Thoughts On Twin Springs (September 2007)

 I've been going through a lot of old junk, spring cleaning is most important.  In between the sleeping mice I discovered a few essays that I wrote quite a few years ago.  All of the tiny zeros and ones surely have even tinier particles of dust, I'm sure that's how it works, isn't it?

I present to you, a journey to the near past.  I don't know about you, but my personal life is nothing like it was 15 years ago.  I'm a man now, and not really thrilled about the idea of maturity.  Perhaps I was then too; then again I was born at the age of 102.  Fifteen years gone by like they never happened at all.  Just stories to tell.  

Well, first an update: After the hellish fires of 2 years ago, the Clackamas is still closed for "recreation" *whatever that means? Anyway, Highway 224 is open from Estacada to Ripplebrook, where it becomes Forest Service roads.  There, it's closed until further notice for repairs and hazard tree removal.  2 years barred from my beloved lands, it has been difficult to be sure, for a lot of people who love the Old Cascades as much as I do. 

Ironically, the campground where this story takes place has been destroyed by the Forest Service.  Used by Native People for thousands of years, it was later improved in the early 1930s by the Civilian Conservation Corps.  The crews of young men constructed outhouses, fireplaces, picnic tables, and trails.  In the early 2010s the USFS decided to dig deep trenches along the road, preventing the public from entering the historic campground and destroying the wild feeling of the area.  It is most disappointing, for it was a really beautiful place to camp for a few days.  The dappled light is most pleasant, like a green stained glass window that keeps changing colors.  

When these lands reopen: let us remember how sacred they are, and how much it sucks to be kept out of God's Backyard.  Let's not fuck it up with unburied poop piles and mounds of your garbage.  

PACK IT OUT! BURY YOUR WASTE!  Do what's right for the next family that comes along to camp.

Are you ready for this?  Of course you are, it's Sunday afternoon here in gloomy Portland and the spring seems grouchy today.  Let's dream about summertime...just imagine the smell of roasted August forest litter...caramel tea...

"Thoughts on Twin Springs" 

Oh! Once again the tentacles of society had wrapped a stranglehold upon my frame and spirit. One too many idiot-act witnessed from too close had driven me to a numb anger and strange disconnect. I had had enough and desperately needed to flee this manufactured place. At the grocer’s I couldn’t distinguish between sliced ham and canned olives but somehow made it thru the carnival shelves with enough provisions for an Arctic Month. With a heavy head I pointed southeast with bright hopes for this cloud to be extinguished. I would be traveling solo for this trip. It’s important to experience connection with one’s own half; ultimately it’s all we ever have although we do our daily dance with ghosts with names. I was feeling remorse to be without my comrades, but as I was eloquently reminded “shit happens” so I directed no hostility towards their better natures. Instead, I drank fully from the cup of freedom, so little tasted in our geared world.

These mountain roads, these forever free places seem to slip from our grasp like so much sand. They’re never easy to get to these days of artificial barriers and psychic discord that we must swim through to escape the undertow. Don’t forget: George and Rebecca were once free and in love with everything before the claws of empty materialism locked them into their falsely verdant plastic-palace. Each water-filled pothole is merely a signpost telling of the true nature of our Ship of State, each ripped apart forest and mud-bloodied meadow screams volumes. But, destruction and rebirth are more than mere laws to guide; they are everything in this reality we co-create. Otherwise our world-pores would become clogged with so much spent discard. Fires, carnivores, mold, radiation doing it’s invisible dance; they all free us from the stack of so many carcasses so we may venture forth as the new sun drips from the next horizon. But what to make of oil upon water events? Of shredded trash bedecking grand old firs like so many grotesque streamers? Of the very flesh of the earth ripped open to gleefully display her bleeding orange? Yet somehow this is all To Be, for someone to bare sad witness and fill our souls with the coldest empty day of deep winter. However maudlin, it is important to spend time dwelling in these supposed unfortunate acts for they define the divine. Sometimes it’s what we don’t do that defines the purity of our hearts and the strength of our better natures. We are all in this together.

