Balsamea Aranyaka

Added today to our Ponder This blog page, a collection of favorite quotes:

“When our beliefs are based on our own direct experience of reality and not on notions offered by others, no one can remove those beliefs from us.”  – Thich Nhat Hanh in Living Buddha, Living Christ, p. 135

Well … almost no one.  There is oneself.  My beliefs have changed many times as a result of changing experience of reality and the vicissitudes of delusion.

-The Balsamean

On Weather

Another personal essay by Zivara from his Summer 2003 journal.

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When sometimes I am reminded that the mechanics and shop-keepers stay in their shops not only all the forenoon, but all the afternoon too … I think that they deserve some credit for not having all committed suicide long ago.
– Henry David Thoreau

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June, 2003 – Spring in the Adirondacks has finally warmed up and dried out after a wet, cool beginning.  Still, nothing about the weather has stopped me from enjoying the outdoors.  Being out there under all kinds of conditions, including rain, wind, snow, ice, darkness – things people deem negative – are opportunities to enjoy the experience of reality in nature as it really is, not merely as it is in “fair weather.”  Each condition is a unique and enjoyable experience in its own way.

For me, the least preferred condition is high heat (over 80) with full sun.  But those are days for being in the water and slow saunters in shady places, and there are plenty of opportunities for that.  I’ll take a cloudy or partially cloudy day over a full-sun day any time except in winter when the sun is a better friend to me.  Some day I want to be “out there” in a hurricane, hunkered down in a hollow, ready to leap and run out of the way if a tree comes down at me!

One night I stayed out until well after dark and never turned on a flashlight, so my eyes could adjust and get their night vision.  Then I walked back to the car, partially cross-country and partially on the trail, in what most would call “complete darkness.”  It was not “complete” at all.  Humans do have some capacity for night vision.  Night walking makes for very mindful walking, too, when all your attention is really on walking, not on how you’re going to pay the bills or deal with tomorrow’s appointments.

We are like aliens on our own planet.  The experience of “adverse” conditions in nature is not really adverse!  Each has its own beauty.  Shutting ourselves in against them leaves us disconnected from reality as it really is, knowing only a partial reality that we create in our buildings and yards and cars, even our gardens, but not the one filling the majority of the space in the world.

We know most of the roads and stores and major buildings within fifty miles of home, but we don’t know our way around a single square mile of any woods without well-beaten paths, and many can’t even navigate those without taking wrong turns.  Many people can’t even use the sun to tell them what direction they’re going.  Neither would they recognize the same large tree in the woods if they walked past it ten times, usually because they’re too busy thinking about other things and other places and other times instead of what is right in front of them in the present moment.  We’re too busy going someplace else to enjoy where we are.  We’re too busy racing forward to take a moment to turn around and see where we came from, which is the best way to recognize the way home.

Thoreau once wrote, “I believe that there is a subtle magnetism in Nature, which, if we unconsciously yield to it, will direct us aright.  There is a right way; but we are very liable from heedlessness and stupidity to take the wrong one.”  I find it interesting that he said “unconsciously yield to it,” then claims that it is heedlessness and stupidity (or not being consciously aware) that gets us lost.  This points up the need to learn to know that “magnetism in Nature” by conscious effort, by heedfulness and careful attention, until it becomes second nature, so we can then “unconsciously” follow it the way we “unconsciously” drive a very complex machine at the death-defying speed of a mile a minute (and faster) over fantastic distances.  If we put half the effort into learning what nature is doing within our sight as we put into learning to drive and maintain a car, we’d all be smarter than foxes and owls in knowing nature, and never afraid of the dark.

I can sit or stand still for an hour in the woods and just look at what is within immediate view, and do it repeatedly at the same place over and over again throughout the seasons, and see completely “new” and different things every time.  Not to mention hearing, feeling, tasting and smelling, and the apparent changes, or differences, incurred by changes in daylight and weather.  Just a small change in the speed of the wind makes a place altogether different.

That’s why I spend so much time on the same trail and in the same wooded area over and over again.  It’s also why I’ll never tire of the woods and trails within ten miles of where I live now.  To me, going ten miles away is to the outer limits of my territory.  Ten miles!  In eight months of living here, I don’t yet know one percent of the public land within three miles!  (I’m surrounded by public lands … one of the best things they do with my taxes.)

