R. Mark Liebenow's Blog: Nature, Grief, and Laughter, page 9

The Seasons Within Me

I used to think that, for the most part, summer progressed smoothly into autumn, and autumn into winter, each day taking the next step on the way. Then I began to pay attention. Each season often has a pause, as though the earth is having second thoughts and is reluctant to let go of what has been.
A few days of unseasonably warm weather in autumn is often called Indian Summer, and yet it doesn’t feel like summer or autumn, but something that is all its own.
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The air hesitates, too, as if nature has hit the pause button. A light jacket is enough to stay warm. The leaves on the trees are filled with colors. The clear blue sky is sharp and deep, and not yet soft with the scatter of snow crystals high up in the atmosphere.
This pause can last a few days or a week. Then the season shifts back into gear and each night is a little colder, and each day the daylight is a little shorter. Then the last of the autumn leaves drop, late blooming flowers release their colors to the air and draw themselves back underground, and the rich warm hues of the meadows turn brown, black, and mauve.
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I pause, too, and let the rest of me catch up. There are seasons changing within me. As I let go of the endless activity of summer, I open to a quieter season of reflection.
Yet each season calls us to grow, reflect, learn, and change. Creating isn’t limited to summer, nor reflection to winter. Each season pulls out from us another aspect of our personality, and pulls us inside to deal with something else.

Each season we step away from what no longer is and step toward what will be. Each season challenges us to grow.

Each day we are born again new.

Thunderstorm in the Mountains

from an October a few years ago             *As I come out of Tenaya Canyon in Yosemite after a hike, the skies darken and it begins to sprinkle.  Then thunder crackles and bangs through the sky. The wind increases and blows branches and camp chairs across the Upper Pine campground. I love rolling thunder, especially the type that I can feel rumbling deep in my chest. Hurrying back to camp, I grab my rain gear and head for the meadows so that I can see what the storm is doing to the surrounding mountains. 
A white cloud is forming just below the lip of Upper Yosemite Fall. It's the only cloud this low. The color of the water in the fall matches the white of the cloud so it looks like the fall is pouring into the cloud like a basin, and it seems that more water is pouring into the cloud than is coming out.
I wonder if the atmospheric conditions are such that the fall is creating the cloud? Maybe the cool air flowing down the Yosemite Creek canyon behind the fall is mixing with the humid, warmer air rising from the valley floor and forming a cloud at the junction. Lightning flashes and unhitches the cloud from the fall to float up the valley.

I walk through the meadows in the middle of the valley in the pouring rain, going from Leidig to Sentinel and down to Stoneman and Ahwahnee. When the rain slows to a drizzle, I return to camp and meet Tim and Dave who arrived today. We discover that as I was watching that cloud develop below Yosemite Falls, they were at the top of the Falls photographing it from above as lightning started zipping around their heads. Later I learn from a ranger that the storm dropped so much snow at Tioga Pass they had to close the road.
I turn in early at 8:30 p.m. to get sleep in case the storm intensifies overnight and I have to battle it to keep my tent upright. I sleep fitfully for ten hours as the rain resumes, waking repeatedly to listen to the sounds of rain on the tent and thunder echoing off the valley walls.
The storm makes it clear that I’m not in control here. The weather, the wild animals, and the exposure to the elemental forces of the earth tell me that I am visiting a world where matters of life and death go on, and nothing is assured except this moment.
Overnight the air gets colder as the freeze in the highlands moves down into the valley. Temperatures have fallen into the 20s. The carrots in my cooler are frozen. It's supposed to warm up a few degrees today and a few more tomorrow, but the sun won't rise over the south rim of the valley and reach Camp 4 until 10 a.m. keeping camp cold.
Today being a rest day between long hikes, I don’t have anything scheduled, so I walk around the valley floor trying to get warm. I may have to break out my insulated winter coat that makes me look like a blue Michelin man.
Last night, to my great delight, I found out that the hood to my new sleeping bag works handles cold weather well. It’s called a "mummy bag” and I can pull the drawstring so that it surrounds my head and keeps it warm. I can draw it so tight that only my nose sticks out. This allows me to breathe fresh air and expel moist breath outside the bag, while I stay warm and dry inside.
If I have a warm place to sleep, I relish tromping around in the cold. If I'm cold and wet and know that this isn't going to change, I don't enjoy being outside. I confess, it's a growing edge, to enjoy nature’s beauty whether I am warm, cold, or wet. 

