1992 (3) – A Lesson from Life

An efficient and tasty dinner of dehydrated lasagna and beef jerky was consumed with gratitude, and we passed a very pleasant evening among the large white boulders that provide a clear view of the developing night sky.  The nightly performance of heavenly bodies was continuing on its smash run, with nothing but glowing reviews.  The twilight orchestra was tuning confidently, and the stellar actors waited calmly, veiled in the wings by a curtain of dissipating light refracting around the edge of the earth.  This was our show; as if the three of us were the only audience in the world.

As the sky grew darker, I pointed out several satellites bisecting the skies on their steady, straight orbits.  We tried in vain to pick out a few constellations, settling for the familiar Big Dipper and Orion.  The sky was teeming with pinpricks of light; a veritable swarm of fireflies fixed in the firmament.  Fiona had never seen as many stars as she saw up here; and Joy regaled her with tales of the pitch-dark nights in rural Holy Cross, where the brilliant stars were blackened by passing shadows of wak-waks from the jungle.  I asked her if the stars were different there, just a few hundred miles from the equator.  She was offended that I might be implying that her stars were somehow less magnificent than these, and I concluded silently that she was probably busy caring for her younger siblings when she was supposed to be in astronomy class.

In my own turn, I helped the girls prepare for bed, after which I returned eagerly to the flat rock, anxious to try something completely different.  I remembered I had brought a boat, in which the natural supine position would give me an excellent, cushioned view.  I launched the small craft on top of the smooth water that was dark as oil.  The wind had died down as usual, and all was silent except the dipping of my paddles and the swirl of water as I pushed away from shore.  Assuming a comfortable position and finding Venus in the southern sky as my guide, I settled in for the most comfortable time I ever spent in the wilderness.  Clusters of multicolored stars spun above my head, as the boat charted its own spiraling course.  I watched them rise and set from behind the black rim around the lake.  The kind, gibbous moon beamed down to where I where I was floating on my back, looking up at her face as she floated on her back, drifting among the stars and looking up at me.  The reverie was broken by the nudge of a rock under my butt, and I knew we were getting too close to shore.  I had to paddle over fifty yards in the dark to get back to the rock dock, but it was worth it!  When Joy asked where I had been, I told her I visited the moon.  This only served to confirm her suspicions that she had married a lunatic.

Morning surrounded our tent and switched on the searchlights as if to say, “Come out with your hands up, you don’t have a chance!”  Indeed, our little nylon cocoon quickly became a solar oven when sunlight hit it.  By design, it was pitched in a spot that would get shade in the afternoon for naps, but in the morning, it was in full sun.  We had a very level floor, but still wound up scrunched and tangled together, inside our separate sleeping bags at the base of the tent, like worms in a test tube.  I had to unzip the door to wriggle free, and slither out into the crystalline stillness.

Experiencing Big Bear Lake in the morning is like being an animated character exploring inside a three-dimensional National Geographic photograph.  Moving through the intense stillness conveys the impression of swimming weightlessly in a liquid panorama that is frozen in time.  The air seems to ripple and eddy as you pass emerald trees petrified in amber light.  The silence is so omnipresent that it folds inside itself as a vibrating tone of quantum tranquility, and you hear every nuance of the small sounds you make, even as you try playfully to make no sound at all.  The lake is a perfect mirror; more dynamic than glass, and pulsing slowly with the heartbeat of the mountains reflected in its surface.  Words become superfluous.  Incredulous looks are exchanged.  The water just sits there, patiently waiting for you to understand.

Today we were going to see Little Bear on my first day hike!  But not altogether carefree, as I had the very real challenge of guiding two neophyte trekkers across a crazy mile of jumbled boulders, craggy crevices, and scraping manzanita bushes.  Above all, I wanted them to have their balance, and fashioned walking sticks from local boughs.  I carried the essentials in Joy’s small pack, including the irrepressible dinghy, deflated and folded to the size of a pillow.  I was looking forward to drifting in circles around Little Bear, with its sentient rock walls and lush forest marching down to the shore.  It seems silly to think about now – all that work just to fool around for a couple of hours and come back – but more than anything else, I wanted the ones I loved to visit the magical place that played over and over again in my lowland dreams with the comforting rhythm of a heartbeat.

