P/P Photoweek: Last Light at Pop Creek Pass (IX.15.08)

WEST WIND AT POP CREEK PASS

Each time I cross a pass, I suddenly remember something
I always seem to be forgetting about the energy of insight,
about how similar the two experiences are. This moment
of crossing over, the epiphany that fills us as a new horizon
appears before us and instantly rushes in. This is the energy,
it seems to me, of sudden awareness, of suddenly discovering
a new way of seeing or looking. Where does it come from?
What is its source? It doesn't seem personal to me, a mere
mechanical product of my own memory. No. Insight seems to
be coming to us from 'someplace out there,' from someplace
truly intelligent or divine, an in-breathing of the gods as the
ancients used to say. We don't really know, do we? To me,
it is just there, ever-present, like pure air, like healthy rich soil,
like the clear fast-flowing water moving around me everywhere.
One can either choose to listen to it, move with it, drink from it,
or just walk right by indifferently and ignore it.

A steady west wind roars through the ridge crest firs and
pines, blowing the last few thoughts of the past decisively
away, and bringing the sound of what seems to be a distant
ocean near. O view of the known world . . . I turn to look a
last time at the valley from whence I've come.

Just before I step across into this new world, the flashing
white outline of a nutcracker's wings catches the last light
of day as it shoots straight up, sheering the strong winds
like surf, and vanishing almost as quickly out of my field
of sight. And all this as if to say, "Ah, you poor people people.
Will you ever learn to fly, learn to fly free of the fetters of
fear, free of the fear of falling?"

These are the thoughts that fill me, as I take out my
headlamp, adjust its single bright beam, and start finding
my way slowly down a steep talus slope as the darkness
of night descends around me, happy to once more have
been reminded about these things.

Hidden Lake,
Eagle Cap Wilderness,
Oregon, IX.7.2008