• Category Archives Wild Neighbors

  • The Forest after dark

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Samain and the Choice Moon

    Saturday gratefuls: The Blues Shabbat. Ron and Jamie, the Blues Brothers. Veronica. The oneg. Thanksgiving. The Forest at night. Orion. The Pleiades. Scorpio. The night Sky on Shadow Mountain. The half crescent Choice Moon. Driving at night. Tara helping me get ready for my aliyah on December 1st. The torah blessings. Alan and Adrian. Helen. Evergreen at night. Israel ben Abraham and Sarah. Word to Deed today on prayer. Studying the Parsha. Making a sabbath.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: Orion rising

    One brief shining: At the service last night Elizabeth announced Veronica and I would sponsor the oneg (after service food and drinks) on December 1st, people turned and smiled, greeted us afterward with genuine joy, reeling us both in closer.

     

    Last night I drove home from the Blues Shabbat, which was wonderful. Back up Brook Forest Drive which becomes Black Mountain Drive. A fat crescent moon hung in the southern Sky, stars twinkled, coming into sight and disappearing among the trees of the Arapaho National Forest.

    Two different realms. The daytime Forest and the nighttime Forest. We diurnal animals can navigate the Forest with relative ease during the day. Rocks and Trees, Valleys and Creeks. A trail going up or down. If there’s Snow or Ice, we can plan how we want to approach it. Or, turn back. The colors of the Grass, the Trees, the Granite and Gneiss show up. Green Grass or dead Grass, dusty brown, reddish bark, the gray of Boulders and other Outcroppings of Rock. We can cross the Creek on the fallen Tree, or those hopefully not too slippery Rocks.

    At night? Not so much. Our eyes, like all diurnal animals, gather light, but not as efficiently as nocturnal animal eyes. Our body temperature tends to be lower since we have the heat of the day. We sleep at night while the nocturnal animals sleep, or rest, most during the day. Nocturnal animals’ senses of smell and hearing also tend to be more acute that us day lovers.

    The Forest at night for a diurnal animal. Not our world. Even when our eyes adjust to the dark we don’t see well. Much more likely to trip, run into something, miss the patch of Ice or deep Snow. Nocturnal Predators have the upper hand over diurnal animals once darkness falls.

    As a result, when I drive through the night time Forest, an atavistic fear or at least caution arises as I imagine myself having to make my way through that dark landscape. Vulnerable. Uncertain. Certain species memories arise from the collective unconscious saying beware, there may be monsters. Not difficult to see how folks of say, the Middle Ages, created folk tales and legends around the Black Forest, Sherwood Forest, or even the Big Woods that used to stretch from the East coast to the Midwest.

    That’s in part why the Bull Elk I saw in the Rain and at night had such a powerful effect on me. He roamed the night time Forest, had a presence there I could not imagine.

     


    Feelings Mountains Plants Wild Neighbors

  • Consider Oneness

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Fall and the Harvest Moon

    Monday gratefuls: Fat Bear Week. See this link. Rebecca in India. Mary in K.L. Mark in Hafir, Saudi Arabia. Me on Shadow Mountain. My son and Seoah and Murdoch in Songtan. Israel. Gaza. West Bank. Korea. Divided nations. Night Sky. Stars above and around the Lodgepoles. The coming darkness. A Mountain Morning. Aspen Torches, Trees of Ohr. The Tree of Life. Malkut to Keter. The Wildwood Tarot. Luke. Ginny. Jimmy. Murdoch, the silly. My son, the silly. Kate, who was also silly. Jon, who was not. Ruth. Gabe.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: Fat Bear Week

    One brief shining: A bear stands on a rock facing downstream, salmon climb the ladder of flowing water headed to their clan home to spawn, one tight powerful snap and the journey ends.

     

    War. A son whose life lies in preparation and readiness for war. A nation, Korea, divided and still at war. Israel, my coreligionists fighting a war of their own creation. Oppression has a heavy price, paid too often, most often, in blood. Consider the violence of a nation that still relegates its native peoples to lands not wanted, depriving them of the lands that once sustained them. Consider the violence of a nation that systematically denies the vote, a decent education, good housing, well-paying jobs to persons descended from the enslaved. Consider a nation that denies an entire people, the Uighurs, even the crumbs of citizenship. Consider a nation, any nation, that allows its majority to wreck havoc on its minorities without conscience or care. Most nations.

