The Mindful Hiker:
Soul Home
In the early fall, the air is warm, fog is rare, and as I stand atop Mount Wittenberg—my own Mount Olympus—I look out to an ocean and headlands made impressionistic by the filtered light that adds pastel hues to the already soft landscape.
Autumnal winds blow strongly at times but not with the constancy of the vernals. After no appreciable rain in six months, the possibility of fire coupled with big winds, as happened in 1995, is always a worry.
Birds of prey soar down the valleys, deer lounge on the ridge’s open, grassy meadows, bucks joust for the rut.
Wittenberg’s summit is covered with firs the size of Christmas trees stunted by the weather. They sway and bend in the breeze, but without bracing and holding on as they would in a violent squall or winter storm.
Mesmerized by the magical light, somehow milky and clear at the same time, I lose all sense of time and even all sense of self-watching.
This place, which I feel has been my soul home throughout and before time, unfurls into fullness like a maple-leaf bud. Every thing in the landscape—every blade of grass, wildflower, jackrabbit, doe, vulture, sparrow, beetle—is familiar, is family, in that flick of timelessness.
Everything dances—that purest of art forms that leaves no prints, no record of its performance. I can’t even say whether the scene before me is real and alive.
I’ve lost my frame of reference, and without it I can’t even say if I am alive. I simply am. "I am that I am," the God of the Old Testament told Moses.
So, in that moment (and I can’t even call it a moment, for “moment” is by definition a measure of time), I (and I can’t even say "I," for I have no sense of being separate from anything that might be other than I) am part of the timeless, "the Deathless," as Ajahn Sumedho calls it.
The future, the past, and even the present are gone. Eyes, ears, nose, tongue, body gone, as the Buddhist Heart Sutra teaches. Mind gone. A place where life is simply lived, without remorse or doubt. Such a place, being a good place to live, is an equally good place to die.
In that blessed state, I am immersed in bliss, immersed in “I am that I am.” All around is love, not love as I have come to know it or was taught, but love that cares for and embraces all life always. Even purpose disappears. Life itself is enough. "I am sufficient as I am," wrote Walt Whitman, content with nothing other than life’s brocade.
Love is a cocoon, and if I could metamorphose and allow it to embrace me as it has forever, I could emerge a liberated butterfly—that essence of joy that flips and dips and flutters and sips, living only a short time but offering a glimpse of eternity.
But as I twist to get a better stance, a sharp pain stings my knee and rekindles the embers of aversion and fear, and out of the cocoon I tumble, still a caterpillar.
The Mindful Hiker: On the trail to find the path (DeVorss & Co. May, 2004). Available at booksellers or directly from the publisher at www.devorss.com.
Origins
Sky Trail
The Living Trail
Quietening
Faith in a Huckleberry
Fire on the Ridge
Loving and Grieving a Tree
Tap Roots
Stalking Silence*
Moon on the Man*
Grace Land
Resurrection
Pain as Teacher
Wind-ing
Spring Eternal
Letting Go
Soul Home*
Epilogue and Benediction
The Mindful Hiker: On the trail to find the path (DeVorss & Co. May, 2004). Available at booksellers or directly from the publisher at www.devorss.com.
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