The August sun glared down indignantly at our meager party, as we picked our way carefully to find the easiest path up to the outer wall of the basin.  Facing east and southeast, this enormous mass of granite withstood full sunlight every day, and in places the white granite seemed to melt softly into swirls of hard vanilla ice cream.  Oh, that my sun-baked mind would have chosen a less tantalizing metaphor!  Nonetheless, this was by far the easiest traverse to Little Bear in my short memory.  Little Fiona held up surprisingly well, as she channeled her inner chipmunk and leapt spryly from one rock to the next.  Joy was so impressed with the view that she forgot to cast looks of vexation in my direction; enamored to distraction with the outer spectacle.  Across the basin, the faces of the Pharaohs on Sphinx Rock gazed down at us kindly. To them, we were ants marching across the crest of a frozen waterfall, pulled ever downward to the left by the massive curve of foamy white granite cascading to the green forested valley.

Our arrival at the miniature north shore of Wee Bear was phenomenally picturesque.  The trees were still arranged on the southern shore just so, and the great, bare silver pine skeleton thrust high and proud on the eastern edge, framing the tiny lake in a postcard setting.  The girls were delighted and awestruck by the distinctive and adorable cuteness of the scenery, which had the charm of a colorful background to an animated movie.  They couldn’t stop oohing and aahing, exclaiming delight at every new display of natural beauty.  Like a proud papa showing off his beautiful new baby, I beamed with pleasure and empathy to relive vicariously my own first impression of this amazing symphonic arrangement of visual harmony.  I showed them the Furniture of the Gods, the Beater Cedar, and the lush green, miniature inlet meadow that was still as vibrant as an artistic terrarium arrangement.  I pointed up to where the improbable cave lay hidden amidst tumbled boulders the size of trucks, but feminine prudence vetoed the notion to check and see if there were any inhabitants.  We instead wound our way up the short, familiar pathway from Wee Bear to Little Bear, hoping there would be no one else there to alter the energy of the moment…  Thank all the gods!  It was still midweek, and we were spectacularly alone with the spirits of this ancient alpine cirque, born of a volcano and surging with an eruption of splendiferous beauty – solely for our benefit.

We were hungry and thirsty after the hike, so I pumped some cool water through the filter while Joy prepared the meager rations in the small backpack I carried.  The vinyl dinghy took up most of the room, and the dried fruit and nuts we had brought had been mashed to the bottom, looking wholly unappetizing after all the effort expended to reach our goal.  Fortunately, I had brought a fishing line (without a pole), and I set about to see what could be done with the implements at hand.  I tied the line to a stiff branch, and carefully placed one of the few salmon eggs I had brought on the hook, like a jeweler setting a ruby.  From the shoulder of White Bear Rock, I tossed the coiled line into the crystal clear cove 10 feet below, and WHAM!  A small trout met the red egg as it hit the water, seeming to leap out and catch it before it even got wet.  This little guy put up a valiant fight, but he was hooked through the jaw and was soon sparkling in the air next to me, as hand over hand I pulled up the nearly invisible line, shouting to Fiona to come take a look.  She squatted next to the dying fish, and like most little girls would, she felt sorry for it.  But not sorry enough that she didn’t want to give it a try herself!  I showed her how to toss it down and hold the branch like a fishing pole without getting too close to the edge of the rock, and WHAM!  Another juvenile trout met the red salmon egg at the surface just as it hit; no doubt jealous of his rival who had so quickly devoured the previous one!  And where did he go, by the way?  Oh, there he is, dead on the rock next to me, glistening in the sun.  Oops!

