargate sequence in 2001: A Space Odyssey. Who needs to travel beyond the front door to find the outer frontiers? It was evidence again that what we see is more limited by our imagination than by the supposed reality we face.

So come tripping with me, deep into the heart of nature and light. This is my Christmas prayer. Can you recognize oneness here? It’s all I see.

IMGP9025 300x200 Divine Light

IMGP9060 300x200 Divine Light

Posted in Grace and Tranquility, Part of the Wind, The Beauty of Doubt, The Sun on Your Face | 1 Comment »

Autumn’s Leading Edge

Thursday, September 30th, 2010

Autumn’s sharp leading edge cuts into the soft greens of Oregon summer. The long light is fading, the crickets are slowing, and I hear wistful tones in others’ voices. The wistful tones would’ve once been my own, in younger days when seasonal sadness seemed endemic. I’ll miss the light and warmth too—not to mention baseball season—but in recent years, my wistfulness is fleeting to the point of subliminal. No longer do my moods fall and drift when the leaves do.

What seasons changed inside? From where did this equanimity come? It wasn’t in accomplishment, or any other form of external attainment. I didn’t find it on Craigslist, or in the pockets of a forgotten jacket. It was somewhere in the learning of a quiet embrace: I learned to hold the purpose of the seasons, as I feel them in my individual way. Summer’s time of outdoor exploration is brilliant and precious. It’s for celebration of that light; for activity and motion, wandering across the face of the wild earth. But the pace of that can’t be constant. Fall begins the slowing down, the letting go; and if there’s anything that lightens emotions, it’s letting go. Old wounds, unrealized expectations, the need to be in exploratory motion—these can fall away with the leaves. Who needs them? There is new life within the fall to find.

Come winter, there will be hibernation, reflection. It will be time to go inward and embrace the experience of the previous year, to rest by the fireside and wonder at the storms. I choose a creative project for each winter, and there will be many to select from this time, with abundance at hand. Then spring will bring its inevitable rejuvenation—a celebration of another form. I remember having a conversation with Canadian musician Harry Manx, who said to me (in a month I can’t remember): “This is one of my favorite seasons!” Then he looked at me and smiled further, adding, “I have four, you know.”

I have four as well. No need to hang onto a passing favorite when it’s equally replaced by another. No need for nostalgia or looking forward. Only a desire to look more deeply into the current day. This past Sunday, we looked into the day from along the trail to Parker Falls, a little-used trail not far from home. The leaf, the caterpillar you’ve already seen here were there.

The sky above us was painting its beautiful kinetic art.

The falls held rainbows, just as we held them in our vision.

The creek held the greens and the yellows of the deep, steep canyons.

The forest surrounded us with its gathering release, ready to let go, to slow down, to embrace the nourishing coolness and wetness surely on its way. Everywhere there is new life coming, so no need to restrictively grip the old. To embrace and to let go: paradoxically, they’re one and the same at times like these.

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Always Further (and Furthur)

Saturday, September 4th, 2010

Some twenty-odd years ago when I lived in the Bay Area—and they were very odd years—Ken Kesey brought his magic bus to Berkeley as part of the mayoral campaign for ‘60s counterculture icon Wavy Gravy. (The estimable Mr. Gravy—who had discovered in the ‘60s protests that police didn’t hit people in clown costumes—was campaigning with the slogan “Put a REAL clown in office,” and questioned his opponent’s experience because “he’s never even been to jail.”) Anyway, after running into Kesey at another author’s reading at Black Oak Books, some sequence of events happened that I don’t recall, despite that I’ve never taken LSD. All I clearly remember is that I ended up on Kesey’s bus, taking pictures of the intricately decorated interior—only to discover later that, for the only time in my life, I had forgotten to actually load film in my camera.

I was mortified. It bothered me for years. An opportunity and a memory like that, and such a basic bonehead move cost me the photos? I couldn’t come to peace with it until one random day when I realized I had been pranked by the enduring Merry Pranksters spirit. I laughed out loud on the street. Apparently I was supposed to be experiencing that free moment, not capturing it to keep. That was the prank’s message. Either that, or my own projected madness had simply become consistent. Whichever. I reached tranquility with the memory either way, at last.

A recent weekend brought the memory flashing back. The Kesey family is still deeply involved in creating culture in Eugene—literally, since some of them are in the yogurt business—and Kesey’s bus was out for Eugene Celebration, the annual town party. (There have actually been two buses, and this is the second of the two. It’s the one named “Further” instead of “Furthur,” although it answers to either name. It’s the very same one I climbed on, decades previous.)

“Please don’t climb on the bus,” now says the polite label on the front bumper. And the explanation of the bus history encourages everyone to take pictures: “She likes that,” it concludes.

