R. Mark Liebenow's Blog: Nature, Grief, and Laughter, page 10

Adventure of Solitude

Many of us go into nature to unwind and be refreshed, but when we try to talk to others about how nature is transforming us, we find it hard to express the changes in words.
In Breaking Into the Backcountry, Steve Edwards takes on the challenge of describing this inner movement. He invites us into his days as he takes care of a cabin in the wild backcountry of Oregon for seven months. With no one around, he is forced to deal with the silence, isolation, and unresolved struggles in his life. As John Muir, one of Edwards’s heroes, said, the journey into nature is also a journey into ourselves.
Insights of Thoreau, Rilke, Thomas Merton and others guide him as he adjusts to the solitude and his life intersects with the lives of the deer, bear, and mice. There are keen observations of nature’s changes as it transitions from April to November.
At the beginning of the book, Edwards questions how he is going to cope with living alone. By the middle of summer, lost in the glory of another sunset, so much has happened that he wonders how many other epiphanies he has already forgotten.
This is a book of presence, of discovering foundations. Solitude becomes part of him. Edwards does not arrive at the destination he seeks, but he finds the path that is taking him there, a path of guidance and nourishment.

This is a beautifully written book.

Seeing Nature Through a Lens

(my photo of Half Dome, taken from across Tenaya Canyon)
Early one morning I followed the Merced River in Yosemite from Happy Isles to the big medial moraine, turned right, and headed up Tenaya Canyon. At the far end of Mirror Meadow I sat on a log by Tenaya Creek. Half Dome began on the other side of the river and rose a mile over my head. My intention was to sit by the quiet river, focus on the triangular boulder in the middle of the river with its image reflecting off the still surface of the water, let thoughts come and go, and calm into the mindfulness of nature. When the light in the sky was in the right place, I would take black and white photos of Half Dome backlit by the sun.
When I first began taking black and whites, I quickly learned that the “form” of colors, what gives colors their colors, does not translate to b/w film. Black and white picks up contrasts. What gives colors their power is reduced to rather indiscriminate shades of gray. I had to train my eyes to see the natural world differently. 
Whenever I arrive in nature, it takes my city eyes time to refocus and see nature on its terms instead of in the context of a built landscape of right angles.
Ansel Adams was convinced that a black and white photo was different than a color photo of the same scene, a difference that went beyond the colors, and for years he refused to deal with color. Perhaps he felt it was too easy to be swayed by the colors in a setting. Psychologists tell us that if a scene is green, we become peaceful. If it’s red, we get excited. Colors affect us emotionally.
The colors of Yosemite are amazing, especially at dawn and sunset – deep azure skies, granite cliffs that shift from blazing white to golden to the alpen glow hues of the sunset, and meadows that are vibrant green in spring, and rust and tan in the fall with accents of purple.
And if we’re serious about photography, whether we’re using color or b/w film, we want to compose each photo so that it tells a story.
To me, black and white photos capture the details, the grain, the textures of the land, rather than the colors shimmering on the surface. 
If you have had the chance to see two photographs of a friend’s face, one in color and the other in black and white, you know it’s like looking at two different people. In the black and white photo it’s as if a protective covering has been removed. We notice the wrinkles and blemishes, and in the eyes we see the struggles he or she has endured. In black and white, the personalities of people are revealed.
Questions to toss around at your next party:
If there is more emotion to color photos, is there more philosophy to black and whites? Which one has more drama?
If writing and reading are essentially black and white affairs (black ink, white paper), do avid readers see black and white photography better than non-readers? How are digital books with colors and photographs changing this?

French cartoonist Heuet has created a graphic novel version of Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past. Does a graphics version of a story tell the story better, or does it tell a different story?

