Discerning Circles

At the edge of the peninsula, waves lick away the feet of mountains. In the center of the peninsula they reach far into the clouds and pull some of the most abundant life out of their misty heights. It seems that here on the Peninsula I can always find a landscape, an ecosystem, a nook or cranny that suits my emotions perfectly.
Some days I may be drawn into the forest, and find myself staring at a moss-laden conifer wider than my childhood bedroom that towers above from a rooted foundation that predates the ‘discovery’ of North America. These trees teach me a lot about true steadfastness in life. Other days, from a canoe I may watch a small yet zealous stream plunge into the lake, spreading rocks it washes from the mountainside into the lake, rocks that were previously washed into the oceans some fifty million years ago. Then after ages of slumbering below the ocean floor, an ongoing dispute between two tectonic plates scraped these sediments back up onto the edge of the continent some twenty million years ago, leaving the Olympic Mountains. Streams like this remind me of what immense growth can come with change.
Today, I find myself staring out the window of the café where I sit overlooking the Strait of Juan de Fuca, and watch a small sailboat bob like a tired seagull in the tide. I scan the restless water for aberrant signs of life. I track the birds cruising in the ebbing tide in hopes of seeing one previously unknown to me. Turning from the window after many minutes, the empty seat across from me momentarily takes me back to where two years ago I sat sharing this view with someone who is no longer here with me. I flinch, and stare back out the window, wondering what place pain has in all this...
Punctuated by sweet sips of white lavender tea, I watch movement around me, but eventually I notice my attention lapping back to the bobbing hull of the small, solitary green and white sailboat as it circles around its mooring a hundred yards offshore. It circles, and circles, never discerning, just circling. In these moments, I am glad I have friends on the water, for they help me realize many things in this world are forever adrift. We may have some say where we go if we are aware of the world around us, but the flow is there to take us along, not to be controlled.

The Lesson of Experience

The last two months have been an amazing transition to living back in the States. I realized finally the reason I wasn't writing so much was that I was finding it more important to just roll with the flow of life here again, and not to question or reflect too much until I felt ready. I feel wonderful, and, as always, this land and this life on the Olympic Peninsula never ceases to divine the depth of my daily interactions, unearthing a well of inspiration that calms the rapid of life's experiences into pools of calm discriminating currents.

I will get to posting some reflections soon, but until then, there are some words that I read back in high school, again in college, and were shared with me again back in June that now encapsulate some of the pinnacle views I have been experiencing for awhile now. More coming soon! Oh! These words are from the Bhagavad Gita. Read it!

~
Thinking about sense-objects
Will attach you to sense-objects;
Grow attached, and you become addicted;
Thwart your addiction, it turns to anger;
Be angry, and you confuse your mind;
Confuse your mind, you forget the lesson of experience;
Forget experience, you lose discrimination;
Lose discrimination, and you miss life's only purpose.

Renaissance: A Long Awaited Arrival

Renaissance. This is the word that rang clearly through my mind this morning as I sat in a room of peers out here on the Olympic Peninsula listening to Obama’s Inaugural speech.
Today marks one month that I have been back in the states, and all that matters is after spending 4 very important weeks with family and very dear friends across the country from Pennsylvania, Kentucky, Colorado, to my home here in Washington it is clarity I see surrounding me. It is a clear vision of who I am, and what I want for this life, and this world.
I do not know why, but I have always felt inspired to live a life experiencing new things, from braiding bracelets as a 6 year old, to catching my first native trout as a 15 year old, to throwing pots on a pottery wheel after my science classes at Bucknell, to shooting my first deer with a longbow on my terms in Colorado…There is always something more to learn, something compelling me to search for something that doesn’t bore me in short order. For most of my life, renaissance has meant something much different to me. It has meant simply amassing skills to create things that are useful in my life.
Now, with Peru in memory, I do feel very much like I have been reborn into my country, and I am in love with this life, this opportunity, each moment, every blink. It feels like a true renaissance. Not a sea change, but a long awaited arrival.

I do not know what I will write on this blog this coming spring. The only culture shock I am really recognizing at this point in my readjustment to the U.S. is how I view communication and communicate with people differently than I used to. So, I am going to take some time to think about how I use this website and my writing to communicate this sylvan dream. There is much to come. I am living in a place where my life feels balanced between my mind, body and spirit, and in the balance of these three elements of my life, I feel my light, my love, and joy becoming amplified into pure energy, shining on my surroundings. I wake up in the morning excited to throw back the cover of my sleeping bag, and watch the coming of another day fade from the stars that glitter on the shimmering lake outside my house.
I am also having trouble keeping in touch right now. A phone feels useless to me, and my energy for writing e-mails has waned. It will return, but for now, I hope you all will contact me, and not take my aloofness as nothing more than an indication of how content I am in each moment right here, right now. I want to share this place with you all, but e-mail is not going to do the job. Come out here and love a little bit of this life with me.

Wow, It's the end...

Well, tomorrow night it is back to the States.

