Elevation

Lugnasa                                                                              Superior Wolf Moon

william-wordsworthThe World Is Too Much With Us

 

 

The world is too much with us; late and soon,

Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;—

Little we see in Nature that is ours;

We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!

This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon;

The winds that will be howling at all hours,

And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;

For this, for everything, we are out of tune;

It moves us not. Great God! I’d rather be

A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;

So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,

Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;

Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;

Or hear old Triton blow his wreathèd horn.

20160829_065845Sitting up here on Shadow Mountain, as I’ve said before, the world can seem far away, down the hill: lodgepole pine, aspen, mountain streams, rocky hillsides, mountain peaks, wandering elk and mule deer, bobcats and mountain lions and moose show up on Pinecam.com postings. There’s also a lot of talk about our mountain lifestyle, though I’m not sure just what that is.

In a presidential election year the world can be too much with us. Trump seems to be gaining back some purchase in the polls, but not enough to win, not even close. His candidacy has shaken and stirred Republican politics like no other in recent memory. So much so that more than one article has wondered about the death of the GOP. The constant heavy breathing from the punditocracy can make any election year seem portentous. This one actually seems to be. I’m glad to start gaining altitude when driving out of Denver.

20160627_121559Gaining altitude is my new equivalent to turning north. When I traveled from Minnesota by car, whenever the return journey changed direction toward Canada, toward the north woods, I would feel a certain relief, a sense of imminent homecoming. When we cross into the foothills from the end of the great plains, our Rav4’s four cylinder engine begins to work harder, as if it too is eager to get back, clawing its slightly underpowered way back to its stall.

Wordsworth and the poem above, especially these lines: “Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;—Little we see in Nature that is ours; We have given our hearts away…” convinced me long ago that I’m a latter day Romantic, one inclined to shrug off getting and spending for finding in nature what is ours. That’s the point of reimagining faith and I suppose you could call it a regression, a move backwards. To me it feels like a peeling away of the getting and spending layer of our third millennium lives, so we can see clearly what’s beneath, not a regression to a past framework, but a revealing of what is always.

As Wordsworth says further on:

“I’d rather be

A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn…”

And so I am.