So Kesey’s bus rolls on without him. There’s no longer a decision to be made about being on or off the bus, because you can’t get on. And the pictures the pranksters denied me back then I now captured with my iPhone—no film needed at all. Everything seems turned a little upside down.

Or is it? Perhaps it’s just at an opposite point on the circular cycle, as the earth turns around the sun, which turns around in the galaxy, all of which turns along the same paths of spiritual quest as always. The acid tests may be history—and I still have no interest in taking any—but other paths of inquest are equally present and urgent for those seekers whose time is now. There are always new seekers, and in the seeking there is always Further (and Furthur) to go. It’s eternal. As long as we’re the ones alive, there’s another mile to be explored, another different bus to climb on, another new way to screw up the pictures and confuse the memories. It’s all rather funny, if you look at it right. If I close my eyes and forget the film, I can hear Kesey laughing at the grand cosmic prank. I can still see the radiant glow he had, the aliveness that was somehow just a touch wilder and brighter than most.

I should keep Kesey’s glow in the present tense, for I think he’s still pranking me from beyond the grave. When I went to look at my iPhone pictures of Further, one and only one was inexplicably upside down: the photo of the bumper sign asking us not to climb on the bus. What’s the prank this time, I wondered? I’m guessing Kesey is hinting at just what I’ve spoken: that it’s not his bus we should climb on now, but our own, with new wild colors and different laughs and quests, equally wild and free. There’s just as much to celebrate now, to protest, and to explore. Indeed, there is always Further and Furthur to travel, inside and beyond.

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The Loudness of Silence

Thursday, August 5th, 2010

Growing up in the din of California suburbia, an electric buzz seemed endemic to the earth. Traffic seemed a feature as fundamental as air. Other aspects of experience were obscured. Blue skies in summer, untainted by smog? I never even considered the possibility. Moonlight as primary illumination, strong enough to hike by? It wasn’t just that I didn’t experience it. I didn’t even know it existed to experience. Sonic and physical pure open space were beyond me as a child.

Still, genetic memory is a layer far deeper than conscious knowing. It remains present in all of us, and the memories of silence and forests remained present in my youthful form, growing into a yearning that first had no exact expression. I became drawn to distant open green spaces. I longed to reach them in their distance from me, knowing in an undefined way that they were home, even if I’d never known them. I’d stare at pictures of lush groves as I would an alien landscape, yet it was like looking in a mirror. I was seeing my own roots, my home, my lands of origin. I’d simply never been there yet.

I’d never been to silence either, not really. It was shocking to finally turn twenty under an Oregon forest sky, blue in August, without electricity or other city to impede. (Without running water or telephones either, but that’s another story.) It was incredibly, deliciously quiet. It was a revelation that millions, perhaps billions of modern humans have yet to have.

Peaceful, however? Not necessarily. I quickly learned that external silence gave space for inner voices to play—and play loudly, they often did. In the silence, obsessive thoughts became larger and more repetitive. The scale of dreams and feelings climbed wildly. And without electricity, no recorded music or television could block them out. Yet that did not keep music from rising to a crashing din within. I spent most of that first silent summer with a small phrase of music in my head, looping endlessly, that I almost knew but could not quite recall. I could hear the guitar, the harmonies, but what was the next line? What was the song? It nearly drove me mad, until I was later back in college in California and randomly heard the answer playing across the courtyard. (“St. Elmo’s Fire” by Brian Eno, from Another Green World. How appropriate.)

Having stillness and silence nearly bring me madness instead of peace was a revelation of its own; one I saw play out in many minds years later, when I was resident artist at Wilbur Hot Springs, one of the quietest and most special places I’ve yet experienced, again without electricity or distraction. Over and over, people would arrive, thinking they had found paradise—then discover all their unheard feelings rushing up at them with unexpected intensity. It’s only in silence that you discover what the city has hidden from you, not only in the world, but within your own heart. For those able to handle the inner clamor, the result is transformative. Those buried emotions can be exhumed at last, their ghosts released from wandering through the catacombs of the soul. Eventually, true quiet does return. Eventually, tranquility that’s real settles in. Finally, a walk under that pure moonlight without the intrusion of streetlights or the torture of inner distraction.

Are you really ready to be this alive again? That’s the question the forests seem to ask me now, as I walk within them daily, home at last and unable to distance myself from the challenges of silence. Are you able to handle the cuts of sharp inner edges? The trees dare me. Can you learn to release the thoughts which begin again as soon as they end? Only sometimes, so far.