I have been fortunate to watch six full moons in Peru, the last one being just a few days ago in Cusco, during an early morning walk back from the discos as the night was fading to twilight. For awhile, staring up at each moon only made me feel tied to the places on which I could envision that same moonlight shining down - back home, the people, the places, the memories...Until my fourth moon, after a walk on the trails around the research station. Once the other guys climbed in their tents, and ceased rustling around as they wriggled into their sleeping bags, I looked around the moonlit valley, and traced the clouds up to where they just looked like ghostly feathers streaking across the full moon. I felt a fullness in my feet that hadn't been around for awhile. I was rooted there and then.

It is just a simple and trite thought to be truly present in a moment, but it is a thought that I feel constantly challenges me. Finally, I could feel the full weight of where I was, and knew that I was in the right place. That night, it was only once I felt this perfect sensation of placement that I then felt my heart reach back to the places I missed back home, and I know some of those places felt my happiness that night.

Of course six months abroad, living like this has changed my life, taught me much, and given me ample thoughts on how to change my life and those around me for years to come. However, suddenly in less than 30 hours, all I have grown familiar to in the past 6 months will be gone, and I will be dependent on my memories and writings to remind me. I am excited to get back to the life I know I love back in the states, and I am equally excited to see how the life I have developed over this long long trip will complement the coming years.

I will definitely miss Peru extremely, and if I do not return here in the coming years, I will be very surprised. See you all soon.

On the right path...

I have arrived in Paucartambo for a day to catch up on some e-mails and what not. The following are two journal entries from the recent weeks.

11/8/08
There are days when ya just know ya just got it right, when things seem impossibly good, and then they get a little better.
After a few hours of searching for nests up and down this mountain creek a few miles from the station, the sun finally crested the edge of the deep ravine and cast brilliant blue light into the booming pools of water tumbling past me. There was nothing else that made sense in that moment other than to just get in. So, I laid my backpack, binos, clothing, and boots along side the river on some rocks, and jumped in. Well, no, I eased in, sat down in the water and managed to hyperventilate in the frigid water for about five seconds before I jumped up and out. Some exclamations escaped my lips, who knows what. After a few more minutes in the sun, I felt I was ready for the real shock of swimming up in the rapid where a small torrent fell two feet into the pool that swirled and spit splashes of icy water on my bare skin.
I quickly walked into the edge of the sandy-bottomed pool, jumped into the deepest part, and swam like a frog in the current for perhaps ten seconds before running back out. The pool was just large and deep enough to swim in. The icy water rushing over my eyes, the clarity of the rocks around me - all was perfect. The last time I felt a moment like this in such frigid mountain water was several years ago now, back in Quilcene, Wa. I would ride a borrowed bike down Linger Longer Rd. a few times a week after work and go for a swim in the Little Quilcene river. At the bottom of the deepest hole, I would cling to an exposed tree root, holding myself on the cobblestone creekbed as I stared up at the blue summer skies. A few times swallows glided in the air above, and something seemed oddly perfect to be staring into that realm while kidding myself into feeling aquatic for so long as my lungs allowed.
After laying on the rocks for a few minutes, I decided to hike up the creek and look for some more nests along the banks, and left my clothing behind. There is something about being drenched in frigid water while bathed in intense mountain sunlight that made me stand there smiling, dripping wet and naked, wondering how things could feel any better at that moment. Once I sat back down to warm up and dry off an hour later by my clothing, a few butterflies landed on my legs, probing for salty sweat. Their violet-blue wings mesmermized me as they winked in the late-morning sun.
---
10/28/08
Ever so slowly, I think my travels are revealing to me that I have people in my life, people who influence my thoughts on a daily basis, people I miss when I am away, everyday people I truly love who make me feel at home. For awhile in my life, I felt alone to the point that I felt accustomed to thinking I really was alone, and that I might not be able to find other people who felt the same about life as I did. But as I stare over the mountainside at the misty clouds that blow condensation into my hair, I am finding the elation I feel in seeing such beauty generates an undeniable longing to have some people here with me now. Someone with whom I can argue over the intrinsic value of such so-called nature, someone to share a barely noticeable grinning glance with as two squirrels pass by unaware of us watching from our treestands, someone to lay in a cozy bed with as we lazily watch the sunrise on the mountainside, someone to lay on a blanket with in the sun as the spray from a nearby fountain kisses wispy drops of rain on our bare skin, someone with whom a normal commute to work can become one of the most memorable mornings of the year...
From shadows of such self-imposed times of youthful loneliness, I am finally acknowledging that I have never really been alone at all, and I am beginning to see it´s not only places so far from man´s hand that I need to see, but I need others at my side in whom I know resides a similar glowing ember as green as these forests through which I am so lucky to roam each day. It may be the path less travelled, but that does not make me alone or unique on this path.

Wet and Beautiful

The early morning light opens my eyes around 5am each morning as it creeps up over the mountaintops on the opposite eastern side of the valley some mile or two away. The mornings are crisp, and the first thing I do as I sit up and slide out of my bivvy sack is put on my sweatshirt that I use as a pillow, and slide on my pants I have beneath my legs where I sleep.