I am not St. Cuthbert who intentionally sat in the cold North Sea off Lindesfarne, England to commune with nature (or deaden his body so he could pray). I pray best with my senses open to the glorious, transcendent beauty of the wilderness.

Hiking in the Rain

Today is a day of rest for my body. The physical exertions of yesterday's dawn-to-dusk hike wore me out. Generally the day after any hike longer than 10 hours is a rest day, or a day of a few short hikes, time to let the body recoup and stretch its muscles. 
So far I detect no serious tightness in my legs or hot spots on my feet. Although my mind wants to go on another long hike and see more mountain scenery, today’s sporadic rain dilutes my drive and encourages me to saunter around slowly and observe the details of nature more closely. 
This is also a good time to catch up on housekeeping chores in the tent, as I tend to dump things in when I return late from one hike, reset my backpack for the next day’s activity, and take off at daybreak.
The impact of weather on camping and hiking is brought home as I encounter changing weather conditions in mid October. When it's rainy, much of my attention is focused on staying relatively dry. My first concern is for the inside of the tent. If my tent and sleeping bag get wet, the trip is over. Once the tent is secure, then I resign myself to sloshing around all day, with parts of me perpetually wet. 
I can endure a day of wet feet and half-wet pants, wet hands and a wet face, as long as I have a dry place to sleep at night. After yesterday's late rain, I had to deal with a little seepage under the tent and moved my tent to a spot under a tree that stayed dry during the storm.
Cold, wet weather is a different creature.
Hiking in the mountains when it's raining isn't fun because the trails are always going up or down and are slippery and potentially dangerous in spots. The added weight and layers of rain gear slow me down, making long hikes cumbersome, and blisters are more likely to form on cold, soggy toes. Hiking over flat ground in the rain is fine because not much friction is put on the bottom of my feet. 
And yet, the mountains in the rain are endless scenes of wonder. The glistening tree leaves. The hovering of clouds over the peaks of the mountains, hiding them from view. The rising of mist from the forests that drift low over the meadows.
The sounds of the natural world also come alive, from the soft plick of raindrops dropping off the branches of a ponderosa pine onto the layer of needles, to the sharp schiss of rivulets of water racing down the valley wall, to the growing roar of the river as it fills and surges with water.
It’s tempting to scamper up to scenic vistas in the mountains to see the panoramas, knowing that I’ll have to slide most of the way back down.

Why does walking through the rain in a wilderness place move deeper emotions? What is it about fog that seems to erase the boundaries of time? 

Brother Sun, Sister Moon

The feast day of Francis of Assisi is October 4. In this harvest season, as I drive through the countryside past golden fields of corn, I think of Francis and his great love for nature.
I see him running through the fields of his scenic Umbrian countryside, robe flapping around him as he shouts his words of praise — lyrics about glorious flowers, singing birds, and the glowing fields of wheat. In what would come to be known as his Canticle of Creation, Francis praises the beauty and presence of the natural world and all its creatures, and gives thanks for his companions, brother Sun and sister Moon.

Except that Francis actually began this poem not when he was out in the fields being inspired. The words came when he was seriously ill and lying in bed. How was he able to sing praises of joy when he felt so horrible that he couldn't get up? When I’m sick, praise is the last thing on my mind. I am truly a horrible patient.
Already in exile from his home and family, after days of being cold and shivering, perhaps the words slipped into his consciousness when a single ray of warm sunshine touched his skin, like the comforting touch of a friend.

Rather than moan about his suffering, he celebrated this simple pleasure and gave thanks for this.

Sweetness of Living

Native life in the barren Arctic is a constant battle to survive. To the Inuits who live there, the brutal struggle to stay alive is balanced by the sweetness of living. A long life is never assumed, not even an additional year. There was gratefulness for what each day provided. For them, it was not enough to survive if they did not also find something to celebrate.
My great grandparents felt the same way, I think. Life was hard when they moved to Wisconsin in the late 1800s and created a farm in the prairie wilderness. Yet the physical life and the fresh food they grew helped them live long lives.

