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.
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.
posted by Debasaurus Wex at 7:19 PM
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