Fiona was proud as can be, and held the trout daintily on the line for the obligatory photo.  I had only a few eggs left, and set about preparing the next cast with our primitive gear.  While Fiona squatted next to me on the rock, head between her knees to get a close-up view of the two little fishes, I tossed the line out a third time, and WHAM!  Another over-eager trout made a fatal swoop on the bright red bait; almost as fast as the other two had.  Three salmon eggs, three casts, and about three seconds of actual “fishing time” with the hook in the water had netted us a cute little meal of one super-fresh alpine trout apiece.  “Look, we’ve got sushi for lunch,” I said to Joy, who had come up the slanted side of the rock to see what all the commotion was.

“Ewww,” exclaimed Fiona, standing up and wiping her hands subconsciously on her shorts, even though she hadn’t actually touched the fishes, “We’re not gonna eat them raw, are we?”

“Well, I didn’t bring a frying pan,” I joked, knowing that the plan was to roast them on sticks like marshmallows.  Fiona’s expression indicated she would be satisfied with the dried fruit and nuts, which was back where we had left our stuff; no doubt attracting the attention of the local chipmunk mob.  She wandered back down the rock to make sure she still had something to eat.

I tossed the few remaining salmon eggs into the cove as a gift to the surviving trout.  None of them hit the bottom.  I could have caught as many fish as I wanted, but we only needed one apiece, and now it was possible Joy and I would be sharing Fiona’s.  These were barely legal teenage trout morsels, but that was all I wanted – to share with my loved ones the sweet, succulent energy that presented as German Brown Trout in this pristine wilderness.  I had no urge to gorge on their flesh, or worse, catch more than we could eat.  We came to visit; not to plunder.  I started a little cupful of fire in a disposable fire ring, and cleaned the fish in an out-of-the-way place.

A “disposable fire ring” is a well-planned exercise in respect for the untouched appearance of nature.  As in previous trips, I was somewhat disturbed by seeing big fire pits with blackened stones left in all the camping sites, and in some other places, too.  The life-giving energy of a natural place is altered significantly when human artifacts are left to distract from the beauty.  I pulled rocks from places where I could easily return them, blackened sides down and hidden from sight after they had cooled.  I only needed a tiny fire anyway, knowing I could collect many chunks of resin-infused pine deadfall to make a quick bed of coals to roast the trout.  The three of them stood nearby, impaled on their sticks like grisly banners in the breeze, gaping mouths choked with pine branches, their cold dead eyes dully reflecting the orange flames.

Joy was most favorably impressed with the flavor and texture of freshly roasted mountain trout, and devoured most of Fiona’s portion, too.  Fiona never ate much anyway, and was content to share her trail mix with a few of the bolder chipmunks that ventured close enough to almost take the treats out of her hands.  After our meager lunch was consumed, the only thing left on our agenda was the boat.  It sat defiantly in a lumpy yellow pile, waiting to suck the vapor from my lungs once again.  “If I’m gonna be stupid enough to bring a freakin’ boat up here,” I groaned to myself between gasping breaths of thin air, “Next time an extra pound or two for a freakin’ foot pump would be worth its weight in gold.”  Breathe, inhale, blow.  Gasp and breathe some more.  Wait for the heart to slow down, and the retinal flashes to subside.  Breathe, inhale, blow.  Pinch!  Don’t let any of the precious air escape!

This was going to take a while.

The females lost interest.  They poked along the shoreline, exploring the rocky clefts and marveling at the incredible living tapestry of the western rock wall of Altamira above the lake.  I took my time inflating the boat with the feeble bellows of my lungs, content to spend long intervals gazing at the landscape I loved so much.  It was early afternoon, when the sun began to dance on the emerald water in a hundred thousand flashes of brilliant white crystals.  The familiar green and white pattern of vegetation and granite blended with the deep purple shadows in the clefts among the rocks all around me, as if I was part of a basket woven of earthly matter.  Breathe, inhale, blow.  The incongruous vinyl contraption began to stretch its shape to look like a boat, although it had a long way to go before it could hold three people like it did back at Big Bear Lake.  Breathe, inhale, blow.  My lips started to tingle, and my ears were hot with hyperventilation, exacerbated by the higher altitude, until every breath seemed to produce only a few cubic inches of air.  I used my tongue to block the escape of air between breaths, so that I appeared to be permanently attached to the floppy bladder, in a gruesome imitation of a sickly infant sucking on a flaccid yellow teat.