Being in the wilderness centers me. It connects me to the land and its spirituality, what runs through the roots of the trees, shines in the eyes of its creatures, and sings in the melodies of the birds and the howls of coyotes. Its power surges in the rivers and claps its hands in the booming of the thunder.

Gratitude is not based on what I don’t have. It’s giving thanks for what I do.

The Wilderness is Home

(The top of Yosemite Creek as it goes over the falls.)
This is where it began. In the snow. My journey in Yosemite began in the snow one winter. And I could not believe that such a place could exist.
I grew up in the woods, on the rolling hills and lakes of Wisconsin, reading the words of John Muir, Aldo Leopold, and Sigurd Olson. When I moved to the Bay Area in California, and the urban landscape of endless buildings and highways, I lost touch with the outdoors. 
When a friend took me to Yosemite, I entered the place that John Muir describes in his books, and I was stunned by what I saw. I return to Yosemite whenever I can to be renewed by the fresh air, hiking up the mountains, and the quiet sounds of sitting in undisturbed forests. 
I sit by the rivers and listen to the surging water, watch deer and coyotes play in the meadows, look for owls, hawks, and ravens in the sky. Often I see bears as I hike, and sometimes I glimpse mountain lions moving through the shadows.
Yosemite inspires me with the power of its many waterfalls, the great granite domes, and the giant sequoias that rise up 300 feet and are 3000 years old. Sunrise and sunset often fill the sky with yellow, orange, and red. From the warm, green fullness of summer and the cool brown days of autumn to the quiet trickling of snow-clad rivers in winter, each season holds its own beauty.
When I am in the wilderness, the rush of daily life slows.  I have time to think about life back home and work through its complications. By camping, I renew a relationship with nature and learn to hear its many voices. Often I feel awe as I hike the trails between the great vistas, and sometimes I feel fear, for this is still the wilderness, and it has its own rules that I need to respect.
When I look over the seven-mile length of the valley as a winter storm clears and light brightens on the horizon, mist rises from between the trees of the dark green forest, drawing me from the visible world into the mystery that is hidden within.
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I have a video with many of these words on YouTube. Created with Kevin Hall, it uses photography from my hikes and music by Lindsay Adler. On YouTube, type in “Liebenow Yosemite” and the video will come up. Or use this link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7YU61Cy2lio. There are two versions – one with captions, and one without.

Yosemite Tree Notes

This week, forest fires are burning in Yosemite and threatening groves of giant sequoias.
In the late 1800s Sir Joseph Hooker said he had never seen a coniferous forest that rivaled the Sierra's because of the grandeur of its individual trees and the number of its species. 
The Ahwahnechee and their ancestors lived in Yosemite Valley for hundreds of years. Acorns from black oaks made up 60 percent of their food.
The prime growing area for the ponderosa pine is in the Sierra.
For the last 140 years, trees in the meadows of Yosemite Valley have been in flux. Black oaks love moist earth and need fire to thrive, which they don't often get today because of human fire suppression. Pines and cedars like dry earth and suffer root-rot when there’s too much moisture in the ground.
When the settlers drained the swamps in the valley in the late 1800s, pine trees began replacing the oaks, and a crucial source of food for the Ahwahnechee was greatly reduced.
The pioneers also replaced a community and its sustainable way of life with hoards of tourists, creating a place of noise and commerce. Yosemite is also a place where millions of people come each year to experience the awe of nature and the wilderness. Many come to heal, calm their demons, and find strength and guidance for their lives back home.
When I’m in Yosemite, at dawn I often walk into the coolness of the meadow with a cup of hot tea and stand by my favorite ponderosa. I look up at the mountains catching the first rays of light, and feel the warmth of the sun flow into the valley. I think about all the people through time who have stood on this spot — the Ahwahnechee who no longer call this valley home, the pioneers who are also gone, and the people who come today to be alone with nature.

I am heartened by people returning to nature seeking wisdom and inspiration, but I grieve what has been lost.

