“Every mountain top is within reach if you just keep climbing.”
― Barry Finlay
Mountains know and Trees believe
Mountains have certainty and trees ambition
Both are of earth but where trees have air and water,
Mountains have fire
Mountains stand tall but resist change
yet fall prey to erosion
Trees bend with the wind yet are
much more vulnerable
The River is the carefree agent of change
It cares not for knowledge, belief or ambition
Its only interest is in the stories it collects
along his carefree path
“Mountains seem to answer an increasing imaginative need in the West. More and more people are discovering a desire for them, and a powerful solace in them. At bottom, mountains, like all wildernesses, challenge our complacent conviction – so easy to lapse into – that the world has been made for humans by humans. Most of us exist for most of the time in worlds which are humanly arranged, themed and controlled. One forgets that there are environments which do not respond to the flick of a switch or the twist of a dial, and which have their own rhythms and orders of existence. Mountains correct this amnesia. By speaking of greater forces than we can possibly invoke, and by confronting us with greater spans of time than we can possibly envisage, mountains refute our excessive trust in the man-made. They pose profound questions about our durability and the importance of our schemes. They induce, I suppose, a modesty in us.”
― Robert Macfarlane
I spent the greater part of today in Whistler, BC visiting friends and enjoying the mountain view. Whistler, besides being the site of the Winter Olympics in 2012 is renown for skiing and hiking. Outside of the resorts it also has become something of a large picturesque shopping mall. On a busy holiday weekend, thousands of people could be seen shopping and milling around. Many were attending a yoga festival and in the main field of the tourist park mall there were around fifty people, impressing lookers on and their friends with the way that they could contort their bodies. There were kids running and lots of dogs and people generally having a good time but moving quickly from one place to another.
It felt good to look to the mountains and see the unmoving. They have been there way before there was an Olympic village and way before there was a native fishing village. They preceded humans and may very well be there way past the time when we are not. I look to them and find patience and acceptance of everything that happens and a will to observe the hurry-scurry with tolerance, forbearing and humour even as I participated in it. Like the mountains I will forbear what comes my way tho unlike them I find times when action is necessary and even preferable. A mountain view always strengthens me tho as I realize that little that seems traumatic and important in the moment truly matters from another perspective.
Blessings, G
“For I am I:ergo, the truth of myself; my own sphinx, conflict, chaos, vortex–asymmetric to all rhythms, oblique to all paths. I am the prism between black and white: mine own unison in duality.”
— Autsin Osman Spare
I spent today driving through the mountains of British Columbia with my family. I got caught up in thinking of mountains as metaphor. There is the slow climb up and then the drop down into the valley. Dual quests that bring us ever further. More so tho I try to relate to the mountain. That vital energy that lives within the solid rock that can burn so fiercely and ultimately sustains life on the surface of the mountain. So much lies within me. I feel the climbs and the descents and that ever present burning, yearning for life that produces all that I show on my surface. How can I be true to my mountain self? Another lesson to learn for mountains are ever patient enduring cycle after cycle, within and without.
Blessings, G
“I have lots of things to teach you now, in case we ever meet, concerning the message that was transmitted to me under a pine tree in North Carolina on a cold winter moonlit night. It said that Nothing Ever Happened, so don’t worry. It’s all like a dream. Everything is ecstasy, inside. We just don’t know it because of our thinking-minds. But in our true blissful essence of mind is known that everything is alright forever and forever and forever. Close your eyes, let your hands and nerve-ends drop, stop breathing for 3 seconds, listen to the silence inside the illusion of the world, and you will remember the lesson you forgot, which was taught in immense milky way soft cloud innumerable worlds long ago and not even at all. It is all one vast awakened thing. I call it the golden eternity. It is perfect. We were never really born, we will never really die. It has nothing to do with the imaginary idea of a personal self, other selves, many selves everywhere: Self is only an idea, a mortal idea. That which passes into everything is one thing. It’s a dream already ended. There’s nothing to be afraid of and nothing to be glad about. I know this from staring at mountains months on end. They never show any expression, they are like empty space. Do you think the emptiness of space will ever crumble away? Mountains will crumble, but the emptiness of space, which is the one universal essence of mind, the vast awakenerhood, empty and awake, will never crumble away because it was never born.”
― Jack Kerouac
Things I can’t accept
the mountain teaches wisdom
Temporal things pass
A few days away
lonely with family
exploring mountains, peaches
and my own being
If I could remove the inner peach core
and let my outside be devoured
would that bring me greater peace?
or do I with stony exterior
address the world with hard wisdom
and acceptance of all.
My peach self will pass
and the mountain abides
I scatter to the wind
knowing that scars heal
and new fruit grows
something greater remains.
“Thousands of tired, nerve-shaken, over-civilized people are beginning to find out going to the mountains is going home; that wilderness is a necessity…”
― John Muir
Back in Washington State for the first camping trip of the year. The rain is coming down and yet we’re staying relatively warm and enjoying family time and nature. I’m looking forward to some quality communing and meditation tho my posts for the next few days might be a bit sparse. Still this quiet time is for recharging and contemplation so I can bring back the good stuff.
Blessings, G
The Consciousness of Space by G A Rosenberg 
The Consciousness of Space by G A Rosenberg 
Ringed by G A Rosenberg