Celebrating Nature and Community

Dawn rises over our city. The oppressive heat and humidity of yesterday is gone. The rush of yesterday’s work day forgotten.
Delivery people toss newspapers that plop on cool, concrete steps. Joggers and dog walkers nod at each other on the streets as they slowly wake up. Buildings catch the early sun and fill the dark alleys with light. People linger in bed with windows open wide to let in the fresh breeze and the sounds of birds chirping. Lovers hold hands as they walk along the shore, remembering the sweetness of last night.
Street vendors roll their carts into place and begin to warm hot dogs and chorizo, Italian sausage, satay, and burritos. They ready their ice cream bars and shaved ice cones.
Children race across the grass as their parents spread picnics on blankets. There are pick-up games of basketball and soccer. Frisbees glide on the air. Musicians gather on corners and under the trees to play the sweet and sad songs of their ancestors and the songs that rise from their hearts this morning. The rhythms of steel drums and bodhrans, the melodies of guitars and the haunting Andean flutes. Shuffleboard and chess, dashikis and yamulkes, laughter, dreadlocks.
The smell of corn roasting in the husk fills the warm afternoon air.
People dance as couples. People dance in wheelchairs. They dance in groups, they dance with their dogs, and some dance alone, raising their faces to the sun in gratitude. Kites soar up on the breeze. Big ships sway on waves in the harbor. Boats with orange and yellow sails go by.  Rowboats and red kayaks go by. Faces are painted with imaginary blue creatures with whiskers, and toes are painted in a rainbow of colors.
The city dances and sings today, giving thanks for this glorious weather. Old folks and young people dance. People with cancer smile and dance because today they feel good. People with Alzheimer’s dance, so present to this moment of joy.

People of so many cultures are singing and dancing together on this beautiful, gorgeous, most amazing day outdoors.        

Dawn Rises Over Our City

Dawn rises over our city. The oppressive heat and humidity of yesterday is gone. The rush of yesterday’s work day forgotten.
Delivery people toss newspapers that plop on cool, concrete steps. Joggers and dog walkers nod at each other on the streets as they slowly wake up. Buildings catch the early sun and fill the dark alleys with light. People linger in bed with windows open wide to let in the fresh breeze and the sounds of birds chirping. Lovers hold hands as they walk along the shore, remembering the sweetness of last night.
Street vendors roll their carts into place and begin to warm hot dogs and chorizo, Italian sausage, satay, and burritos. They ready their ice cream bars and shaved ice cones.
Children race across the grass as their parents spread picnics on blankets. There are pick-up games of basketball and soccer. Frisbees glide on the air. Musicians gather on corners and under the trees to play the sweet and sad songs of their ancestors and the songs that rise from their hearts this morning. The rhythms of steel drums and bodhrans, the melodies of guitars and the haunting Andean flutes. Shuffleboard and chess, dashikis and yamulkes, laughter, dreadlocks.
The smell of corn roasting in the husk fills the warm afternoon air.
People dance as couples. People dance in wheelchairs. They dance in groups, they dance with their dogs, and some dance alone, raising their faces to the sun in gratitude. Kites soar up on the breeze. Big ships sway on waves in the harbor. Boats with orange and yellow sails go by.  Rowboats and red kayaks go by. Faces are painted with imaginary blue creatures with whiskers, and toes are painted in a rainbow of colors.
The city dances and sings today, giving thanks for this glorious weather. Old folks and young people dance. People with cancer smile and dance because today they feel good. People with Alzheimer’s dance, so present to this moment of joy.

People of so many cultures are singing and dancing together on this beautiful, gorgeous, most amazingly perfect day outdoors.        

Trying to Hold Sunlight

I hike in nature to be overwhelmed by scenes of natural beauty. I want to be stunned by what I see. I want to be swept up in something that leaves me in awe.
The problem is that these moments seldom last very long, and as soon as I realize that I’m in one of them, as soon as I think about what I am experiencing, the moment ends. I become an observer instead of a participant.
I can try to stop thinking and hope that I slip back into the moment, but this rarely works because I can’t will myself to be surprised. Or I can hope that I’m still close to being in the zone, resume hiking with the chance that further down the trail another moment will sneak up and hijack my senses.
Sometimes I take a photograph of the special moment to preserve it, even though when I look at the photo a year later I wonder why.And to take a photograph, I have to step away from the flow of the moment to deal with the mechanics of the camera – deciding on focus, composition, shutter speed, and lens. I also jot down a few words to remind me to record the details down later before I forget them, something like “big moment by North Dome.” But trying to preserve transcendent moments in one-dimensional forms like photography or writing doesn’t work because the feeling cannot be caught and held like a butterfly this way. Photographs and words are only signposts.
One time I was hiking by Taft Point thinking about coyotes when I happened to look across the valley and saw a 500-foot-tall silhouette of a coyote’s head on the side of El Capitan. Formed by a cloud, it was soon gone when the cloud shifted.
Transcendent experiences are not the result of close observation or a matter of logic. I cannot make them happen. Like a Zen koan, the moment comes on its own and catches me by surprise.

