R. Mark Liebenow's Blog: Nature, Grief, and Laughter, page 12

In Illinois, in midwinter, the trees are bare and brown. The sky is generally gray, and on most days there isn’t enough sun to satisfy my cats. Without leaves in the way, I can see a mile over to the next hill where there are more brown trees. Brown doesn’t interest me much. I prefer green.
The woods are quiet as I walk down the hill under their spare canopy, follow the creek around the bend where the water has carved a channel into the land, and find a place to sit. Today there is sun, and I lean back against a tree and wait.
Life has moved underground and is preparing for the warmth of spring. Everything around me seems to be frozen or dead. Yet when I look closer, I see the forest’s patchwork of life.There are shades of brown in the trees and bushes. The dry leaves that have papered the ground for months are a spectrum of muted colors — browns, of course, but also blue, red, yellow and purple. Lichen on boulders are colored sage, yellow, gray, black, and orange.
There are also signs of death. Several trees have limbs that have lost their bark. The trunk of one tree is bent at a right angle fifty feet up. I doubt that it will bloom again, but I will watch.
A slight breeze drifts up along the hollow of the creek bed and rustles the leaves. Squirrels emerge to dig for acorns. White-breasted nuthatches twitter in the trees, and a red-tailed hawk circles overhead checking the ground for food.
Over the rise, a crow caws. A response comes from the other direction, and a laid-back conversation begins as each crow thinks about something witty to say before responding. Sometimes, when I have been here, there has been a barred owl and a deer.

I am grateful to have a physical place to go where I can be surrounded by presence of nature and listen for the sacred.

It makes a difference. The one percent.
You’ve seen the commercials. One person does something nice for someone else, like picking up a package she dropped or holding the door open. Someone else sees this and does something nice for another person down the street, and so on. A chain-reaction of helping others. But this is more than a feel-good moment.
An experiment with the particle accelerator in Batavia, Illinois found there was a one percent difference between the number of muons and antimuons that arise from the decay of particles known as B mesons. This one percent more of matter particles than antimatter particles is the reason we don’t explode into smithereens. You see, matter and antimatter do not get along.Trying to save the natural world can seem like such a large task that we give up trying. How do I stop corporations from polluting and fracking the land into piles of waste? But we can save parts of nature where we live, whether this is blocking the company that picks up our trash from also dumping toxic waste into our landfill, creating a free recycling program, or convincing people to stop buying plastic water bottles. 
Aldo Leopold restored a denuded sandy area along the Wisconsin River that was once a thriving prairie filled with wildlife and birds. His efforts led to the formation of The Wilderness Society and the idea that it’s not too late to undo much of the damage that we’ve done to nature. Others saw his work and started their own projects, like the effort to preserve sandhill cranes near Baraboo, Wisconsin.
In practical terms, what I do on the local level won’t do much to slow global warming or save the glaciers from melting. Not by itself. But when my one percent is added to your one percent, and to the one percent of our friends, then we begin to affect larger matters. By working with our neighbors, who may not agree with us but who trust us, we help change their minds and they begin to do their one percent.
If I change my neighborhood, and you change your neighborhood, and a thousand others change their neighborhoods, a thousand people will see what we did, and they will make their changes, and soon we have made a noticeable difference.
The one percent in the world is capable of changing many things. I wonder if it will work with our wasteland of politics, run by money and not by compassion or common sense.

