Looks like I spoke too soon about Spring settling in. Lady Winter seems to be casting a last, long glance. Its cold, wet and dreary. Something in between sleet and snow seems to be beating down on my living room window and the wind is howling like a mad dog.
Anyway, I spent the last weekend vacationing up in the Canadian Rocky mountains. To start with its important to clarify that the Rockies really are walls of rock... not the traditional triangular peaks that we assume all mountains to be. Sometimes they converge in sharp jagged peaks, but often enough they take the liberty to look like ... say a table or some piece of broken furntiture that badly needs repair... Whatever shape they take, there is probably only one word that fits 'em all: Majestic.
Driving out from Calgary on the Trans Canada, as the rolling Prairies gave way to a violent urge to touch the skies and the soft corn fields exploded into bare rocks with jagged edges, I felt a strange feeling of surrender. A sense of awe mixed with a sense of extreme peace.
Awe because of the sheer natural force I beheld. 85 million years ago, two continental land masses collided and in the violence of the collision was born the Rocky mountains. To this day they bear testimony to the catastrophic incident ... ocean floor rising thousands of feet, killing all in its wake. Over the years, the forces of wind and water have lovingly carressed, carved and sculpted each mountain into a unique figure ... many jagged edges have been smoothed and corners rounded ... yet many remain.
Standing thus, in front of such a magnificent display of force, change and the passage of time, I could not help feeling the very insignificance of our lives. All of human history ... its' constant embattlements and suffering, its' constant search for the divine,its' quest to know, control and conquer, to seek love and glory ... seemed to be minuscule. While we tend to forget and often resist, our fates and destinies are also part of this continuous process of change. It gives new perspectives to what we consider immediate and what we consider unimportant and distant. It made me wonder if our short temporal windows to existence and life often robbed us of the bigger picture that we live within.
Somewhere from that feeling of surrender, I felt a surge of joy. As if all my fears were gone, all my mistakes had been forgiven and the wide world was throwing open its arms in a gesture of welcome. I was no more tied by my history, limited by my ambitions, or defined by my self. Instead, as I gazed at the walls of rock, I felt like I was one with them, one of them, included and welcomed. In that brief moment all the world and I shared a dialogue that celebrated all our diversity and similarity. The pine trees, the beetles, the elk, the azure lakes, the smell of sulphur in the mountain caves, the bears seeking honey ...
I felt one with the universe, atuned to the rhythms that throbbed through all of it.
I felt love.