    Consider all these things. We are human after all, all too human. Jealous of what we already have, greedy for what we might get. Israel did not invent oppression. Nor did China. Neither did the U.S.A., even when slavery was legal. No. We humans find love, justice, and compassion often beyond our grasp even if in our individual hearts we might feel it. Collectively we protect our families, our clans, our regions, our skin color fellows, our nations. And in protecting, a noble and worthy action, deny others what they need, a base and evil result. This is the original sin of our species. To love those we prefer and exclude those who fall outside of our love’s sphere. A sad, pitiful narrowness to our vision.

    Then consider the human body. Consider what the philosopher Alfred North Whitehead called the fallacy of misplaced concreteness. The often unfortunate result of a reductionist science that separates the heart as a consideration of medical care from the liver, from the gut, from grief and joy and stress and despair. That separates the teeth from the pancreas. The blood from the lungs. The thyroid from the feet. Treats each one as a thing sui generis when no. Cortisol bathes each organ, blood moves through and into and out of the lungs, the gut, the feet, the brain and into the kidneys. We are one.

    Of course we can learn and know about the heart when we dissect it, image it, palpitate it, treat its actions with chemicals of our own devising. Of course. But how did the heart come to have that blocked vessel? That flapping valve? That enlarged chamber? How does the heart function as part of the oneness that is homeostasis? How is that homeostasis affected by the smile of a child? The sound of a jackhammer? The death of a loved one? The denial at every turn of opportunity?

    More. Yes. My body is one. Yes, it is. But. It is one within a community, within an atmosphere. My body so individual and precious to me can last no more than a few breaths without the oxygen exhaled by plants nearby and faraway. My body so individual and precious to me cannot live more than a few days without food grown by farmers, caught by fisherman, sustained by healthy soil and oceans and skies. My body so individual and precious to me cannot last without the touch, the warmth, the smile, the greeting of others.

    Our original sin. To misplace the apparent concreteness of our skin color, our tribe, our class, our nation as worthy of dominance over others. No. We are one. The Eternal One only knows unity. Only sees togetherness. Insists in its nature on love, justice, and compassion. It has ever been so, and has ever been denied. Our fault, our most grievous fault.


    Great Wheel Health Judaism Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant. Reimaging revelation Science US History Wild Neighbors World History

  • This and that

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Fall and the Harvest Moon

    Monday gratefuls: A pink Cumulus Cloud over Black Mountain. The start of a new Day. A new life resurrected from the 1/60th death of sleep. Each Day a full book in the library of life. The vast wing dedicated to each life. Yours. Mine. The Mule Deer and the Butterfly. Rain. Fall weather this week. My son and his sweet note. Gabe. The Rockie’s game that wasn’t. Twins playing last year’s winner of the World Series in the playoffs. House cleaning today.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: Life, the wonder and the miracle

    One brief shining: Small drops of Water hit my deck this morning, taking the Mouse trap outside to make  an offering to the Ravens, the dead mouse would not come out.

     

    Yes. When I got back it was late September and the Mice had made a new incursion. When I went to get my electric Mouse trap out, I noticed a blinking red light. The sign of a killed Mouse. ? Sure enough, in the worst decision of its short life, this particular Mouse had chosen the Mouse trap as its home.

    I don’t like killing mice. It makes me sad, feel guilty, puts me in a category of human behavior I never aspire to. Yet my team that came to help me clean a couple of years ago made me get over it. Too much of a health risk. And, I know. I know. Hamburgers. Bacon. Chicken wings. Who ever said contradiction was not a part of life? Even so.

     

    Slept well the last two nights. Colon less vigilant. Yay. Jet lag waning, as it will. Perhaps today, maybe tomorrow I’ll shake free of Korea’s Sun and return to the one under which I now live. These transitions go unremembered after a journey is over. Their price part of the experience like airfare and taxis.

     

    Fall in the Rockies. A distinctive time here, one I’m glad I didn’t miss. The bugling of the Elk Bull’s searching for mates. Hyperphagic Bears tipping over garbage cans, raiding cars, going into houses after a portion of the 20,000 calories a day they need before their long nap. The Aspen’s gold, muted this year, against the evergreen of the Lodgepoles. Signs for snowplowing, ads. The Mountain Lions hunting for the straggling Mule Deer, the startled Rabbit. Skies as blue and as pure as new born Fawns, reflected in Mountain Streams and Lakes. The weather becoming more unstable, veering between heat and cold, changing. Nights that go into the electric blanket zone. Days that feel warm in the sun, cold in the shade. All of us, humans and wild neighbors, making sure we’re ready for the cold season that follows.