An example of this phenomenon of being unconscious of reality is that I believed I had to carry-in rocks to make a fireplace at my little “Big Pine Refuge,” a plot 200 feet off a certain trail.  So I dutifully hauled in dozens of rocks from the trail and the creek, a few at a time, over many visits.  But with each visit to the place, and repeated observations of the surrounding fifty feet, I learned more about it.  Finally I found that there were enough large rocks within fifty feet to make a wonderful fireplace that could be there for a hundred years before nature buries it in her inexorable progressions through changes of state.  In just two days, using only what I found within fifty feet, I built a fireplace larger and more fortified than I could have made in months with scores of the rocks I had strength and will enough to carry from the trail or the creek two hundred feet away.  Now, mostly for the sake of tradition, I still bring in at least one rock on every visit, to build a cairn, a monument, a cenotaph in memoriam to billions like myself who have died and have been dying of life detached from reality.

I am aware that at any moment a microburst of air can blow down the huge Pine (of nearly a three-foot diameter) nearest my fireplace, or that it may just fall over of its own weight at any time.  When the great Pine goes down, its roots will flip up and toss about my silly little monument like a house of cards in a gale.  I’ve considered this carefully, and determined that it is no matter for concern.  The joy has not been in having it, but in building it, in being there, in all the hikes associated with each visit to the place, in all the real living simply and joyfully lived there and nearby.

It is much more a monument in homage to the God who loaned me the Big Pine Refuge than it is a fireplace.  There I am much more naturally inclined to prayer than in church or in my apartment.  That place is a church to me.  (I may yet learn truly that every place and every moment is sacred.)

I should write a Will to have the ashes of my carcass dumped into this fireplace by a few friends gathered to build a fire in it, with the supply of wood I stacked little by little in a hidden stash nearby, burning a tribute on top of my ashes to celebrate the passing of life enjoyed there.

Though it seems that I enjoy such things more alone than in most kinds of company, it would thrill me no end to know that someone else came to regard and enjoy the place as I do.  But that may be impossible for anyone who did not experience the transformation of the plot from just another spot in the woods to a refuge.

I don’t have a fireplace there.  I have an altar.  And I did not build it.  It was there already, just waiting for some idle arms and legs to bring it together, and a heart to appreciate it and the process of its appearing.  In a sense, it has been there always, partly inside of me and partly scattered in pieces on that little plot of ground, waiting for a long time to materialize, using me as part of its process, not at all anything that I can call mine.  It is a temporary gift for me to enjoy while I can.

I cherish it more in knowing that at any moment it may disappear, as do all things, and as will I.  Everything changes.  Nothing is forever but God, the All, the Nameless, the Placeless, the Presence in all presence, the Conscious in all consciousness.  I seem to know this best when I am alone in the woods.

I think it’s true that I’ve never been to the same place in the woods twice without finding it different (and I add to the changes by my repeated presence).  Not so in our cloistered world of houses, offices, stores, cars, roads, and sidewalks.  We do all we can to create sameness and familiarity, which is the opposite of what Nature does … and what God does.  We box ourselves into a fabricated reality for security, but it makes us falsely insecure when pushed out of the box, which is inevitable and frequent.

Not that I don’t appreciate my little boxes, like my stone fireplace/altar.  I enjoy creating them, too.  It’s human nature to do so.  But again in the words of Thoreau, “To enjoy a thing exclusively is commonly to exclude yourself from the true enjoyment of it.”  Even a sacred refuge can become as boring to me as a TV commercial if I abuse myself of it with exclusive attachment.  The fact that my “Big Pine Refuge” will be destroyed eventually by nature is something good to know.  So I happily regard it as a temporary gift, and gratefully acknowledge that there are many more to be experienced everywhere.

I laughed out loud when I read in the same Thoreau essay of 1862, when this country was still almost completely wilderness, “When sometimes I am reminded that the mechanics and shop-keepers stay in their shops not only all the forenoon, but all the afternoon too … I think that they deserve some credit for not having all committed suicide long ago.”  No wonder I’ve felt suicidal at times.

Besides … getting back to the matter of the weather … many forecasts couldn’t be more wrong if they intentionally lied.  Many are the most pleasant days, with just a few quickly passing showers, when they had predicted rain for the whole day.  So if I depend on the forecasts too much, I’ll miss a lot of “good” days, and there have been many “good” rainy days, and snowy days, and dark nights, too.  They’re all good.