Why do I stare into the woods?
There’s not much going on. The woodchuck is hibernating. The deer haven’t come through in quite a while. The birds are foraging elsewhere. And don’t get me started on the owl that’s been on vacation for six months. Everyday it looks the same. Basically black trees sticking out of a foot of white snow that has buried the bushes and rounded the land so that everything’s smooth.
And yet I stare at the white landscape, mesmerized by the intricate patterns of dark branches and trunks, watching two squirrels chase each other over the snow.
I also like to walk in a cathedral when it’s deserted on late afternoons. Nothing is going on there, either. No rituals, no music, few people. Yet I do because I feel a presence as I sit in on the hard wooden pew in the darkness of that cavernous space. Red votives flicker up front. Stained glass windows glow in the shadows deepening to darkness on the side.
I do this because I like to be surrounded by something larger than myself, something grand and soaring like a cathedral, like the mountains of Yosemite. Something powerful and unsettling like a massive thunderstorm that booms and crackles across the sky. Something that holds mystery in its folds. A power that hums through the earth, vibrations I feel when I rest my hand on its stone.
Presence and mystery. Two matters that don’t physically exist. Things we can’t pick up, turn around, and examine from different angles because we exist inside them.
We sense the sacred when we are quiet and still, and when we stop talking and listen to another person’s journey.
It’s a grace to be in a place that opens up my interior hovel to light and fresh air. A place that allows me to breathe deeply and dream of what might one day be. A wild place that challenges me to take risks and see another unfolding of the spirit’s mystery. You probably have your own spots where everything comes together and you feel delightfully alive and energized. Hopefully you go there often. Life is hard, and it helps to be swept up by something greater than ourselves.
This woods, in the ordinary living of its life, helps me believe in more than what I see.

Primordial turn of Earth.Snow.Solitude with stone.
Light rises,            travels below the south ridge.Cold lingers            on the shadow side of the valley.Fleeting moments of warmth midday.
I clap hands to awaken my ears             to this season’s voice.This aliveness.This.Deer nibble the ground.Squirrels and Stellar’s jays scold us             for no apparent reason.Each creature listening            for enlightenment.
Snow covers the world.Night settles down into the meadow.Moon rises over the far ridge.Coyote trots over memories of buried trails,            listening.
Glaciers deepen on the north side of mountains.Icicles click in the breeze.
Listen.

(One day in January a few years ago, I spent an afternoon in the Mariposa Grove of giant sequoias in Yosemite.)
Leaving my car at the entrance, I walk slowly through deep snow and let the silence of the sequoia grove wrap around me, moving from one giant tree to the next, placing my hand on the red bark of one hoping to detect its pulse. I feel endurance in the thick red bark.
Beneath my feet I sense its roots connected to the roots of the other trees and feel the strength of community. In its stretched-out branches I see its praise of creation. And in its canopy I know that an ecosystem of life exists, above the visible life that I can see from the forest floor.
I feel insignificant here, and imagine how dwarfed I’d look in a photograph standing next to it. These 3000-year-old elders of the mountains hold centuries of memories in their branches, and in the quietness of the afternoon, I listen to their wisdom.
Beneath trees that John Muir loved, I pick up three dark-green cones and hold them in one hand. It amazes me that cones from trees 300 feet tall and 30 feet around should be so small and their seeds so tiny. Freshly cut down by Douglass squirrels, the cones tightly bind their seeds inside, seeds that hold giant trees waiting to begin their lives. The cones will not open without the intense heat of a forest fire, a fire which also burns away the undergrowth and prepares the soil for the seeds to grow.
At the end of this glorious winter day, even the sun is reluctant to leave. The light blue sky of daylight intensifies to a glowing orange that deepens to red, fades slowly to pink, then releases to the cobalt blue of the cosmic night. Constellations of stars emerge and string the branches overhead with twinkling strands of lights.
John Muir wished that sequoia juice could run in his veins, and I’ve seen writing he did in his notebook using sequoia juice. Muir said, when he lived in these mountains, “I only went out for a walk and finally concluded to stay out till sundown, for going out, I found, was really going in.”
Yosemite is 1200 square miles, but every trail I’ve hiked and every place I’ve camped feels like home. The wild, unkempt beauty of the wilderness lives here.
The splendor of sequoias in the majesty of the mountains draws me into sacred roots.