After a year hiatus, the cold mornings have broken me, and I now drink coffee again. Cupping the mug in both my hands, I watch birds flit by on the mountainside as the daylight grows, the clouds sweep up the valley from below, and I await breakfast.

The days are long, slow, and inconcievably enjoyable. I hike thirty minutes or so to my site, and prepare for the morning's work, putting on one thermal layer, raincoat, and rainpants. As I leave the trail and begin creeping up through the thick forest, I half wince, half relish the first cool drops of water that fall on my cheeks from the mossy branches as I weave through the thick vegetation, climbing, half crawling up the mountainside. From time to time, I find myself staring off through the low canopy as thoughts of home, future plans, missed people, or a beautiful birds catch my attention. One morning, a red flash far off through the canopy caught my attention, and I smiled as my eyes focused on the mountain toucan I have been seeing every few days. I called to it through the woods-a mixture of a hen chicken and a veloci raptor-and the toucan's head jerked to the side, slowly shifted 90 degrees, and then jerked to the other side. Over the next twenty minutes I called them to within a few meters of me, and watched them pass in the canopy above before continuing with my work.

Searching for nests is hard and tedious. I think to do this work and not go crazy you must either really love doing, or just be a very diligent person. I just really love roaming through the woods in a grid-like pattern each day taking part in essentially the hunt to end all easter egg hunts. When my eyes fall upon a small grass-lined opening in a ball of moss hanging from the side of a tree, my heart jumps a little bit. Most of the time I reach inside to just find an empty cavity, just a shadow of a home. One time I saw something odd in the obscure darkness of the rainy forest peaking out at me, and as I reached up and poked it in confusion the face of a mouse recoiled from my finger. This old nest had been taken over by a family of five jungle mice. Not what I was looking for.

As I head back up the mountainside on my way back to lunch around 1230, usually the skies have thickened in confusion over whether it was time to rain or not. A thick mist descends upon the mountainside, and for awhile that is all you think it is when suddenly ten minutes later I realize my shoulders are damp and the chill is licking at my sides. I brush my hand over my beard to find it rather wet but not dripping. Each day it seems this is how the rain comes, subtly sneaking dampness into your clothing, making you realize you should have put on your rain gear.

For me, this is a blessed place, a haven, and a mirror into the person I am trying to be.

I would like to write more but my time is up in this small internet cafe in the mountain town in which I have chosen to pass my day off. I hope you all are well.

Macchu Picchu

Sweat dripped liberally from my brow and into my moustache as I made my way up the side of the mountain towards the entrance to Macchu Picchu. Daylight was just fading to pale blue behind the mountains surrounding me. It felt great to push myself hard up a mountainside again. It had been awhile,

Once we got into the park, people started running ahead like maniacs to the other side of the park to the other entrance to Wayna Picchu, which only allows 400 people a day. Once we had secured a place in line to hike up to Macchu Picchu, I took some time to walk around for some early morning photos before the park got filled with other tourists.

The morning had closed in quickly with cloud cover. The sun shown brightly through the clouds, and as it rose above the mountains on the eastern edge of the valley a single tendril of light reached down to Macchu Picchu for a few minutes.

Once we got our tickets to hike Wayna Picchu later that morning, our 25 year old Peruvian guide, Juan, took us around to show us the city. He highlighted the significance of certain parts of the city, its architecture, and its temples. I estimate I missed a fair amount of what he was saying, since it was all in spanish, but I rathered to stumble through understanding his perfect spanish, than have him struggle to explain himself in broken english. Without seeing this place, explaining much of it isn't that interesting. To see it in person is awing. People always talk about how the rocks line up perfectly, with no gaps whatsoever, and this is true where the most attention was paid, at the temples. All of the temples at Macchu Picchu were essentially built to worship some aspect of the earth that the ancient civilation was grateful for. The earth that nurtured them was their god, and the attention they paid at reflecting nature in their designs and rituals was very acute.

Later, we climbed up to Wanya Picchu, and from there the view was amazing. Macchu Picchu looked like some sand castle inlaid with moss and small rocks. We sat up there for awhile taking in the view, but all in all this was a very different experience for me.

I think this was the first time I have been to a place that is one of the wonders of the world for its natural splendor as well is its human heritage. Given time alone up there, I would have sat for hours observing the place, but as it was, teaming with other tourists, I felt no need to sit and dwell. There were a group of people sitting in a circle in one of the temples up on Wayna Picchu. In some circumstances I could have felt myself doing that, but it wasn't the same. I knew going into it that I would be surrounded by other people who may have very varied reasons to be up there. So, I went up there to try and take in as much of the awesome history and beauty this place has to offer, and enjoy it for that.

Sitting upon Wayna Picchu as I looked at the surrounding valley, mountains, and Macchu Picchu below, I felt a solid pleasure in this civilization's legacy. I found it very enheartening to witness the labor that must have taken lifetimes to build. I saw it as the devout result of an understanding by another human culture that realized there was something much greater than their life, their culture, their humanity. Granted, the work was most likely performed by slaves or the poor of the culture, and there were no doubt many darker sides of this culture that this beautiful relic doesn't depict, but this will be true for anything regarding humanity, be it 2000 years ago, today, or far into the future.