     

    If you read the NYT, you will find in this morning’s edition an article about Bishop Joseph Strickland: A Texas Bishop Takes on the Pope. It’s rare that I have a personal connection to any stories featuring Catholicism coming of good Protestant stock and about to become a Jew. In this case though. Paul Strickland, Joseph’s older brother, is and has been a close friend of mine for over thirty years. He’s one of the Ancient Brothers who meet by zoom each Sunday morning.

    Paul and all of us Ancient Brothers have a very different take on the world than Joseph. Yet. Not a surprise that Joseph is articulate, strong, and determined. Like Paul. Not a surprise that Joseph has catalyzed others. Like Paul and the 10,000 Friends of the Maine Coast which prevented a huge LPG terminal from taking over the tiny Maine town in which he lives. Even folks in the news have families.

     

     


    Asia Commentary on Religion Family Feelings Fourth Phase Friends Health Korea Mountains Politics Shadow Mountain Travel Weather +Climate Wild Neighbors

  • The Meat Shop

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Lughnasa and the Korea Moon

    Thursday gratefuls: K55. The bus to Osan AFB. T-card. Transportation money on a debit card. Rain from Typhoon Hauikui. Seoah. Murdoch. My son. Comic books. Dressed in his uniform and off to work. Posco the Sharp. My son and Seoah’s apartment complex. CS. A convenience store. The Meat Shop. How my son cares about his squadron.

    Sparks of Joy and  Awe: A well organized and easy to understand bus system

    One brief shining: When boarding a city bus in Songtan, the bus stop itself tells you how far away in minutes your bus is as well as having a swiping spot that tells how much money you have on your T-card no digging  through pockets for change or wondering when the bus will be there or whether you have enough money for a fare. Civilized.

     

    Went out last night for a farewell dinner for a master sergeant who worked in my son’s office. The Meat Shop. In that cluster of small shops and restaurants I mentioned across from the main gate for the base. Slices of meat in a long row of glass covered cases. Pork. Ham. Galbi. (beef cut in small pieces). Sausages. Pork belly. Some marinated in soy sauce, others in a barbecue sauce. Vegetables like bok choi, mushrooms, onions, tomatoes. Rice at a separate station. Lots of small saucers and plates and bowls. Linoleum and several long tables.

    An odd decor which featured a Klimt print, muscle bound scantily clad women, tiled surfaces with faces on some of the tiles, a Korean calendar, lacy paper on some of the shelving.

    Back at the table every four chairs had a gas burner and a large griddle tilted downward toward a grease pit. Cut out the chef. Make the guests cook their own meal. A very typical Korean spot. Hot Pot the same. Galbi, too.

    Seoah has her own opinions about how meat should be cooked. Wielding scissors, also so Korean, she cut our meat into smaller pieces, turning them with chopsticks. A loud and boisterous evening. Lots of beer and meat. Very American yet with a strong Korean stamp.

     

    Seoah and I took a taxi home because my son  had to walk all the back across base to his car. When we got home, Seoah went down the CS (convenience store) and the dry cleaners. I sat down on a stone bench to wait. My hip was sore for some reason.

    While I waited, the towers of the five tall apartment buildings in the Posco the Sharp complex rose above me. Lights on in random windows. A slight mist in the air. Cars came and went from the parking garage directly across from where I sat. Hissing in the recently rained on streets.

    Delivery motorcycles avoided the automated gates and turned into the garage. Not busy, a late evening pace of movement. Folks returning from work. Going out for a meal or to a club. Ordering food for delivery.

    Thought of Shadow Mountain. The Lodgepoles and the Aspens. The Mule Deer and Elk. Bears and Mountain Lions. Black Mountain across the way. This spot where I sat was as far away from Shadow Mountain as I could get. Urban. Gentle slopes. City streets. Constant movement of cars, buses, taxis, motorcycles. People living high off the ground stacked on top of each other. Lights blinking and fading, suddenly appearing.

    Yet, I liked this, too. I also realized how it fooled the eye. Yes, every one lived one above the other, side by side, yet each apartment was an individual home. Folks here did not live their lives with each other, rather they lived their lives in their own versions of home, still separate from each other. Not like, say, a small village where Seoah grew up.

    Sure on any day you’ll run into way more people here than I do on Shadow Mountain, but the number you know? Probably about the same, given the usual differences between introverts and extroverts.