Eighteen years ago this month, in 1997, Yosemite Valley experienced a 100-year flood. Warm rain melted the snowpack in the high country and all that water flowed into the valley. The damage was so great to the roads and infrastructure that the valley was closed for several months. When minimal facilities were restored and I could get in, I hiked the seven-mile length of the valley, going from the east end by Half Dome to the west, surveying the damage and hoping that the places I loved have survived.
            *
In Tenaya Canyon, the bridge crossing Tenaya Creek above old Mirror Lake is gone, washed away like many of the other footbridges in this area. I reach the other side by stepping across boulders in the stream. The trail that went along the riverbank disappeared with the riverbank. The tranquil spot by the river that had a reflection of Half Dome overhead is gone.
In many places the water is red-orange, which indicates the presence of iron. There is an actual "Iron Spring" below the lower pool of Mirror Lake that colors the water there, but this coloring is new since the flood and starts just below where Snow Creek joins in. The pine trees in the middle section of Tenaya's landscape are dying, whether this is due to the change in the river's route, damage from the flood, the new presence of iron in the water, an infestation of insects made possible by the environmental changes, or all of the above.
Change one element in nature and the effect ripples throughout the ecosystem.
The riverbed going by Mirror Meadow has been altered from a quiet, pastoral scene to something that resembles the rugged, torn-up delta below Yosemite Falls. Furrows have been dug through its broad plain, and huge boulders line the new river banks, pushed to the side by the brute force of the water. Footbridges that managed to stay intact now have no trails leading to them or from, like London Bridge sitting in the desert in Arizona.
Below Mirror Lake, the riverbank eroded away to such an extent that the main metal footbridge across collapsed into the flood and was swept away. The flood also took shortcuts over bends in the river and swept away the Upper and Lower River Campgrounds.
At Happy Isles, where the Merced River comes down the Merced Canyon, more than 10,000 cubic feet of water per second were flowing through at the peak of the flood.
The heavy concrete bridge was destroyed. The small islands look scoured of vegetation, but the cascades still dance. Up the canyon, the metal bridge above Vernal Fall was torn off its foundation and sent tumbling down the river to wherever it is that the river collects its trinkets.
In the middle section of the valley, the broad meadows of Cook, Sentinel, and Leidig are buried under a foot of granite sand and look like a wasteland. There won’t be any wildflowers this year. The cabins below the Lodge were swept away or destroyed. The place on the bank of the Merced River where I used to sit and watch water ouzels play in the water, and where I would watch the colors of the sunset deepened and spread across the sky above the mountains, and feel the presence of nature’s great spirituality, is gone.
Other creeks that come down into the valley — Yosemite, Sentinel, and Bridalveil — as well as all the water flowing over the canyon walls added their water to the surge. In the Cathedral Rocks beach area, where I would watch mallard ducks drift by on the water, and watch climbers on El Cap through binoculars, the flood shifted the river 150 feet away, leaving a massive gravel sandbar behind. A large section of the forest eroded away on the bend, and uprooted trees still lay in the woods where they were flung.
At Valley View in the west end, where the canyon walls come together and the river leaves the valley, the rushing water compressed and flooded the forest. Everything being carried along in the water battered the trunks of the trees like bowling pins, taking out huge chunks of wood and bark. Further down the canyon, the river washed out the highway.
Looking at the meadows, I see other low areas where the river flowed perhaps a century ago. Although this flood is the largest in recorded history, it is simply another step in a long process, because looking 3000 feet above me, I see where the river used to be, before glaciers came through and carved the gentle river channel into this deep valley. But that’s a story for another time.
I will miss the beauty that I have come to love, but change is constant in nature. I look forward to the new beauty that is forming.

