I Walk the Line

There is something that has prevented me from writing these last few days. It is a question of style and content: How do I strike a balance between invoking the reverence and spirituality towards the places I go to explore without sounding insincere or derivative? It is hard, and I want to know if I walk the line.

Climbing up Neahkahnie Mountain (1,631) in the Oregon Coastal Range this weekend was a moment that seemed to put this particular problem into focus. To see a Northwest forest in the rain is to see something normally quite beautiful become absolutely alive and at its most natural. Through the Sitka spruce and Douglas fir needles the rain droplets and light held in the air to create rays and prisms of light. A grove of trees easily transformed to have the same effect as almost any beautiful European church I’ve set foot in.

There were two equally intense emotions I felt on Neahkahnie Mountain: One was spiritual and the other was love, and at lots of moments, they sort of became the same thing. On the one hand, it is religion, from what I know of it: It is elements of ancient mysticism, Eastern religious thought, and even Native American belief systems. But it is also like love, or maybe more infatuation. It like meeting the most beautiful, interesting, and wise person imaginable. How else do you talk about these feelings without reverence, respect, and awe?

I think that the only way to talk about nature is to speak in terms of human experience because that is the only way in which to make language at all invocative of the emotions. I understand what I experience as love, reverence, beauty, respect, curiosity, and mostly awe. I think these words speak most strongly to spiritual and romantic language. I have decided, although, I am sure my feelings may change, that the best way to talk about nature and the emotions I often find it invoking in me are not new words. I am a blip in all of this, and so I find that using the terms and language established by lots of blips throughout history to be the truest way to express what I have to say. Centuries worth of blips add up to a lot -- reflecting the evolution of human societies to their landscapes and lots of experiece.

With the rain obscuring my view of the ocean and the Coastal Range, the climb was exciting because of by what I could hear of the rain drops against the trees, rock, and dirt and all that I could smell of the earth and wetness. When I looked up I saw nothingness -- these were the moments when spirituality and love mindgled most simply and purely. There was nothing I could see, and so what there was to experience in those moments went inward. It was not filtered through my eyes but my ears and my nose. There was nothing to see but there was not nothingness.

The Rivers Run Through It

On the holiest of Jewish holidays, Yom Kippur, I always look for a river. It is a tradition to take bread, rip a piece off for each sin or transgression committed throughout the previous year, and send the bread down the river. This symbolism has always spoken nicely to my view of things.

When Yom Kippur rolled around this year, I didn’t look for the biggest river I cold find; although, when I was younger that mattered to me. The smaller streams were often full of ducks that would eat my sins before they could wash out of my sight. Sometimes I left with a heavier heart than when I arrived. I was not sure of the significance of having my sins eaten by another animal rather than washed away. Now I surely think it speaks to the relationship between humans and the natural environment, but at the time those thoughts were very far from my mind. I chose the Deschutes and Columbia rivers this year for the symbolic rite mostly because there are no ducks in it as far as I’ve seen, and for the first time in my life I wanted to see my sins float away -- out of my hand, out of sight, and out of mind.

On Yom Kippur I drove out to the Deschutes River and stopped at the point where it spilled into the Columbia – Deschutes State Park. I decided that if I was going to attempt to wash away my sins I wanted the entire bang for the buck that I could get. And surely, having your sins washed away in two rivers must be better than only one. As the bread left my hand, left my sight, left my mind, I decided to explore what lay in front of me.

With my bike I set off on the trail toward the old Harris Ranch ten miles into a deep canyon cut by the Deschutes River. There was something about following the Deschutes upstream that spoke to my other religious inclination: fly-fishing and overall river meditation. From my vantage point I could see pools and ripples near perfect to cast into. I had such a clear picture from my view that I couldn’t have had a better sense of how to fish that river than if I had been told beforehand by an experienced angler.

From where I was there was no way down to the river without a long fall, so I kept biking and watching the river. There is an amazing moment in Oregon where the high desert gives way to the lush mountains of the Cascade Range. It is a moment that I have concentrated to see on more than one occasion and have somehow I have always missed the essence of it. Biking along the high desert landscape, the sagebrush and cliffs looked straight out of the middle of Wyoming.

The other side of the canyon carved by the Deschutes is entirely rich and different geologically. It is made of red mesas and gray lava cliffs that speak of some other inspiration entirely different from its across the river neighbor. The mesas were full of such intricate rock patterns that each piece looked individually placed and I could almost make out a pattern of a bird emerging from the rock.

The geologically rich landscape exists along an equally rich human one. Along the trail lies old farm equipment rusted and sun bleached. But my favorite artifact along the trail was and an old claw foot bathtub placed so randomly that it could almost be some sort of art installation.

Upon reaching the old Harris Ranch homestead I stopped. I do not think I really could have had any other reaction upon seeing the old homestead. The house remained very intact with the old fashioned stove still inside, although it was badly busted. The animal holding pens remained open in such a way that I imagined someone herding them back from the pasture on the gentle slopes above.

The way in which the ranch was abandoned made it feel like the family had only gone for vacation and in their absence someone had burglarized the house explaining why there wasn’t any furniture. As much as I have tried to find out more about the Harris Ranch, I have not been able to aside from the single fact it was built at the turn of the twentieth century. I suppose with the family went the story.

I stood still listening, mesmerized by the wind. It was too quiet and too loud in the way that only prairie wind can sound. It is geologic history, it is human history, it is my own history ending in the river. Holy or sinful it all washes away.

On Manifest Destiny

I have wanted to complete Manifest Destiny since first hearing about this prophetic historical and political concept in eighth grade social studies. Despite learning about the actual realities of such expansionism, I have always felt it was right for me to move westward in successive stages re-enacting the legacy of United States settlement. If only James K. Polk could know how strongly his words and deeds resonated in my twelve-year-old heart and mind.

Anyone who knows me well, or anyone that has talked to me for upwards of half and hour, has heard me talk about Manifest Destiny. And at age 22 – both my golden birthday and a palindrome – I have completed the lifelong dream and have moved to Oregon. Interestingly, and not all that surprising, the historical and political origins of the phrase relate directly to the acquisition of Oregon in the nineteenth century.

As a U.S. history memory refresher: Originally the U.S. and England had both occupied the Oregon territory. However, in the 1840s a bunch of brave pioneers started making their way to Oregon along the Oregon Trail. With all these new Americans in the area the U.S pushed to claim more of the territory. In there effort to show just how much they meant business, the Polk administration created such catchy phrases as, “The Whole of Oregon or None” and “Fifty-Four or Fight.” After time and the necessary political machinations, the U.S. and England agreed to draw the boundary at the 49th parallel, and Manifest Destiny was realized and continues to exist in this form today as the boundary between the U.S. and Canada.

And here I am today living out the dream…the dream of my forefathers. But history and politics aside, Manifest Destiny has guided almost all of my major life decisions up to this point. I went to college in Ohio, took a semester off from college and lived in Montana, graduated from college and moved out to Oregon. I have consciously made all of these decisions in an effort to complete Manifest Destiny and reflect the gradual expansion and historic shift westward. As easy as it might have been to move directly out West, I have never considered that as an actual option. It is as simple as this: Manifest Destiny was a movement with progressive westward stages, and so my geographical choices have mimicked this reality.

It is only now that I have actually completed Manifest Destiny that I have begun to wonder what I would have done if I had grown-up in the Mid-West or the West Coast rather than New Jersey. It just doesn't seem the same to try Manifest Destiny in reverse.