All I can do is pay attention and be open to the unknown that exists around me.

Taking Risks

(photo of climbers gathered around Columbia boulder)
Camp 4 is where the rock climbers hang out, and when I’m in Yosemite I stay with them. I like their camaraderie and the stories they share around the evening campfires of adventures from the day.
On days when they’re not climbing the big walls, they often gather at the 30-foot-tall Columbia boulder in camp and challenge each other to make it up the overhanging “Midnight Lightning” route. Almost all of them will lose their grip at some point and peel off the rock, with friends catching them below.
Climbers know their big wall climbs are dangerous. Sometimes they will miss a hold, or the rock will disintegrate in their hands, and they fall, with safety ropes catching them forty or fifty feet down. Generally the only injuries are bruises and cuts.
Taking risks brings excitement into the day and ushers me to the place where I am open to insights. I would guess that most changes in the world happen because of people taking risks, when they see a need and try to help without knowing what to do. Improvising on the spot, they discover hidden abilities and solutions.

I can get through life comfortably doing what I’ve always done. But I grow only when I take a risk and try something that I don’t know if I can do. 

Hunger for Life

Life is a hunger for Truth, Beauty, and Life. You know, the Big Ticket items. 
We think about this a lot, well, not so much really, mostly after a really long day and we are wondering why we work so hard. Or when we’ve had a little too much to drink and our guard is down.
We really want to know because we’re scared that we took a wrong turn and this is as close to understanding LIFE as we're going to get. There are no big answers, of course, to go with the big questions, only little ones that we fold up and slip into our pockets and pull out now and then to give us a measure of comfort. But we still stare at the beer nuts on the bar trying to decipher their arrangement like tea leaves for divine wisdom.
It may be an unspoken quest of everyone to find these places, these moments, to touch something eternal that will last forever, and then to linger in them for as long as we possibly can.
When I went with my grandfather into nature, we’d row his boat from the Mill Pond through the channel and out to a quiet place on Rock Lake in Wisconsin, put our fishing poles in the water, and sit. Often enough we didn’t catch many fish. We also did not talk much. I think he was teaching me how to listen to nature.
In autumn we’d walk at dawn across the fields and hills, listening to the dry corn shocks rasp against each other in the breeze, and solitary crows call to no one in particular. We’d smell the scent of fall apples in the air, and feel the cold bite of winter approaching.
I don’t think we need to use words to understand nature, because I don’t think words are capable of conveying this mystery. We just need to be outdoors to watch and listen. Or the mystery of waking up to our beloveds and feeling amazed at the wonder of their being and that they have chosen to be with us.

When we love someone and when we love nature, we move to a place beyond words. I don’t think we need to know why we feel so alive when these moments of intimacy come and we linger in them. We only need to listen the song of love that rises from our hearts, and the song that the rivers sing to the mountains.

