On the Fourth of July, I trekked through an alpine meadow with a gurgling stream straight off ice melt, with plants and little flowers hugging tight to the earth. I saw what the wild wolves see. I was at the base of Mt. Shasta.
Thinking about it, I can’t think.
Ray Bradbury had a sign by his desk. “Don’t think.” People call that nebulous something various words—intuition, the internal knowing, the muse, the Holy Spirit, God.
I sat beside the lake, dangling my feet in ice water until they turned numb.
It will take a while to integrate what I learned on the mountain, and even longer to articulate it. Maybe nothing will come, perhaps everything. Maybe seeing that all creatures and non-creatures are imbued with spirit—the trees, the water, the flowers, the rocks, the little raccoon that wanted to look at me, but didn’t want me to look at him, that giant old Grandmother tree that fell to the earth. It is crumbling, providing shelter for the little ones, providing mulch for the ground—soon, it will be soil.
I got it that human beings are not warring, sniping, sniveling, petty entities by nature. That has been drummed, conditioned, and taught to them. Human beings are love, expansiveness, beauty, and children of a divine creative force.
“Miracles don’t happen overnight.
Sometimes they take an entire weekend”