    I could live like this. But I don’t want to. I prefer my own house, my wild neighbors, the Rocky Mountains. Still, at another point in life? Maybe.

     

     


    Asia Cooking Family Feelings Fourth Phase Korea Mountains Shadow Mountain Wild Neighbors

  • Go now, the play has ended

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Lughnasa and the Korea Moon

    Sunday gratefuls: The Trail to Cold Mountain. Performed to applause. Released. Packing started. Radical light this time. The company of actors. Acting. Alan and Joan at dinner last night. Cold Mountain. His poetry. The improv class’s Armando. Ginnie. Rebecca. Marilyn and Irv. Ruth. Jen. Gabe. Joan’s piece on the dybbuk. Alan’s on aging. Tal, a master teacher at 26. A chilly Mountain Night. Luke and Leo. Vince. The Parking Spot. TSA open at 4 am for precheck security. Korea. Israel. Taipei.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: Live a Great Story (decal on a Jeep back window)

    One brief shining: This time there was a crowd when I walked out, confident in my piece, carrying the drinking Gourd and my parchment poems, dropped into Herme and Han Shan’s story, Great Sol gone unseen as Berrigan Mountain rotated west with the rest of us, a light breeze blowing.

     

    Go now, the play has ended. My first play has found an audience. What a rush. I finished saying, “Take the Trail to Cold Mountain.” And we all had. My performance was over. The work of the summer over. Ups and downs culminating in a work I was proud of and a performance I was proud of. Felt wonderful. Stretched in a healthy way past my comfort zone.

    Only will know later if my goal for the piece spreading the word about the Rivers and Mountains poetry tradition of China found its way into anyone’s heart. If I had written an artist’s statement for The Trail to Cold Mountain it would have been something like this:

    I want to introduce to a Mountain audience the Rivers and Mountains poetry tradition of China through the Tarot archetype of the Hermit. I believe most Mountain folks have a strong component of this archetype that led them here. We like the curvy roads, the cool Mountain mornings, living with Wild Neighbors on Forested Land. No, more. We need to live away from the World, to clear the heat and dust from our minds and be where the Wind sings through the Pines. So, too, in China. In the Andes. In all the great Mountains and Forests of the World. We are one people.

    Poetry and archetype, myth and legend. Religion. This has long been my realm. From one novel to the next, from one job to the next, even the motor behind the justice work. Now it speaks to where and how and with whom I live. In the Mountains, with other Hermits yet also linked in loving ways to a community, caring for them and being cared for by them. Still linked in deep heart connection with Minnesota made friends, with family far away and nearby, living my own life with them all, yet apart from them, too.

    Deepening the love. Burning away the dross.

     

    Coming home, late. Drove up Brook Forest and Black Mountain Drives. Realized a powerful raison d’être for experiencing the sacred. As I drive along the familiar ranks of Lodgepoles and Aspens, I look now for another glimpse, a brief appearance of the natural world calling to me. (Art Green, Radical Judaism, p. 120) I know that the opportunity, the chance to again see through a portal like the Rainy Night Watcher exists. Thus, I’m more aware of the sacred all along the drive.

    This is, I imagine, the reason others over the course of history have written down their experiences, collected the stories of others, and collected them in what we call sacred writings. Not to freeze those moment and make them rules against which to measure our lives, but as clues, as prompts to the possible moments when the natural world will reach out to us, to help us be ready to see what we’re looking at.

     


    Acting Family Feelings Fourth Phase Friends Myth and Story Plants Reimaging revelation Shadow Mountain Tarot Wild Neighbors Writing

  • Love

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Lughnasa and the Waning Crescent of the Herme Moon

    Sunday and Monday gratefuls: The Trail to Cold Mountain. Off book. Kristie. Off meds? Sunday’s Ancientrails, forgotten. Unusual. The Ancient Brothers on love. A morning with Rich and Ron. Also about love. Burn away everything but love. Study today. Jewish identity. Cool and Foggy morning. Good sleeping. Ready for packing. Cable organizer. Reinforcing off book for the Trail to Cold Mountain. So many wonderful people in my life. Korea and Israel. Same continent. 5027 miles apart. [Osan to Jerusalem]

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: Good friends

    One brief shining: A bowl filled with strawberries, blueberries, black berries, and slices of mango sat by a wooden cutting board with lox heaped upon it next to a lazy susan with cream cheese, capers, cut onions, almonds warm cut bagels on my plate as Ron and Rich and I sat together talking mussar, parenting sons, writing, such a good morning.

