Tag: mountains

Feeling Blue

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The world is blue at its edges and in its depths.

This blue is the light that got lost. Light at the blue end of the spectrum does not travel the whole distance from the sun to us. It disperses among the molecules of the air, it scatters in water. Water is colorless, shallow water appears to be the color of whatever lies underneath it, but deep water is full of this scattered light, the purer the water the deeper the blue.

The sky is blue for the same reason, but the blue at the horizon, the blue of land that seems to be dissolving into the sky, is a deeper, dreamier, melancholy blue, the blue at the farthest reaches of the places where you see for miles, the blue of distance. This light that does not touch us, does not travel the whole distance, the light that gets lost, gives us the beauty of the world, so much of which is in the color blue.

For many years, I have been moved by the blue at the far edge of what can be seen, that color of horizons, of remote mountain ranges, of anything far away. The color of that distance is the color of an emotion, the color of solitude and of desire, the color of there seen from here, the color of where you are not. And the color of where you can never go. For the blue is not in the place those miles away at the horizon, but in the atmospheric distance between you and the mountains.

“Longing,” says the poet Robert Hass, “because desire is full of endless distances.”

Blue is the color of longing for the distances you never arrive in…
~Rebecca Solnit from A Field Guide for Getting Lost

photo by Philip Gibson

I become easily lost in a horizon of blue mountains
or a vivid sky with clouds
or by merely peering into the innards of a blue iris.

I realize I can never actually be there, but only here,
longing for what I see but cannot touch.

These are landscapes in my mind
forever beyond my reach,
where I can never actually go,
but dwell nevertheless
simply by opening my eyes to see.

My heart forgets me not.
My soul, though lost,
will be found.

Leaving the Wilderness: Peaks and Valleys

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One sees great things from the valley, only small things from the peak.
~G.K.Chesterton

It is all a matter of perspective-
what we see from where we stand
as we walk through the wilderness
of these difficult times.

it takes great strength and determination to climb a peak,
looking down upon the valley left far below
where even mighty mountains seem diminished.

Yet what gives our lives most meaning,
what encourages our faith,
what instills our hope
is how we are met by the Lord
in the darkest of valleys.

He dwells alongside us this week
watching over us,
never leaving us,
always encouraging us
to lift our eyes to the hills,
to gaze at His dream-like peaks above.

photo by Josh Scholten — view of Mt Shuksan from the top of Mt. Baker
photo by Josh Scholten – dawn from the top of Mt. Baker, seeing its shadow to the west

Seize the Day Gently

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Night and day
seize the day, also the night —
a handful of water to grasp.
The moon shines off the mountain
snow where grizzlies look for a place
for the winter’s sleep and birth.
I just ate the year’s last tomato
in the year’s fatal whirl.
This is mid-October, apple time.
I picked them for years.
One Mcintosh yielded sixty bushels.

Fifty years later we hold each other looking
out the windows at birds, making dinner,
a life to live day after day, a life of
dogs and children and the far wide country
out by rivers, rumpled by mountains.
So far the days keep coming.
Seize the day gently as if you loved her.
~Jim Harrison, from “Carpe Diem” from Dead Man’s Float.

Forty some years later, the days keep coming, a life to live day after day after day. I try not to take a single one for granted, each morning a gift to be seized gently and embraced with reverent gratitude.

Even knowing I am meant to cherish this gift, I squander it. I grumble, I grouse, I can be tough to live alongside. I know better than to give into an impulse toward discontent, yet still it happens. Something inside me whispers that things could be better than they are — more of this, less of that — I tend to dwell on whatever my heart yearns for rather than the riches right in front of me.

I’m not the first one to struggle with this nor will I be the last. It turned out rather badly when those before me gave into their discontent and took what was not theirs to have.

We are still living out the consequences of that fall from grace.

Yet, even in our state of disgrace, despite our grumbling and groaning, we have been seized – gently and without hesitation – and held closely by One who loves us at our most unloveable.