Dodging these potholes and snaking through these stained but magnificent acres I am soon delivered to my place of rest: a cathedral of noble firs doing their part to recycle ancient basalt lava into dirt and a host of other simple elements. The gentle wind makes the impossible storied branches dance and scatter the jeweled drips from our fond celestial orb as it slips silently westward and down. Untold multihued mushroom caps burst and pop madly through the dense brown duff and leaf litter, only to spread their spores so the snaked miles of invisible mycelium can continue to grow and feed upon what other organisms have deemed waste. Interesting how that works, nothing is wasted in a closed loop beyond imagination. Soon, the stars slip from the shadows. The moon beams like a gleaming pumpkin faced child eager to still seek each new mystery. Each tree joins with the dark to form a net where secret nocturnal affairs take place. What is foreboding is merely a matter of perspective; each creature has been equipped to exist in a very defined set of circumstances.

I am quickly at peace in this place. I am a sponge for all this peace dripping like a thousand Mexican altar candles, flickering and holy by act alone. A man can smash or caress, there alone lies our painful fate. Somehow, the world is born anew each moment.

We, as humans experience failure in every pointless act, because ultimately every act is pointless. It’s impossible to exist as master in these places of constantly unfolding miracle, impossible to hold onto our fragile empty selves in a land were we are smaller than the most insignificant mouse. We exist in various states of denial to dull the knifepoint of pain that randomly stabs us through the loss of something special. Hal remarked how different our world would be if each peak were topped by a shaman silently praying, instead of miles of forested ridges, empty but for a few noxious-spewing mechanisms. But it is all choice: how deep are we willing to look into our pain and insignificance? How will we use these blood lessons after the silent teacher has lectured?

History is just a Japan wind over Nebraska.

“Nothing in nature will harm us if we are not scared and treat her with respect”

-Tom Brown Jr.

My Illinois days and hot Virginia nights haven’t prepared me for this place. But for the first time, perhaps ever I did not feel like an invader into this land. It was really just a matter of intent, to make a stand against my own fears and inadequacies and to realize that I simply belong here and nothing will hurt me if I radiate peace. This changed everything, I felt as peaceful as a monk in a 100 year coma, simply by exercising free will. Strange things began to happen: a tiny mouse stared me down, absolutely fascinated. The world opened up, just for me. Tiny birds flocked and landed right next to me. Maybe it was just a matter of looking, I don’t know. As the sun drifted across the sky like a balloon I roamed the hills alone, seeking history down old trails, looking for magic tied into the rocks and soil. I like old maps - they exist as a snapshot in time, telling of what was considered important during that brief flex in the flux. In 1915 the “Plaza” as this brief flat is called was quite the place to be, an intersection of ancient cross mountain routes, lush springs for man and beast, and the beginnings of the U.S. Forest Service administration including a backcountry ranger station complete with wood stove and crank telephone. 100 years later, all is gone and insignificant except for the old trails. Why they still exist is a mystery in this age of petroleum powered everything; why walk?

An immense fire blackened these ridges around 1900 as by design. Evidence still remains, many blackened stumps peeking out thru the underbrush, and trees no older than 100 years. But again by design a new forest had taken hold, using the same molecule-seed that has drifted on the winds for untold ages. In time it will again be ancient and exhaling, but for now is content to be an adolescent stretching it’s new limbs.

And then, in a blink it’s time to go. My spirit may be forever laced through the ferns and moss covered rocks, but I too am human and must be among my own kind to participate in the damage, splitting so many atoms and dumping so much noxious juice into an unwilling biosphere. Where do we go? How do we stop this machine that threatens to eat us whole? One thing is certain – it is dreadfully fearful to witness a race lose its connection to our source. Unless each of us makes the effort to connect with the natural world we are doomed to eat ourselves whole, like the symbol of the snake consuming it’s own tail in a loop. Twin Springs or Hackensack, it doesn’t matter much in the end. All I know is there is a shortage of reverence in our most holy of places, and we our burning the very bridges that lead to our freedom. All I can do is to encourage every man woman and child to spend at least a day fully aware in a sacred place, and let the lessons speak to you without words. Then, take this basket of fruit home and offer it to your friends. And don’t forget to eat a peach yourself.