It’s the same internally and externally. There may be fewer noises out here, but each individual one then stands out. It’s harder to ignore them. I feel like the baseball player who can more easily shut out the drone of a large crowd than a small one, because in the latter the individual heckler’s voice can slice right through. Yet I love the forest acoustics—the way an owl’s soft evening call resonates in return through the trees. I love knowing what my quietest discontents are, alongside my deepest joys. I love knowing exactly what the same trees look like, day after day after day. They stand there without motion or complaint, with a steadiness our own souls will never know. Silence? They know it better than we ever will. They practice it constantly. I admire them for it. And thirty years since I first saw them standing where they still are now, on this land, they’re far taller and stronger, and they’ve never once bragged about it, or even thought to. I can only do my imperfect best to emulate them in their silence. I can only still my mind once in awhile, and tonight if I’m lucky, I’ll do so enough for a peaceful night’s sleep. It’s beautifully dark, the moon has disappeared for the month, and instead the magic of night reveals the true stars. It’s silent, just as I will try to be, though tonight the noise of spirit is roaring inside once more.

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Hitchhikers

Thursday, July 29th, 2010

Never mind storks bringing babies and other myths of creation. I have my own fictional legend about how each of us arrives here: we stick out our thumb by the Great Roadside and the planet stops to give us a ride. Where ya headin’? Around the sun? Cool. Thanks. That’ll get me there.

It’s an act of kindness when the planet allows us to hitchhike for as long as eighty, ninety, even a hundred sun circles before dropping us off again. I’m mindful that my entire life is dependent upon that benevolence, and I don’t take it for granted. Passing along kindness to others is always the best way to deserve more, so I feel conflicted when I’m heading down the Interstate with an empty seat beside me and I pass another soul with a thumb out. I would love to offer rides in the same spirit of kindness.

But I don’t. And I don’t feel tranquil about it. I feel a vague sense of guilt and unease as I turn up the music and keep rolling. Still, the average hitchhiker I pass has broken eyes, dirty features, and a sense of hardness that scares me. I don’t feel confident that my attempt at kindness would be met with integrity. It feels like a wise risk of self-preservation to leave the latest ragged drifter at the roadside, lest I be robbed, invite unknown mental breakdowns in, or otherwise have good intention turn to nightmare. It’s fear, yes, I recognize it. I loathe it though I know that in moderation it’s a friend. Can’t live by it, but it does have a small healthy place in the spectrum of emotions.

Photo by Bev Henrich

Every once in awhile, though, a hitchhiker slips in. There’s no way to avoid it sometimes. It happened to me recently, with one hitchhiker who had clearly never taken a shower, who had seriously unshaven legs, a wild alien look in his eyes, and absolutely no discernable communication skills. In short, he was gorgeous. He—I’m guessing even at gender here—was one of the largest and most beautiful moths I’ve ever seen, and in the middle of a hike on the land here, he was suddenly riding my pants leg and apparently quite comfortable there.

It felt magical. It didn’t feel at all like when an overly amorous dog attempts a ride on the same location. I was not only happy to give a ride in this case, I felt deeply honored. We stopped to marvel at the moth. I also felt that the long walk ahead was likely to take the moth far from home, rather than provide a valuable service. A silly feeling, really. What do I know about moth transportation and homes? I was probably just assigning human ways to an insect mind again. And it wasn’t my business, either. If a moth chooses to hitch a ride on a passing mammal, isn’t that the natural chaotic process of life and its risks? Wouldn’t I disturb the natural order by not letting it ride if it chose to?

It’s a good thing moths don’t suffer these kinds of philosophical dilemmas. If moths did philosophy, their lives would be paralyzed, like ours.

Despite our dim notions of what’s best for a moth and our right to decide that, we decided to put him on my finger so we could transfer him to a tree. He seemed equally content to be there. I stared him in the eyes for a moment—no recognition—and studied his ferociously hairy legs. Given the size of his wings, I checked the underside to make sure it didn’t say “Boeing” somewhere. I discovered that the wing spots were beautifully translucent when viewed from the underside. They looked like skylights. Now the moth was reminding me of our ceiling. I decided again that moths are better off without minds.

Anyway, I love hitchhikers. Truly I do. I love those willing to brave the adventure of the open road. I love the chance connections of life and stories told between two who will never meet again. I love that people actually dare to stop and take the ragged and broken to their next destination. They deserve their destinations as much as the rest of us do. They certainly deserve it as much as a moth. We’re all hitchhikers here, according to legend, and nothing makes me more grateful for being given another lift around the sun than a moth on my pants. Go figure.

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Grace and Tranquility at Britt

Wednesday, June 23rd, 2010

For many years, I’ve noticed the subtle presence of natural affirmations in my life. As I wrote in the “Silent Support” chapter of Wild Grace: “I find that as a reward for creating harmony, for compassionate steps taken, for pure hard choices I’ve made that keep me along the path of the heart, the quiet affirmations offer themselves. A coincidence of birds at a moment of my own song; a falling star’s timing attuned to a good decision—it’s these kind of messages I hear as affirmations.”