     

    I have now a surfeit of riches. Wealthier than I could have dreamed possible. And, yes, in terms of money, too. More important than money though friends and family who love me. Whom I also love. Who will open themselves to me and I to them. A wonderful morning yesterday as an example.

    The Ancient Brothers gathered on zoom to talk about love. Ode talked about Robert Bly’s connected universe, all atoms linked to each other in a grand chain of becoming. As are the atoms in each of us. Bill added Buckminster-Fuller’s Cosmic Plurality:

    “Cosmic Plurality”

    Environment to each must be

    All there is, that isn’t me

    Universe in turn must be

    All that isn’t me AND ME

     

    Since I only see inside of me

    What brain imagines outside me

    It seems to be you may be me

    If that is so, there’s only we

    Me & we, too

    Which love makes three

    Universe

    Perme — embracing

    It-them-you-and we

     

    Paul offered Rilke:

    Widening Circles

    Written by Rainer Maria Rilke

    Translated and read by Joanna Macy

    I live my life in widening circles
    that reach out across the world.
    I may not complete this last one
    but I give myself to it.

    I circle around God, around the primordial tower.
    I’ve been circling for thousands of years
    and I still don’t know: am I a falcon,
    a storm, or a great song?

     

    Tom reminded us of the love we learn from the dogs in our lives, the angels of our youth and of our old age. Of kindness. Of the sweetness of vulnerability.

     

    I spoke again of the gift given to me between Mile High Hearing and Dave’s Chuckwagon Diner: The purpose of life is to burn away everything but love. If we perfected a just society, we could live only in love with each other. So to burn away everything but love, seek justice. If we could see the ohr [the shard of sacredness, divine light] in each other, in all Trees and Rocks and Roads and Flowers that love Great Sol and Mule Deer and Elk and Mountain Lions and Bears and all Mountain Streams and all Rivers and Oceans and in the Air we breathe, we would cry out in revelation like Mohammed, like the writers of the Torah and like Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, there, the sacred, it’s right there! And we could/would love it all.

     


    Dogs Family Feelings Friends Judaism Plants Poetry Reimaging revelation Torah Wild Neighbors Writing

  • Joy

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Summer and the Herme Moon

    Monday gratefuls: Herme. The Seeker. Gaius Ovidius. Han Shan. Writing a very short play. Acting. Distractions. Procrastination. Writing again. Working on revelation. Sacred. Divine. Holy. Spiritual. Religious. Worship. Inspiration. What do these words mean? Are they still important? Judaism. Sarah. BJ. Family. Ruth and Gabe. Marina Harris. My son and Seoah. Murdoch. Korea. Adapters. Travel. Love. Burning it all away but love. Life’s purpose.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: the religious life

    One brief shining: Here it is the Lodgepole out my window I look at it and see all its Branches arranged towards the East where Great Sol becomes seen each morning no need for western facing Branches due to the shade of others those Branches toward Great Sol right now hold Needles and Cone, survival and reproduction of the species, unseen but known to me is that most magical and necessary of all transformations/transubstantiations photosynthesis gathering in the nuclear fusion power of Great Sol, combining it with carbon dioxide and water, then stepping it down into sugars and oxygen and fixed carbon. A miracle of the ordinary. The ordinary as miracle.

     

    Oh. Speeding into my mind since last Tuesday night Herme and the nature of revelation. Prompting a creative torrent can’t keep up with it. Have to slow down. Stop. Read. Watch television. Burning through my photosynthetically captured energy reserves. Glad my thyroid stimulating hormone has given me the ability to use the energy as long as I can. More than glad. Joyful.

     

    This is so much fun. Considering how to lace lines from Han Shan into my own written dialogue, stage directions, settings. Imagining how to advance the plot, how to have a smash bang ending. Yippee! Having to figure out how to represent each character distinctively. When I have trouble having to do that for one character. Gotta thank Alan for suggesting acting classes. I’ve learned so much about myself. About talents and skills long buried. Not gone. Which makes me happy.

    Acting combines the intellect and the emotions, the lev heart/mind, into a sharpened tool with the whole body. The voice. Movement. Posture. Cadence. Emphasis. Volume. All important. Plus memory. Putting it all into the mind and retrieving it as necessary, remembering per Meisner how to live truthfully in an imaginary situation.

     

    Also going to sleep thinking about revelation. What does it reveal? How? When? How do we know it when it’s happening? Waking up with revelation still on my mind. Seeing revelation through my window.

