“Do not be afraid. There is nowhere you can fall,
but the power of the earth will hold you.”
— Sally Oldfield
~
The wilderness dwells within itself; in the peace that comes from following God’s will for His creation. I am but an insincere tourist, insulated in a bubble of self-indulgence and stealing from the beauty without giving any in return. Quite naturally, I feel as if this place isn’t real. That’s because it’s the only reality. Not this place per se, but this way of being. My ardent awe at the altar of all is but a symptom of a disease that comes from choosing to isolate myself from the source of allurement. Why must I exert such effort and come so far to peer through the knothole of the fence I have made around the Garden of Eden? Why can’t I grow into the reality all around me?
Slowly and carefully, I make my way up the ramps and ledges that lead to Wee Bear, under the supercilious gaze of the Pharaohs of Sphinx Rock. I want to be in the real world, I gush in my mind like a groupie; not in that pointless masquerade I have constructed back home! If I could only convince my family to live simply and to have fewer things. Or more aptly, if I could just find a way to do the right things… The Pharaohs were not impressed, as I pushed my tendons to the brink of rupture to leverage every stupid piece of camping gear I own up one more ledge. So much for being “real,” I ridiculed myself, as I stubbornly conveyed the neatly packed instruments of my delusion.
It’s a short hike, really, of about 4.5 miles from car to lake, but too often it feels like purgatory. I stumble around another boulder, and there it is: Wee Bear, looking just as sacred as I had left it. The pristine, unspoiled beauty of the setting mocks me, as if I had crashed an upper-class cocktail party dressed in dirty rags. With humility and trepidation, I edged my way along the shoreline, trying to touch each rock and tree for reassurance.
Finally, ears ringing with the exertion and high anxiety, I arrived at Little Bear Lake about 5 hours after I had boldly left the car. I was weary, but not exhausted, and the first thing I simply had to do was to check the little rock cave, Baggins End, to see if there were any visitors larger and hungrier than myself. Ready to drop a bag of food and dash down the trail if I interrupted some bruin’s early hibernation, I tossed some logs, threw some rocks, and satisfied my frightened inner child that I was indeed alone. I could see that parts of the cave were still dry after the substantial rains the day before. “One of these days, I’m gonna spend the night in that cave,” I muttered to myself… but probably not until I’m forced to by the weather, and certainly not alone (with no back door!).
What if it’s not about the place, or about the stuff? What if the place to BE is within you and the stuff to HAVE is already there?
“But I don’t like what’s inside of me,” my inner voice whines from the back seat. “I want to have something else.”
We become what we think about.
An uneasy silence enveloped my senses as I approached the lakeshore, accentuating my aloneness. I unpacked very deliberately, placing each item carefully in a chosen spot all around the perimeter of the main campsite, as if to fortify my position, or show the wilderness with how much material stuff I could encase myself. It was an eerily satisfying experience to know that every action, every sound, every thought was mine and mine alone. I knew that before me, countless men and women had bravely (and even casually) spent night after night alone in the wilderness; more poorly equipped and much farther away from civilization and assistance than I was. However, it was my first time to try anything as remote and solitary as this, and I laughed nervously out loud when I first realized how rarely I had roamed from shelter and kinship my entire life. The breathless hush of the lake enclosed me in a vacuum-sealed container of my own perception; totally uncontaminated by any interaction with other human beings. I alone represented my species for many square miles. I felt shamefully inadequate.
Unexpectedly, the silence became louder! From everywhere at once it was as though I could faintly hear a very distinct but distant turbine, or running motor of some sort. The cosmic engine was back! I got so excited that I stretched my ears out until they swiveled like radar dishes. Once again, I could not locate the source of the subtle, pervasive sound that resonated in a way that traveled not through the air, but inside it somehow. It hummed as though every molecule of the atmosphere was a miniscule RV in a trailer park, with a diesel generator running its electrons. I was far too agitated by my own alertness to recognize it as a second chance to perceive the agent of God’s sustaining love, driving the existence of all things. I had experienced this phenomenon years before with Greg on a mushroom trip in this exact location. However, this time I was stone cold sober. I could sense the vibrations “loud and clear,” but was blocked by my own disjointed melancholy, as if I was connected to everything beautiful in a way that only accentuated my own ugliness. I felt somehow unnatural and inferior, like a burnt-out bulb on a string of Christmas tree lights. I know now it was my own terribly low self-esteem that clouded my perception, but at the time, I felt unworthy of participating in such overwhelming grace, and it was merely uncomfortable.
I moved down to the edge of the lake, where I could see the thousand-and-one faces of the cliff wall, looking down upon me speculatively; as if considering my value.
“Why do I avoid silence? Am I afraid of what I’ll have to learn about myself? Is it that I may not be able to bear my voice crying out in honest emotion? Do I fear the shadowy dream figures clothed in anger and rage? And how can wisdom enter the inner sanctum of my sadness? Why the fear? What is the sadness? Why is calmness so elusive? Is it that I haven’t learned to listen?
~
“The lure of television and radio ads draws my attention outward. Join in the consumer circus! Pleasure, fun, and happiness are guaranteed! But it’s a false promise. There is an inner gnawing that something is wrong, something is missing. Could the balm for this unease be silence? Listen to the bird: its sound comes from and returns to silence. All things in nature are children of silence.
“Silence is not the absence of something but the presence of everything . . . It is the presence of time, undisturbed. It can be felt within the chest. Silence nurtures our nature, our human nature, and lets us know who we are. Left with a more receptive mind and a more attuned ear, we become better listeners not only to nature but to each other. Silence can be carried like embers from a fire. Silence can be found, and silence can find you. Silence can be lost and also recovered. But silence cannot be imagined, although most people think so. To experience the soul-swelling wonder of silence, you must hear it.”
— Kalichi