Perfect weather on June 13th was another of these affirmations, the day of Gypsy Soul’s concert at the Britt Festivals, celebrating the release of our collaborative CD Grace and Tranquility. To be blessed with the best day of warmth in weeks was one of many affirmations to greet our collaboration thus far. The mere existence of the concert was an exceptional affirmation itself: to headline the opening night of the Britt season—preceding other summer performances from Jackson Browne, Jimmy Cliff, Taj Mahal, the Black Crowes and many others—is an honor we don’t take lightly, and our gratitude is boundless.

Gypsy Soul at the Britt Festivals

As I stood in the wings waiting to introduce Gypsy Soul, years of other backstage Britt memories flashed through my mind: Watching Natalie Merchant do ironing shortly before showtime. Talking music and basketball with Bruce Hornsby—a man who truly, humbly loves his life—after watching him teach music to Bela Fleck in soundcheck that they never ended up performing. Wondering who that kid was at the backstage piano before another performance, and discovering it was Jamie Cullum himself, much smaller than his explosive stage energy. Feeling disturbed by the intensity of Ani DiFranco’s security team. Being completely welcomed in a warm and curious way by Lyle Lovett, a true southern gentleman in the formal way he approached personal connection after the concert. Watching Mark Knopfler disappear out the side gate in the back of a car before the house lights even came on after his last encore. Other memories flood on. So many brilliant talents have graced the Britt stage and dressing rooms; to be there is to sense all of the moments and talents at once. To become part of the tradition is to slide into the flow of a large and holy river.

The greater river is music, and to enter it gracefully is to approach it from a place of service rather than ego. That’s our goal with Grace and Tranquility—to deepen our own tranquility by bringing it to others—and the launch evening at Britt was an unforgettable start. To share our creation with nine hundred others on a perfect warm evening in Southern Oregon’s best outdoor venue was magical. The weather, music, crowd, setting, friends… all couldn’t have been better. I can only hope that in our small way, we contributed in some small way that night to others’ own daily quest for tranquility. It’s a quest that’s never over, which means that now is another perfect, affirming moment at which to begin again.

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A Journey with Tranquility

Wednesday, June 9th, 2010

It’s tempting to write that the path I wish to follow and share with you is a journey to tranquility—as if peace is a destination, a state of being that we can someday attain and eternally keep. If only it were possible to arrive that way and stay, I’m tempted to wish! But even that wish is attractive illusion. Many masters have phrased the deeper truth in their own way, speaking of tranquility as the journey itself, peace as the path. In choosing the epigraph for my new book Grace and Tranquility, I chose Thich Nhat Hanh’s eloquent summary: “Peace is every step.” Footprints 195x300 A Journey with TranquilityMy book is one of those steps, so is this online journey, and so is my collaborative album with the elegant band Gypsy Soul. As I write this, all of these steps are being released into the public light. I take the steps not as the next master of tranquility—I’m not some ethereal peaceful soul floating above the detritus of messy human emotion—but as another student willing to learn alongside you. It’s no accident that the first line of the title track to the musical version of Grace and Tranquility is, “I am just a student/Of the art of being human…” It’s an art that requires lifelong practice, and to practice with diligence and share with honesty is the best I can offer. It’s my revision of the old writer’s adage, “write what you know,” which I believe should be instead, “write what you want to know.” It’s in our explorations that wisdom is found. It’s in our admission of not knowing that our growth can be attained. How is it that I can deepen the grace with which I move in the world? How can I take this very next step with more tranquility? How can my own attempts at this deepening serve your own? That’s what I’m here for, in these words that draw from my books and move beyond them. This is the living moment-to-moment journey with tranquility, and I hope you’ll join me for every peaceful step.

Posted in Grace and Tranquility, Hardest Good Days, Letting Wounds Go, Liquid, Older Than Its Name, Part of the Wind, Sleep Is the Ocean, The Beauty of Doubt, The Sun on Your Face, Walking Softly Beyond, Wild Grace | 1 Comment »

Comforting Vastness

Thursday, June 3rd, 2010

It’s as important to look for peace to absorb in the city as in the wilderness, because that’s where most of us lift our faces skyward most of the time. Looking to the heights, a celestial body we see is as likely to be a balloon as a moon, and either way it’s up to us to find tranquil perspective within it. Either can draw our eye to the comforting vastness within which our tiny layers of grace and tranquility are nestled.

Posted in Book excerpts: G&T, Grace and Tranquility, Hardest Good Days, The Beauty of Doubt, The Sun on Your Face, Wild Grace | No Comments »

Time to Slow Down

Thursday, June 3rd, 2010

We’ll find tranquility faster if we don’t rush. We may even find it immediately, simply by slowing down. Besides, there’s nowhere else to go. Tranquility must already be here, if it’s anywhere.

Posted in Book excerpts: G&T, Grace and Tranquility, Part of the Wind, The Sun on Your Face | No Comments »

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