This morning before dawn it’s zero degrees out.  
Zero, as if there was no temperature outside. Nothing is moving, no animals or birds, not even the wind. I stand motionless not wanting to ruffle the stillness holding the world.
The frozen sun rises pink on the horizon, shifts to light canary yellow that fades as the sun warms the air to eight degrees. 
Hidden in the stiff, unmoving trees, the unseen longing of leaves is tucked deep inside the wood waiting for spring. Beneath the snow, mice, voles and woodchucks sleep.  
A cardinal comes to the feeder of black sunflower seeds, his brilliant red feathers bright against the white background. Wrens flitter in, then chickadees, and a Downey woodpecker. The birds bring soft chattering to the brittle forest.Squirrels emerge from their hidden nests, knock snow off the tops of branches that drifts to the ground and sparkles in the crisp sunlight.
Zero is also the door between the living and the dead. A synapse. Which way will this day turn? Some things will die today. What will be born?
I look for a sign, as if this stunning scenery isn’t enough, and listen for words whispered by the snow or woods, some transcendent message attached to this vision that I can carry with me. But I think this is it. The message today is THIS. I only exist in THIS moment. If I fail to notice it, it ceases to exist and disappears. But if I pay attention to it, then it becomes a reality, a presence that becomes part of me.
Sometimes transcendence surrounds me with such beauty that I don’t want to breathe for fear of disturbing it. Sometimes it is small, like discovering, when it is light enough to see, the footprints of a bird in the snow beside me.

(It's Aldo Leopold's birthday today.)

Ostrander Hut, Yosemite
In a back issue of The Yosemite Journal, Howard Weamer writes about the Ostrander Hut that is in the area behind Glacier Point. The Hut is ten miles out in the backcountry, at an elevation of 8500 feet, and in winter is accessible only by cross-country skiers. Weamer was its caretaker and host for a good many years, and writes of the wide-ranging discussions that would go on into the night between people of different backgrounds. He also mentions the need for solitude that was often expressed by his visitors: "those who welcome it are assumed to have attained something special."
This phrase stayed with me as I hiked by myself out to the hut one gorgeous autumn day. The stone hut was locked up when I arrived because it’s a winter destination, but I looked in the windows at the tight sleeping quarters, then looked out at the tranquility of the forest, mountains, and the small lake that feeds Bridalveil Creek, and I felt contentment.
Does being comfortable with solitude mean that we have arrived at our goal of attaining solitude? Is there nothing that happens once we arrive? What about self-exploration?
Does solitude lead us into self-awareness, or does self-awareness lead us into solitude?In our society it takes great effort to get away from the bustle of the city and find a place where nothing seems to be going on. And being happy when you’re alone with yourself shows an acceptance of solitude. But it’s in solitude that we sort things out, drop useless habits, set aside limiting conceptions and empty traditions, and focus on where we want to go. It’s spring cleaning for the soul.
Certainly solitude is good for restoring our sense of balance, but it can also be transforming. Attaining solitude means slowing down enough not only to notice a hillside of trees shimmering in the afternoon sunlight, but also to see the differences in each one.
“The beauty and natural silence overwhelm me here.... How do you ask people, though, to walk into the trees and listen to ... nothing?"            Joe Evans
It’s not easy to get people to be still and listen to the natural world around them. When we finally stop our activities and stand quietly beside trees and listen to the silence of the woods, are we listening with the trees as they commune with nature, or are we listening to their voices in the silence, hoping to reach the place where we can finally hear our own?
During my hike, every time the breeze picked up, the sugar pines hummed. One time my mind jumped to the song "I Talk to the Trees" that Clint Eastwood and Lee Marvin, in his gravely voice, sang in the western movie, Paint Your Wagon, but as I sang the lyrics myself and started touching trees, I began to laugh and lost track of my thoughts.
As caretaker of the Hut, Weamer found that he often had to answer the same questions with each group that came in, and he tried, as with the Buddhist's bell, to speak and be heard as clearly on the fiftieth ring as on the first. He discovered his impatience and, in solitude, learned to let go of his pride. I would think that he also learned how to answer better, becoming, through careful listening, more tuned to hearing the nuances of how those same questions were asked. People do not always say what they mean, and sometimes they do not even know what they want to ask.
Learning to hear our own unspoken helps us hear the unspoken of others.
Today I walk into the woods near my home, along a creek to a place of solitude. The water is low and the boulders in the river are meditating in the still water of winter. I sit with the birds and squirrels to spend time in the quiet, and think about the Ostrander Hut. I let the rush of the holidays fade, and wait for a vision to guide me in the new year. 

