Camping and Sound
I am ignoring my work right now. It glowers at me, in piles of paper and unchecked boxes; these are the mountains that surround me now…
And yet…
I am thinking of other mountains. I want to fly away from here and live in the trees. I want to spend my time drinking in the dying embers of something started in the spring or listening to a river.
When I was a child, we used to drive up to the mountains in my dad’s old, beat up van. Riding in it now (he still has the same one, though now it has become a veritable Frankenstein) is a perilous thought. The mettles scream as they shift their weight from side to side but I don’t remember hearing that noise on our long journeys (though you did have to close the door just right otherwise you would be forced to place your hand just so on the window to stop the rattling noises…for the whole trip).
I remember the building music. Some things you can’t express quite right in words; this was one of those things. The music was like the journey. Slowly it persuaded you to open your eyes, your heart to the world around you. Then it weaved in little shafts of light, threads of fire. Blue skies and golden fields of wheat tumbled down over each other with every note, till finally a great expanse opened to the mountains. Something in me wanted to cry with the beauty of it.
Camping with my family was great. We never went into the state parks or the “campsites” but instead found the obscure parts of the world, deep in the woods. We would find old familiar campsites using dried up riverbeds as our paths, and a compass as our map. We would set up home beneath the trees, by the rush of the river. During the day I would wander down on the rocks and lay in the icy pools that would swirl away, urgently making their way back down the mountain. I would look up at the sky and the tree tops and feel God smiling at me. In those moments I wasn’t sure if He was more composer or artist.
Some questions don’t have answers.
And yet…
I am thinking of other mountains. I want to fly away from here and live in the trees. I want to spend my time drinking in the dying embers of something started in the spring or listening to a river.
When I was a child, we used to drive up to the mountains in my dad’s old, beat up van. Riding in it now (he still has the same one, though now it has become a veritable Frankenstein) is a perilous thought. The mettles scream as they shift their weight from side to side but I don’t remember hearing that noise on our long journeys (though you did have to close the door just right otherwise you would be forced to place your hand just so on the window to stop the rattling noises…for the whole trip).
I remember the building music. Some things you can’t express quite right in words; this was one of those things. The music was like the journey. Slowly it persuaded you to open your eyes, your heart to the world around you. Then it weaved in little shafts of light, threads of fire. Blue skies and golden fields of wheat tumbled down over each other with every note, till finally a great expanse opened to the mountains. Something in me wanted to cry with the beauty of it.
Camping with my family was great. We never went into the state parks or the “campsites” but instead found the obscure parts of the world, deep in the woods. We would find old familiar campsites using dried up riverbeds as our paths, and a compass as our map. We would set up home beneath the trees, by the rush of the river. During the day I would wander down on the rocks and lay in the icy pools that would swirl away, urgently making their way back down the mountain. I would look up at the sky and the tree tops and feel God smiling at me. In those moments I wasn’t sure if He was more composer or artist.
Some questions don’t have answers.