Until Every Land

(photo of a statue of Saint Francis)
“Until Every Land is Covered by Tranquility,” my short essay on a peace demonstration, was published this week at Mindful Matter. (You can read it at: http://hlst.ee/1N0wx1L)
That it was a protest against nuclear weapons in Berkeley, California is not unusual. That it was peaceful is affirming. That it was led by seminarians and faculty from nine Protestant and Catholic seminaries is notable because too often religion is silent on matters of ethics when society is for the status quo.
The demonstration took place in 1980, which is halfway between the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 and where we sit today. This year, on the 70th anniversary, there was another protest. This means that politicians and the military still like their big, bad toys, like easy answers instead of lasting ones, that our work continues, and that we still don’t trust them to tell us the truth.
What touched my heart about our protest in 1980 was the presence of Japanese nuns of the Buddhist Lotus Sutra sect. One of their traditions is to beat on drums softly at protests as a way of sharing the peace in their hearts with others.
Later that year, at another protest, I stood beside them in the rain, listening to the beat of their drums and feeling the rhythm of compassion flow into me.
It’s discouraging that the use of weapons to settle differences continues. It depresses me that governments think it’s okay if 20 civilians die for every Islamic insurgent, because the ends never justify the means. It is coming out now, in the middle-of-the-road media, that the U.S. government supported terrorist death squads in Central American that killed off a generation of creative and humanitarian minds from the 1960s to the 1990s, as well as supported dictators before and after that.
This has been known to journalists for decades, but their work has been censored by the corporate media that is more beholden to their shareholders than to the truth.
Yet I am heartened that people continue to protest the backdoor schemes of politicians and the deaths of innocent people for economic gain.
Lasting peace is never achieved by killing. Peace starts with the compassion we feel in our hearts, and expands from there to the hearts of others.

May the beating of the drums remind us of this.

Old Wawona Stagecoach Road

There are special areas in Yosemite that continue to resonate in me because of what I experienced there. I return to them whenever I can. If you want solitude, there are many old, forgotten trails that are away from the summer crowds. This is the account of one hike I took on the Old Wawona Road.
Mid morning I’m at the Wawona Tunnel parking lot. A dozen cars are here and people are lined up along the stone wall taking pictures of the stunning view over the forests and up the seven-mile-long granite canyon of Yosemite Valley. In front of us are El Capitan, Bridalveil Fall, and Half Dome in the distance.
I go across the parking lot and start up the Pohono Trail. Twenty minutes later I reach the junction with the Old Wawona Stagecoach Road. Normally I would turn left and follow that trail along the southern rim of the valley to Stanford Point, Bridalveil Fall, Taft Point, Sentinel Dome, and on to Glacier Point.
Today I turn right and continue uphill, wanting to explore what used to be the road that came in from Wawona. The road was built in 1875 over an old horse trail but this section of road was closed in 1933 when the Wawona Tunnel opened. It took over two years to dig and blast that tunnel through the mountain to replace the steep, and somewhat dangerous, section of the old road that had tight switchbacks.
Many of the roads in the valley were built over the foot paths of the Ahwahnechees, which became horse trails, then dirt stagecoach roads, and eventually paved roads.
Half an hour later, a bend in the road brings me back for a moment to the Pohono Trail at true Inspiration Point. I do not stop to look back at the valley. I will do that when I return. This trail road is less congested with fallen trees and wash outs than its counterpart on the other side of the valley — the Old Big Oak Flat Stagecoach Road that was abandoned in 1943 because of continuous rockslides.
It’s a warm day and a cool breeze is coming up from behind me. In a corner of my eyes, I catch the movement of a large bird. It lands somewhere on the other side of a huge boulder. Quietly I inch forward, peering through the gap between the boulder and a tree trunk to find where it landed. On a branch I spot a red-tailed hawk, and it’s watching me. After deciding that I’m not of interest or danger, it looks away. But when I move around the boulder for a better look, it takes off.
In many places, I walk across a soft, crunching carpet of five inches of pine needles and cones that have accumulated over the decades. The even, undisturbed look of the needle cover says that few people ever hike here. In the middle of the road a coleus-type plant grows by itself; the only one of its kind that I can see. A pileated woodpecker, lean and about a foot long, flies by and lands a short distance away. It looks at me as if I have disturbed its solitude. I probably have.
After an hour and a half I reach the overlook near the end of the abandoned road with a magnificent view of the Big Meadow, Foresta with its two barns, and I feel a connection with history. I sit, eat my lunch, and imagine what it was to ride a horse for days up through the hot, dry foothills and canyons and find this meadow, this cool, green meadow, resting for a spell and loading up on fresh supplies at the barns, before heading on the last part of a journey and entering the valley on the riverside trail with the hope of seeing Mr. Muir.
I imagine the sounds of a stagecoach passing behind me — the rumble of its wooden wheels, the clanking of the carriage, the jostle of the harnesses on the horses, and the sounds of their hoofs on the ground.
This landscape probably hasn’t changed much in 140 years. Beyond the nostalgia of history, I feel a presence here, not of any large animal or famous people, but the presence of the mountain I’m sitting on, the presence of the forest, and the presence of a community of small birds that flit through the trees and  the squirrels that hop over the ground looking for something to eat. Nothing is awe-inspiring, but if I lived in a cabin here surrounded by all this, I would be so grateful because of the wholeness I feel.
Turtleback Dome is directly below me, on the bend of the current road as it comes out of the Wawona Tunnel. Elephant Rock is out of sight. A short ways beyond here the Old Wawona Road dissipates in the forest.
Eventually I walk back down. The forest is quiet, except for the loud call of some bird off in the distance. There haven't been any other hikers or many scenic moments. As I near Inspiration Point, where the early travelers got their first look at the valley, I keep my head down and try to clear my mind of all the images of what I know are ahead. I want to experience the view as the early tourists experienced it. I want to see what took away the breath of Lafayette Bunnell as he traveled with the Mariposa Battalion.