At long last, when I had the dinghy fully inflated, shipshape, and ready for launch, I was almost too exhausted to call out to the girls.  All I wanted to do was to see the shores of Little Bear Lake for the first time from its center, without having to tread water.  The three of us expertly repeated the contortions that would allow us all to fold into the confines of the raft without capsizing, and we pushed off into the sparkling ripples of water like a brave balloon soaring amidst exploding fireworks.  I was again the outboard motor with just one of the two-piece plastic oars, and I scooped paddles-full of fireflies this way and that, to move our brightly colored cluster of tourists around the lake.  First to the deep end, where it was cool and calm, and I could see the rays of the sun slanting into the ancient phthalocyanine depths.  Then across to face the rock wall of Altamira, looking up at its dizzying height from an entirely new angle, as if it were a skyscraper made of organic building blocks.

The last leg of our modest excursion would take us back across the lake to the emerald cove next to Little Bear Rock.  Along the way, we took a mystical detour on the karmic interchange of life.  Fiona spotted an electric blue butterfly struggling on the surface of the water about fifty yards to starboard.  My first thought was, “This is gonna be cool – maybe we’ll see a huge trout leap from the water to snag it, like one of those postcards back at the trading post.”  Fiona, bless her gentle soul, had far nobler aspirations than I, and exhorted me stridently in her high-pitched voice to paddle harder to rescue the poor butterfly before it drowned or got eaten by the Loch Ness Monster.  Grinning with the thrill of do-or-die adventure, I maneuvered the dinghy close enough to where Fiona could reach out at the limits of her balance point (much to her mother’s consternation), and the grateful butterfly latched onto her lifesaving fingertips.

An amazing moment of stillness descended upon our ridiculous vessel, with its tangled crew of gaily colored sailors scudding awkwardly across the afternoon waves.  I let the craft have its way, and gazed transfixed as Fiona held the blue butterfly aloft like Nike with her torch, while the wind picked up and blew us this way and that.  The aquamarine butterfly stretched its wings out gracefully to hasten the drying therapy of the sun’s rays, slowly flexing them up and down.  Nearby, a large trout broke the water to grab a less fortunate insect, and I realized suddenly with a profound surge of awareness that we had just performed a small but magnificent act of kindness in a harsh world.  I asked myself, had we hiked for hours to get to this place, with several cubic feet of my breath inflating this unwieldy vessel, for the sole purpose of rescuing this one lucky butterfly from certain death?  Had we intervened in what the Tibetans call the Wheel of Becoming?  Or were we predestined to be here, at exactly this time, to save the seemingly insignificant life of this marvelous creature, now gathering its strength to take flight from my daughter’s gentle fingers?

I reflected further on the three lives we had taken from this place so quickly and unnecessarily, for the pleasure of our “lunch.”  We could have brought our own sustenance easily, for we were not living off the land as part of the ecosystem, the way the indigenous tribes had so long ago.  I brought along the fishing gear as a way to show my family how easy it is to get food from the wild, and as a result I stole some of the wildness of the place like a callous tourist.  The rescue of this butterfly was a way to somehow pay back what we had purloined, as penance for disrupting the native food chain of which we were not an integral link.  It was a philosophical lesson in the inevitable equity of existence.

The sun glanced off the electric blue sheen of the butterfly’s wings one last time as it abruptly jumped off Fiona’s fingertips and took flight, flapping madly and spiraling higher and higher as if it couldn’t wait to get home and tell its butterfly family what had happened.  Fiona gasped exquisitely as it let go, and sat transfixed in her place amidships, with her arm outstretched in its fluorescent plastic sleeve, delicate fingers waving gently in the wind, until the tiny blue dot merged with the dizzying sky and disappeared.  The moment was over, but was stamped indelibly on our hearts.  The quantum particle of “butterfly” had appeared from and returned to the void.  I paddled thoughtfully to shore, feeling that we had somehow participated in the holy cycle of birth and rebirth.