    The book of Nature, of super nature, always open to one page or another. Great Sol in the Sky. The Lodgepole out my window. The first six inches of Top Soil. Feeling the Oxygen breathed out by the Lodgepoles going into my lungs. Another miracle. The transfer of Oxygen into my blood stream so the energy gained from Plants and Animals can transubstantiate into my organs, flesh, bones, lev. How marvelous! How wonderful.

    These are the ordinary encounters, yes, but still inspirational. Perhaps they don’t rise to the level of revelation. The line between revelation and an ordinary miracle is still not clear to me. Perhaps an ordinary miracle involves the intellect more. I can look up photosynthesis, read about it, yet its role in our life of very life is so intimate, so critical, and so ignored that seeing where it is happening, right now, opens my heart in wonder.

    Yet it does not have the jolt, the jitterbugging of the Rainy Night Watcher. That was a hairs on the skin rising up goosebumps moment. I take from those indicators that my body/lev responded holistically. No mental processing. No slotting of the experience or wondering about Elks. Rather an oh this is happening to me right now! Wow. What? Gosh. A frisson of fear. I can still see him dimly lit at the side of the road, watching, his Antlers spread wider than the space of the two Lodgepoles just behind them.

    Loving this, too. Reimagining revelation. Yes. That’s the key.

     

     


    Acting Art and Culture Beyond the Boundaries Feelings Fourth Phase Reimaging revelation Science Wild Neighbors Writing

  • Super Nature

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Summer and the Herme Moon

    Sunday gratefuls: The sacred. The holy and the divine. Supernatural? Yes, if you mean super natural. Finishing Korea’s Place in the Sun. Starting Two Koreas. Wanting to pare down my home work to focus more on my own work. Reading more. Writing more. Seeing friends more. My friend Tom going on a trip tomorrow. Bon Voyage, Buddy. Diane. Seoah. Murdoch. My son. Rising, rising insurance rates. Shadow Mountain. Black Mountain. My wild neighbors

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: Convergence

    One brief shining: I set down Korea’s Place in the Sun after finishing began to wonder how many books I’d read in my life must be in the thousands by now and where the knowledge I gained is in my inner world and how it affects my day to day life you know all those stories all those facts all that poetry crammed into the tiny space neurons and synapses and blood vessels needed to keep it available and pertinent.

     

    Wanted to pick up today on the definition I posted about revelation. Here it is again:

    “In religion and theology, revelation is the revealing or disclosing of some form of truth or knowledge through communication with a deity or other supernatural entity or entities.”wiki

    Even when I posted it I wanted to edit out the word supernatural. In some ways it’s a nonsense word. Doesn’t pass the how would we know it when we saw it test. It might though if you unpack the portmanteau into super natural. After the post about the Bull Elk and considering other similar experiences I’ve had over my life I began to wonder about the true nature of revelation. What, in other words, does it reveal? And why is it different from ordinary experience? Why do some experiences fit Rudolf Otto’s definition and why don’t others? Posting Otto’s definition of the holy again below.*

    I once again insist on my own turn with his definition, not the transcendent, but the incandescent. What lights up your inner world? Not supernatural, but super natural. That is, experiences that reveal the mysterium tremendum et fascinans of the natural world. I’ll return here for a moment to that Bull Elk on the Rainy night. He stood quietly, watching, lit only by the dim light cast sideways by my headlights.

    It was a natural moment. Yes. Earlier that evening I’d seen a Bull Elk pass by the amphitheater at CBE. Also a natural moment. And an inspiring one as all encounters with our wild neighbors tend to be. But. It was not super natural. The difference. The second Bull, lets call him Rainy Night Watcher, made my heart jitterbug. He exposed a sight which I rarely have. A Bull Elk oblivious of the Rain positioned in his Forest habitat as a Watcher from the other side of nature, super nature, revealing in his brief appearance the holiness inherent in wildness.

     

     

    *“the transcendent [the holy]) appears as a mysterium tremendum et fascinans—that is, a mystery before which humanity both trembles and is fascinated, is both repelled and attracted. Thus, [God] sic can appear both as wrathful or awe-inspiring, on the one hand, and as gracious and lovable, on the other.” Rudolf Otto, the Idea of the Holy.