I concentrate on the images of the landscape where I’ve just been — dry dusty canyons, dark forests that go on and on. Then I look up, and the 3000-foot-tall monolith of El Capitan rises up in full glory. I am speechless that such a wondrous thing could exist in the wilderness.

Wilderness Questions

When I sit on the side of a mountain and watch clouds journey across the sky, thoughts come to mind that I like to ponder. Some are whimsical, but others, I’m sure, have profound implications.
Skyscrapers have been compared to mountain peaks because they’re both tall and massive. When we first see them, we are gob-smacked with awe and admiration. But if we put them side by side, the buildings begin to seem one-dimensional and uninteresting. We can hike into mountains, and they also have forests, rivers, and alpine meadows. And deer, birds, and coyotes, and bears, moose, and squirrels.
Can the great city parks like Central Park in New York City and Golden Gate Park in San Francisco, both designed by Frederick Law Olmsted who was a big fan of Yosemite, ever be a replacement for natural forests? A temporary substitute, maybe. A slice of heaven for people stuck in the city, perhaps. But a replacement? No.
Why do wilderness landscapes that are untouched by humans feel like sacred places? Do we think of them as remnants of the original Eden?
Is any tree as impressive as a giant sequoia? (Don’t answer if you have never stood beneath one.)
Do people need the wilderness to keep their wild spirit alive?
The wilderness was formerly thought of as a forsaken place. Why? Because no humans were around to assign it value? Because the wilderness had no material value that humans could exploit? Because any humans that were there were insignificant specks in comparison to something enormous, beautiful, and perfect?
What unfulfilled needs do national parks address? Did national parks only become good when humans needed to escape from what cities had become?
Today many people find spirituality in nature. Is this because of something that is found in nature, or something that is lacking at home? 
Does affinity for the wilderness come from the landscape in which one was born?
Are people who played outdoors as children more likely to fight to protect the environment?
Do people who grow up with four distinct seasons like to camp more than, say, people from San Diego?
If an environment can kill you, does that make it more real?
Does cooking over a campfire, waiting for the sun to rise over the mountains, and watching the stars at midnight make you dream of matters more ancient than your birth?
When you stand alone on the bank of a river when it’s raining, do you feel lonely, thoughtful, or renewed?