#62.12, Thursday, Nov. 28, 2024

Historical Setting, cold unknown

         Today, I’m walking alone, or I would be, except for my persistent trust that God is with me.  It’s like the air of breath that seems always everywhere, yet invisible, like water for sea creatures. Air allows me to live as I do, a mortal, tangible creature of earth. Air as metaphor for God, invisible, yet always present — life giving.  In coldness when air seems hardest to believe in, it becomes visible for a moment as the breath in exhale.  Thank you, God, for staying close.

         Following the sled trail of hunters who camped on this beach I am walking north up the coast.  I’ve seen nothing of Little Brother today. It’s good he’s found his new family. May they understand his teasing nature and take him in to become beloved in their pack.

         The sled path I follow will at least take me a good part of the day walking, since people probably wouldn’t have made the camp I found, had their day not ended for them.

         Once again, I’m in wilderness solitude for an unknown time – days, hours – years? The desert fathers/mothers could spend all the unnumbered hours of their lives alone in wilderness without a pack of accumulated human stuff and without even a need to count hours and days.  But I’m still longing for human companionship. Maybe I never appreciated being with people enough when it was so normal that I wasn’t prepared for loneliness.

         Now, I must be near people!  To my left where the forest rises, edging this beach, I see a clear sign! The large trees at the edge of this forests have been felled. The canopy of winter branches is disrupted with holes of sky. The eternal stalks of trees are plundered to stumps. Having been human for so many centuries, on one hand, I know it’s a great accomplishment of power and strength to fell such large trees and take a swath of forest. It requires strength and skill. And I’m happy to be near people. 

         Yet, on the other hand these tree stumps are something lost. Generations, sprouted from seed, soaring sunward always reaching, gently defying winds and storms, sheltering birds and critters of all sorts, solid, ever more silently an untouched forest is an edifice to awe the imagination of the builders of cathedrals and castles.

This first sign that people are here, is that the trees were taken.

(Continues Tuesday, Dec. 3, 2024)