People are kneeling in the darkness of a cathedral as a candle is processed by a dancer through the middle of the group to the center where a circle of candles is lit. A cello plays a meditative melody. A loaf of bread is broken and passed among the people. A bell rings, and we open ourselves to the mystery of this moment, not knowing what we will discover tonight.
No words have been spoken, but the gathering is filled with symbols. It is ritual, and we feel something rise within us, something we had forgotten was there, something that quickens our pulse and draws us in.
The holidays are filled with rituals. Which ones affected you the most? Which ones were comforting? Which ones disturbed your focus on what you thought was important?
            *
For this post I gathered two pages of background material on rituals, but I’m not going to use them because they have too many words. In our rituals we find a great symbol, but then we feel the need to explain the symbol in words, diluting the power of the symbol to speak in its own way.Ritual is what engages our whole being, the body and the spirit in addition to the mind. It involves all of our senses. Movement, poetry, incense, bells, candles, and art help us move outside our conscious mind, which perceives only part of reality, and guide us into Presence, into the Unknown beyond our knowing.
For death and grief, there are communal rituals like the Irish wake, sitting Shiva in the Jewish faith, and the Lakota Sioux coming together for mourning and dispersing the dead person’s belongings. There are personal rituals like lighting candles in the evening, a small remembrance altar at home with ashes and objects important to our loved ones, visiting the gravesite, and keeping an empty chair at the dinner table. The Japanese have shrines in their homes where they continue to communicate with their ancestors.
In her TEDx talk, Elaine Mansfield, author of Leaning Into Love, says we turn to rituals to connect our lives to the sacred.
In her husband’s cremation box she put mementos of their life together and things important to Vic. She put in coffee beans and chocolate, not that she thought he would actually need them, but they were symbolic of what he enjoyed in life. She put in photographs of their life, flowers, and written prayers. Later she buried his ashes near their favorite tree and built a cairn of rocks from the stream over it. She goes there to be close to him, bringing, at different times, red crabapples, gladiolas, and candles, and moistening the rocks with her tears.
Ritual carries us over the chasm of disbelief.
            *
Imagine a weekly ritual of drinking tea with someone who is also grieving, and no one speaks. The two drink tea in silence and watch each other’s eyes. They watch expressions change on their faces as each one thinks about and feels their grief. There are touches on the arm and hand. When the tea is gone, they rise, hug each other and smile, then depart until next week.

We are drawn to create rituals with our lives, to get lost in the language of our hearts like poets, be filled with the images and curiosity of artists, and dance like Zorba the Greek when our emotions can find no other way of expressing what has filled our entire being.

This holiday season, I am not looking at the decorations on the houses in my neighborhood. I am looking beyond them to the trees and woods, to the sky and birds, I need the transcendence of nature.
Maybe it will be a sparkling, crystalline dawn             with the rays of the rising sun glinting off ice-covered trees. Maybe a herd of deer will meander down my street at midnight,             with no one but me seeing them. Maybe a cardinal will sit stoically on a branch             as snow drifts down and collects on his back.
These I have seen in past years; they won’t likely be repeated. But I won’t know what the transcendent will be this year until it appears in the corner of my eye and surprises me. I can’t make awe happen. I can only stay alert and wait.I am watching for that one unexpected image that will shake up my imagination and make my heart skip a beat. And when it arrives, I want to stay focused on it. I want it to envelope me with its mystery crenelled with wonder. It is a privilege to see this. I don’t want to hurry on looking for the next surprise. I want to let whatever this is settle deep within, crack open a window into a world I barely know, wrap me in its arms, and overwhelm me.
This watching for, and the expectation of, is the season’s gift.