    Mountains Wild Neighbors

  • See the Wildness

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Summer and the Herme Moon

    Wednesday gratefuls: Dick and Ellen. Ann. Gracie. Lid. Joan. Tal. Deb. Abby. Alan. Those two Elk Bulls. Experiencing a cool summer in a heating World. The World Ocean. Mountains. Acting. Writing. Herme. Gaius Ovidius. The Seeker. Herme and Cold Mountain. Judaism. CBE. The synagogue. Lightning. Rain. Wabi Sabi. Ichi-go, ichi-e. Cold Water. Coffee.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: The Bull Elks

    One brief shining: Lightning crashed down from the night Sky, Rain poured on my windshield as I drove the curves and increasing altitude back home from acting class, a twelve point Bull Elk looked at me from the side of the road near Maxwell Falls his face and antlers framed by Lodgepole Pines.

     

    Another evening of Mountain magic. During acting class Alan had moved us outside to the amphitheater for his piece on aging. While he read Dylan Thomas’ Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night, a twelve point Bull Elk wandered near the Grandmother Tree eating the luxuriant Grass occasioned by the persistent Rains we’ve had. He still had his Velvet. Alan went on reading. The Bull went on munching, collecting energy from the Great Sol. Thunder rumbled in the background, a cool Breeze came ahead of it. When Alan finished, the Bull had wandered on.

    CBE occupies a plot of land not far from the large Elk Meadow Park, the first effort of the Mountain Land Trust many years ago. They bought up all the land east of the Mountains behind the synagogue and west of Hwy 74  for some miles to the north, put it into a permanent land trust to keep the Meadow wild. Especially in the Fall harems of Elk come through the Meadow, stopping to rest there.

    The wildness of these magnificent Animals shows in their confidence around humans. They neither approach us nor steer away from us. We are in their domain, but of it in a manner similar to the marmot, the fox, and the rabbit. If the Elk wish to cross the highway, they cross the highway. If they want to lie down for a while in your front yard or come to my back yard and eat my dandelions, they do it. Moose are the same. Healthy Elk and Moose can defend themselves against predators so they have no reason to fear.

    All very sweet

    Driving home after class though. A Thunderstorm roiled, Lightning lit up the night sky. A heavy Rain fell cooling the air. I had passed Upper Maxwell Falls and begun the final climb toward the top of Shadow Mountain. When. I looked to the left. Slowed down. There. Right at the edge of the road, but in the Forest stood another Bull Elk, equal in size and rack to the one I’d seen earlier in the evening. He looked at me and I looked at him. A guardian of the Forest wildness. Not my friend, not my family. A wild neighbor checking up on a domesticated neighbor as he drove by.

    I’m not saying this well. Imagine yourself on a black night driving through the Rain high up in the Mountains. You see faintly illuminated by your headlights a large Bull Elk standing still, watching as you pass. A Mountain Spirit, rarely seen, offers you a chance to see. See the wildness all around you gathered into the eyes and Antlers of one Animal.

     

     

     


    Acting Feelings Mountains Shadow Mountain Weather +Climate Wild Neighbors

  • A journey into mystery

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Summer with the Summer Moon Above

    Saturday gratefuls: Tom. Aspen Perks. Chicken fried steak and eggs. Coffee. Good conversation. Shaggy Sheep. Kenosha Pass. South Park. No snow plowing from 7pm to 5am.  Canon City. Guffey. Fairplay. Bailey. Royal Gorge Railroad. The Arkansas River. Rafters. The Gorge. Volcanic remnants. Walls of Rock. The Bear. The Bear Butt. Rescue on the Water. Pronghorn Antelope. Big Horn Sheep. A hot blue Sky day.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: Two exhausted men hugging a utility pole

    One brief shining: Tom and I looked out the window of our dining car having become used to the sight of rafters six to a boat with one staff person at the rear passing down the muddy, raging Arkansas their blue or red rubber rafts following the currents around white Water covered Boulders and saw…people in the yellow helmets and life vests of the raft passengers desperately trying to stay afloat as the River swept them downstream!

     

    A day of mystery. The first had come on a road far into our trip which had signs reading: No Snow plowing from 7pm to 5am. What? A second mystery was the biological position of the Pronghorn Antelope. Was it a Camelid? A Goat? A Cervid? The third and most disconcerting was the blue raft empty of passengers, its lone staff person guiding it by himself.

    Let’s back up. Around 7 am Tom and I took off for Canon City and the Royal Gorge Railroad. We had tickets for a luxury meal on the 12:30 train. We stopped at the Shaggy Sheep near Guanella Pass for breakfast, run by a chef who got tired of the Manhattan rat race. Good food. About 20 minutes west of Bailey.