Zivara

A Stick, A Night, A Fire

[Editor's Note: This personal essay by Zivara is not specifically about Balsamea, but expresses themes in a kindred spirit.  We welcome contriibutions like this.]

June, 2003 – I recently broke my favorite walking stick, a good companion of several years, purchased at an annual crafts festival at the Memorial Art Gallery in Rochester, NY.  After a brief surge of sorrow — for my loss and for my stupidity in how I broke it — I quickly resolved to take advantage of the occasion to make a new one with my own saw and knife.  After a failed attempt at making a walking stick from a piece of Oak, I returned to the woods and cut two branches, the first a cane-height piece of Beech, the second a staff-height piece of Maple.  Both were cut just above a sub-branch that would serve as a handle head.

Over the next few days the Beech cane evolved under my knife into a beautiful piece, with a handle resembling a heron’s head, with a small knot for an eye.  The process of carving and sanding it gave me considerable pleasure, until, as the wood continued to cure, the head began to split.  I salvaged it by counter-sinking a screw through it, then filling the crack and over my screw’s head using wood-filler.  It has turned out wonderfully, after six coats of polyurethane and light sanding between each coat.

The Maple staff awaits carving.  I generally prefer a stick of cane height to a staff, but I thought it would be nice to have both.  In the event of hiking with a friend, I would offer the friend their choice.  Each with a hooked head, they could serve as pulls for hiking mates to help each other through climbing obstacles or creek-fording, or to recapture a hat blown out of the canoe.

Actually, the Beech was my second attempt.  The first was with that piece of Oak.  It failed as a cane for three reasons.  First, I had not sawed it properly to keep a branching piece at the head as a handle.  Second, it was too heavy.  Finally, the Oak’s long fibers made carving across their lines difficult.  So I turned that one into a campfire poker, for which it is more than well suited.  It is a darned fancy campfire poker.  Being Oak, the tip won’t burn off quickly, and it won’t rot lying across the top of the fireplace through the seasons.  Nor will it become a victim of termites or carpenter ants.

Browsing my tree guidebooks for perhaps the hundredth time, I was reminded that Ash is popular for the manufacture of furniture and baseball bats.  I resolved to find myself a good piece of Ash.  I studied the compound leaf pattern in the books until I was clear on what to seek afield.

Off I went to the woods, laughing to myself about how much smarter it may be to chase a piece of Ash rather than “a piece of ass” (as it was known in Navy vernacular).  Far be it from me to deny that the comforts and pleasures of a female companion are good things.  The trouble is that as I carve out my place in her life, unlike a piece of Ash, a woman needs to carve her place in my life, and I’m not amenable to carving unless I hold the knife.  Unlike the Ash, she talks, makes demands, has needs, attitudes, desires, and many fears, and she won’t tolerate being left in the trunk of the car between hikes.  My piece of ash never talks about anything I don’t want to hear, and when it does talk, I’m VERY interested.  Furthermore, rather than help me ford streams and ascend arduous mountainsides and whack my way through thick forest undergrowth, as does a good hard stick, despite all the comforts and pleasures of her company at home, in the woods not all women are as sturdy as a good stick (nor men).  And my stick is never afraid of the dark, or rain, or coyotes or bears, or not getting home in time to feed the cat.  At my age, a good woods-mate is harder to find than a good piece of Ash.

It took half a day to find my stick, but finally I did find something that looked like the pictures in the books, and sawed off a nice piece with a good handle on it.  Along the way, I also found another piece of Maple that seemed perfectly suited for my purposes.  Now I have the raw materials for four walking partners:  the salvaged Beech, the Maple staff, the Ash, and the second piece of Maple.

On the night of Friday, May 30, I took the Ash for a walk, in its raw, untamed state, to Big Pine Refuge.  Along the way we “discussed” how the handle should be carved for the best fit and grip, and studied the potential advantages to a little shorter length.

This was the occasion when the rock walls of the fireplace at Big Pine Refuge took on their first bit of blackening.  I arrived at the campsite half an hour before dark.  An hour later, the tree canopy above me glowed in the orange light of a blaze, but not so much that it drowned the twinkling of stars filtering through the holes in the trees silhouetted against the bright black sky.  Once again, I saw the brightness of the night.

Thoreau said, “Genius is a light which makes the darkness visible.”  Perhaps this is some of the genius in the design of the human eye.  Someone has argued that the human eye is not a light receptor, but an emitter.  Either way, it is true, according to the New York Conservationist magazine, that after forty-five minutes in the dark, humans get the best degree of night vision.  I have tested this and found it true.