Land Prophets

Destruction of the land only stops when people screw up their courage and speak up.
They dedicate their lives to figuring out a better way and showing others how they can do things differently. They confront the people in politics and businesses who are exploiting the land only to make money, those who listen to special interest groups rather than the everyday people they represent, those who have betrayed the public trust.
In California, John Muir saw sheep destroying the wilderness meadows of the Sierra Nevada and worked to get them removed. In the process, he helped create the National Park system that has saved large tracts of wilderness areas. He also wanted to save Hetch Hetchy, but the politicians in San Francisco sold nature out for votes.Rachel Carsonin Maine discovered the devastating effects of pesticides on eagles and wildlife, and alerted people to the problem of using toxic chemicals on the environment.
Aldo Leopoldsaw the barren land in Sand County, Wisconsin, and figured out a way to restore the habitat. His efforts and writings kick-started the ecology movement. 
Kathleen Dean Moore writes about the interplay of land and ocean in Oregon.
Sigurd Olsonworked to save the Boundary Waters in northern Minnesota.
Terry Tempest Williams in Utah writes of the radioactive desecration of land in the west and the resulting toll on human health.
Wendell Berryin Kentucky figured out how one can do sustainable farming, feeding people while doing minimal damage to the land, thus enabling the land to remain a habitat for animals and birds and still feed people for decades to come.
Sharman Apt Russell writes of the desert wilderness in southwest New Mexico.
John Burroughsin New York wanted people to love the nature that existed around us, even in the city, because then they would take care of it.
Francis of Assisi also loved nature and its creatures, and felt that we were brothers and sisters to each other. And rather than fear the outdoors, we should participate in its life and care for it.
Stepping into the unknown involves taking risks because we don’t know where we’ll end up, who will object, or what names we will be called. The experiences of the land prophets who have gone before us tell us that this is the way that the natural world will be saved.

Their visions guide and challenge us.

Lingering in Wonder

                                             (photo of the Royal Arches and North Dome)
When I go hiking, it’s not to get somewhere. It’s the journey that matters.
I know, you’ve heard variations of this before, possibly so often that you don’t care to hear it again. But it’s true, especially in wilderness areas like the Beartooth Mountains of Montana, the Tetons of Wyoming, and the forests in Washington. You can stop on any trail, look around and see a view, a creature, plant, or geological formation that leaves you amazed that such a thing exists.
While the scenic viewpoints take our breath away, it’s the journey of traveling there that prepares us to have those ah-hah! moments.
The view from the top of North Dome is spectacular and inspiring, and I love to stand on the spot where John Muir stood and see how two canyons come together and form the valley, but it’s when I linger along the trail to North Dome that I notice a small opening through the trees on the side. I go off trail, find a small meadow, and explore its landscape — the wildflowers, chipmunks, and the specific birds live there. Later, when I see an old path, I push through the brush and find a creek flowing over the edge of the canyon in a foot-wide waterfall.
The valley is the result of massive trauma as well as the slow weathering of wind and rain. It’s the same with people. When we linger with them, we discover what is moving beneath their surface, what traumas have redirected their lives, and how they have been shaped by compassion and the love of others.
When I’m reading a book and a paragraph blows me away, I want to set the book down and let those words settle into me. I want those words to rumbled around inside me for the rest of the day so that I will experience their depth. It might take a year to read an amazing book this way, but I will understand a great deal more. It probably took the author years to find these words.
I want to be open to this moment, to everything it is. Each day I want to leave space for the unexpected to happen. I want to be surprised by wonders that appear on their own. 

I want to be attentive to the details of life, nature, and people, because in the details they become real.

Mindfulness

Kelsea wrote about watching the stark northern edge of the Alaskan wilderness for nature to call forth something hidden inside her.
Her listening throughout the day reminds me of a journey in my past when I paid attention to everything going on around me and I felt connected to the wonder of everyday life. Since then, distractions of secondary importance have taken over and control my days. Unfortunately most of them are worthwhile, so it’s hard to say “no” to them. But I end up skimming the surface of everything and do not connect to the depths of any.Thich Nhat Hanh says that when we are doing something like washing the dishes, we should not be thinking about anything else. We should be mindful only of washing the dishes. Hanh is speaking of being fully present to the moment, not just by listening and watching, but also by sharing ourselves with it. 
When I am talking with someone, I should be focused on that person, on what he or she is saying, and not on what I’m going to make later for dinner. I should also let the other person’s words settle in me before deciding how to respond.
Because of Kelsea’s words, I feel the desire to renew my old journey by taking time each morning to open myself to the day’s possibilities. I want to leave the day’s schedule flexible and not pack every hour with tasks and meetings. 
Each night I want to go over what has happened and see what I learned, where I connected to other people, and how compassion was shared. And I want to think about where compassion will be needed tomorrow.
I want to participate in life, not wave as it goes by.

Related post
Getting Close to Nature - http://markliebenow.blogspot.com/2014/10/getting-close-to-nature.html