    When I started to write that last paragraph, I realized something interesting. We passed through only two towns on our way to Canon City: Bailey and Fairplay. That’s along a two and a half hour drive South and a bit West. Two towns. South Park through which most of our route ran is an example of the High Plains, flat expanses at 9,000 feet. Windy and cold in the Winter and hot in the Summer. Not many folks live on it. Two towns.

    You arrive at South Park after using the Kenosha Pass on Hwy 285, an 11,000 foot spot where the Mountain Peaks level out for a bit allowing a road to be run over them. After you crest the pass, South Park spreads out below looking like Midwestern farming country. Cattle grazing. Bales of hay in the fields. Farm equipment at the homesteads. Yet ringed by Mountains, snow capped this June, and elevated far above the farms of Indiana, Iowa, and Illinois.

     

    We reached that first mystery after we passed out of Park County, which encompasses most of South Park. No Snow plowing from 7pm to 5am. I couldn’t imagine what the sign meant and why you would need one? Are there rogue snowplowers who might insist on plowing this road anyhow? Didn’t seem likely. Solved this mystery once back on my home computer. It’s a Colorado Department of Transportation regulation for the whole state that disallows Snow plowing on stretches of highway that receive fewer than 1,000 trips over night. Staff and budget shortages due to Covid.

     

    The second mystery came as we passed the occasional Pronghorn standing in a field. I’d heard from a hunter that they were Goats. That didn’t seem right. Most likely seemed a family relation to the Cervids: Moose, Elk, Deer. Somewhere I thought I’d read they were related to Camels. None of the above as it turns out. Here’s a quick explanation from Wikipedia:

    “As a member of the superfamily Giraffoidea, the pronghorn’s closest living relatives are the giraffe and okapi.[14] The Giraffoidea are in turn members of the infraorder Pecora, making pronghorns more distant relatives of the Cervidae (deer) and Bovidae (cattle, goats, sheep, antelopes, and gazelles), among others.” Wiki

    The same article points out that they are the only surviving member of their family, Antilocapra americana. They’re the fastest land animal in North America capable of up to 55 mph.

     

    The third mystery though remains unresolved. We had finished our Osso Buco and Buffalo Shortribs as the Royal Gorge Railroad train on which we rode passed out of the Gorge and had begun to head back. We looked out the window to the Arkansas River flowing fast beside the train as it had been since we left Canon City. We saw more of the red and blue rubber rafts representing different float companies setting out on their journey down the surging River. What fun!

    At some point we stopped to pick up a fatigued kayaker. We both thought, likely heart attack. Paramedics on the train tended to him on the observation car attached at what was now the front of the train and also attached to the car in which Tom and I rode. That was interesting. Nice that the train was there and able to help.

    Further along, again looking out the window. Oh. My. God. Look. That’s somebody in the water! Yellow helmet and safety vest suggested a passenger from one of the rafts. Then Tom said. There’s another one! Over there. About to hit the wall. He turned a bit further to look and noticed a blue rubber raft empty of passengers, only the staff person with the rudder oar still sitting in it. The rafts all had six passengers when they set out from the landing where the train had switched directions only ten or fifteen minutes ago. We’d seen two men in the water. Where were the other four?

    The train moved on and we only saw the two. Tom thought he saw one of them reach a raft and get pulled aboard. We passed two more of the blue rubber rafts bobbing at the rocky wall to the River a bit further but the train kept moving. Then it slowed. And backed up.

    I asked a Native American train staff if he knew whether they’d picked up the people in the water. We’re not allowed to comment on it. Oh.

    The train moved back to the site where the two rafts had stopped along the wall of the Gorge. At a utility pole there two of the men we’d seen in the water hugged the pole looking exhausted and bewildered, surrounded by others. A third man struggled up the embankment with no help from the rafting staff, also plainly one who had been in the water.

    What happened to the other three passengers remains unknown to me though I’ve searched several times. A man died on the same stretch of water only four days ago. Thrown from the raft. The 14th water related death in Colorado this year.

    When the train arrived back in Canon City, there were EMT’s and an ambulance and a fire truck there to receive the rafters. They were placed on gurneys and then disappeared from sight.

    What of the other three? Unknown. Tom suggested that maybe they were younger and stronger swimmers who reached the shore on their own. The three we saw all appeared to be middle aged men. May it be as Tom suggests.

     

     


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