Though my troubles and yearnings may continue, I will be content in that embrace, knowing even if I loosen my grip, I will not be let go.

Wondering About the Wild Lands

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He found himself wondering at times, especially in the Autumn, about the wild lands, and strange visions of mountains that he had never seen came into his dreams. He began to say to himself ‘Perhaps I shall cross the river myself one day.’ To which the other half of his mind always replied ‘Not yet.’
~J.R.R. Tolkien — Frodo in Fellowship of the Rings

When you live in Whatcom County, as we do, it is possible to cross the river (several times) over 90 minutes of two lane highway switchbacks to arrive in these wild lands, breathless and overcome by their majesty.

Visions of mountains from our dreams become an overwhelming 360 degree reality, nearly reachable if I stretch out my hand.

God touches every square inch of earth as if He owns the place, but these square inches are particularly marked by His artistry.  It is a place to feel awed by His magnificence.

I am left to wonder about the wild lands, much like Tolkien’s Frodo, pondering what bridges God is building to bring us back home to Him.

Never Felt a Calm So Deep

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Never did sun more beautifully steep
In his first splendour, valley, rock, or hill;
Ne’er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep!
The river glideth at his own sweet will:
Dear God! the very houses seem asleep;
And all that mighty heart is lying still!
~William Wordsworth from Composed Upon Westminster Bridge, September 1802

The world will never starve for want of wonders, but for want of wonder.
— G. K. Chesterton

The ending of September is wistful yet expectant.  We have not yet had frost but the air has a stark coolness that presages a freeze coming soon.  Snow has fallen on the mountain passes and the peaks.

Nothing is really growing any more; there is a settling in, as if going down for a nap–drifting off, comfortable, sinking deep and untroubled under the blankets.

Our long sleep is not yet come but we take our rest at intervals.  There is still daylight left though the frenetic season has passed.

We take our calm as it comes, in a serene moment of reflection, looking out from the edge and wondering… pondering what is waiting on the other side.

The Road Winds Uphill

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Does the road wind up-hill all the way?
Yes, to the very end.

Will the day’s journey take the whole long day?
From morn to night, my friend.

But is there for the night a resting-place?
A roof for when the slow dark hours begin.

May not the darkness hide it from my face?
You cannot miss that inn.

Shall I meet other wayfarers at night?
Those who have gone before.

Then must I knock, or call when just in sight?
They will not keep you standing at that door.

Shall I find comfort, travel-sore and weak?
Of labour you shall find the sum.

Will there be beds for me and all who seek?
Yea, beds for all who come.
~Christina Rossetti “Up-Hill”

It is a comfort to sleep in our own bed after being away for a week. We drove uphill much of yesterday through numerous mountain passes, but then when we descended back into western Washington as darkness descended, we were greeted by the familiar landscape of home.

This life of ours can be a weary and sometimes perilous journey. There are times when it is so dark we’re not sure we can see the road, much less where it is headed or when and where we may be able to rest.

Many have gone on before us so that we will not be left stranded, lost and waiting by the roadside. There is a place waiting for wayfarers like us.

The door is flung open – those who are weary are welcomed with open arms. The road uphill points to the best home of all.

We Come and Go

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The land belongs to the future; that’s the way it seems to me. How many of the names on the county clerk’s plat will be there in fifty years? I might as well try to will the sunset over there to my brother’s children. We come and go, but the land is always here. And the people who love it and understand it are the people who own it–for a little while.

~Willa Cather from O Pioneers!

As we travel through the prairie to meet our new grandson, the expanse of land flies by just as it did when I was a child traveling with my family. The skies are just as dramatic, the horizons lay beyond what can be easily discerned, the grasses plentiful and brown. Sixty years have made little discernible difference to these plains but have made incredible difference to me. I am barely recognizable in comparison.