Night vision is not the same as day vision.  One must accept that things visible to us in the dark do not appear in the same way as in daylight.  There are differences in the shadings, and different ways of looking.  Some things visible in the day are invisible at night, but other things stand out as never seen in daylight.  Night vision is something to learn, as in the way one learns to swim.  It is merely crawling in water, but altogether different from crawling on land.  Different principles apply.  Seeing in the dark is a different way of seeing.

Wouldn’t it be nice if forty-five minutes in the dark yielded new vision in matters of truth, love, relationships, or career?  On second thought, it is true that spending concentrated, consciously aware spells of time in darkness or silence does open channels to wisdom not gained otherwise.  Thus we have meditation.

I spent three hours in a meditation of sorts that night at the fireplace in the woods.  All the familiar sounds we take for granted became more clearly pronounced, and they spoke distinctly to me.

I heard as if for the first time the constant shish of not only the nearby creek, about 200 feet away to the south, but also the lower-toned gentle roar of the more distant creek, twice as far away to the north.  They said with perfect diction that life is a river, in which I am immersed, and which flows through me, even flows as me.

With each piece of fire wood I snapped apart, the sharp cracking sound advised me that the energy in that sound, and the energy it took me to break it, is the same energy that would become heat and light and smoke and ash in the process of the fire.  The seasoned life in the wood makes a good fire, not its death.

I fancied as a sort of laughter the snaps, pops, and crackles of the fire.  I smiled back and agreed that things really are very funny.  I chuckled at a view from outside myself, seeing this character reclining alone in the middle of the night on a piece of plastic-lined painter’s drop-cloth spread in the middle of the woods on a small lawn he planted around a big rock fireplace.

I looked up at the Rorschach splatters of the treetops against the starry sky and said thanks to the Genius who gives such vision, such light in darkness, even the light of humor, to see such things in the bright black of night.  I observed that only some Observer greater than myself can step out of me and look at myself, and share the view with this so-called self I call me.  This Observer lives partly in me, and moves freely in and out of me as it chooses, and still there is some part of me that seems able to direct its perspective to some extent.

Finally, after burning three small logs and quite a pile of smaller stock I had accumulated over previous weeks’ visits to the Refuge, I let the fire dwindle down to just orange-glowing coals.  I laid back and relaxed, as if to let sleep befall me if it would.  “I could sleep here just like this,” I mused.  “If it got chilly, I’d wake up and feed the fire again.”  I thought about the fact that I had a jacket and two emergency “space blankets” in my backpack.  “Maybe I should just reload the fireplace with a big bundle of kindling and small logs and just stay the night.”  Undecided, I just dropped all thought and let my heart and mind focus on everything I could hear, feel, smell, and taste.

The ember-light dimmed still more as I lay listening to the creek and watching the stars.  The wind had become almost perfectly still.  A soft, thin mist hung in the dark all around me.  Life lay still in perfect silence and darkness.

Far off to the southwest I heard a wind rolling down from the mountains.  I listened as it slowly rolled toward me, then directly overhead, stirring the trees above me, first at their tops only, then lower, each phase with a unique sound, but the movement of air at the ground with me was minimal.  Then silence enveloped me again.  I closed my eyes and slid toward sleep, but stopped in some half-waking zone.  In a little while, from the northwest, another wind rolled down, this time missing my camp by a few hundred feet, blowing by to my left.

I could not leave.  I stoked up the fire with a fistful of long sticks broken into little pieces, and watched as they quickly burned away again to barely glowing embers blanketed in their own ash.

I stood and prayed in gratitude for the place, for the time there, for the fire, for each of the things I enjoyed observing and feeling, and for a special dispensation of protective grace on this site and its surroundings, and for a blessing upon all creatures who might pass through here, human or otherwise.  Then I broke the night by turning on my flashlight, drowned the embers with water I’d brought along, saddled up in jacket, hat and backpack, retrieved my trusty piece of Ash, and brought her home.

On the way down the road in the car, about a quarter-mile from home, a large white owl descended to the middle of the road, pouncing on some rodent.  I stopped and shut off the car engine, watching the owl in my headlights as it watched me between gobbles of its snack.   After a while of gazing at each other, the owl flew up to perch on the roadside power line.  I started the engine and drove off, accepting this rare kind of encounter as a sign that I had spent the night wisely.

Zivara