We are born as images of God to stay awhile to love this land as best we can; we come and go. Today we celebrate the coming of a new grandson born of the mountains and farmland and the prairies.

He belongs to the future.

That Witnessing Presence

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Sometimes the mountain
is hidden from me in veils
of cloud, sometimes
I am hidden from the mountain
in veils of inattention, apathy, fatigue,
when I forget or refuse to go
down to the shore or a few yards
up the road, on a clear day,
to reconfirm
that witnessing presence.
~Denise Levertov “Witness”

Even on the days when the mountain is hidden behind a veil of clouds, I have every confidence it is there.  In the off-chance that it might be visible if we took the time to drive up the highway to the foot of it, we did just that last night, risking seeing nothing but pea soup clouds at the higher elevation. Mount Baker remained behind its impenetrable veil, unseen.

A bit lower, at the foot of Mount Shuksan, initially massive clouds obscured it completely – invisible to us except the knowledge that we knew it was there as we had been in that exact spot before and witnessed it first hand. Yet due to powerful winds that blow in the Cascades, over the course of a few minutes Shuksan was exposed before our eyes in all its glory, first in shadowy profile and then crystal clear reality: it was there, movingly unmoved, a revelation of constancy.

No, it had not vanished overnight, gone to another county, blown up or melted down.  My vision isn’t always penetrating enough to see it through cloud cover, but it is still there. 

I know this and have faith it is true even when, within a few minutes, the clouds blew back over the mountain’s face and veiled it completely again.

Some days I simply don’t bother to look for the mountains, so preoccupied I walk right past their obvious grandeur and presence. Then they reach out to me and call me back.  There are times when I turn a corner on the farm and glance up, and there Baker is, a silent and overwhelming witness to beauty and steadfastness.  I literally gasp at not noticing before, at not remembering how I’m blessed by it being there even at the times I can’t be bothered.

The mountains confirm my lack of witness and still stay put to hold me fast yet another day.  And so I keep coming back to gaze, sometimes just at clouds, yearning to lift the veil, and lift my own veil, just one more time.

The Windowed Light

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In its web I see the mountains
swell with slow rhythmic oscillations
in a sea of sky and waves of breaking clouds.

I listen to the leaves—
those that fall, those that persist
on their dichotomy of stems—

Dissection never reveals the whole.
The fragile rings hide their slender strength,
as the trees abide the sultry air,

brandishing their rattling bassinets
in Spring and in the throes of Autumn
drop their dappled dress exposed.

This is the fineness that holds me
here, fibers that vibrate from my searching
for the words to describe them,

words, like houses made of trees,
that let the winds play at their doors,
and let the windowed light know where I am.
~Richard Maxson, from “A Green and Yellow Basket” in Molly and the Thieves

 

 

 

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There are no words for this light, for this color, for this richness
so I simply dwell within it, failing to describe it.

I can’t stop looking, can’t stop breathing it in.

How is it dying is so glorious that it makes me gasp at being alive?

 

 

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Mountains We Had Never Seen

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He found himself wondering at times, 
especially in the autumn, 
about the wild lands, 
and strange visions of mountains that he had never seen came into his dreams.
~J.R.R. Tolkien from The Fellowship of the Rings

 

 

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Thank God who seasons thus the year, 
And sometimes kindly slants his rays; 
For in his winter he’s most near 
And plainest seen upon the shortest days.

I scent my med’cine from afar,
Where the rude simpler of the year
October leads the rustling war,
And strews his honors on the summer’s bier.

The evening of the year draws on, 
The fields a later aspect wear; 
Since Summer’s garishness is gone, 
Some grains of night tincture the noontide air.
~Henry David Thoreau, selected stanzas from “The Fall of the Leaf”

 

 

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Wandering in a wild land of beauty,
especially in the coolness of autumn,
with the dry hot melting “garishness” of summer past,
God is most plain in these places,
His slanting rays touching
everything and all,
especially me.

 

 

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