(no subject)
"Uhmmm... wow."
That's Horse Pens in a nut-shell.
---
I just thought you should know that I. Love. Rocks. I always knew I liked them -- hence my fascination with mountainous forests, sandstone deserts, and boulder-tumbled plains -- but until I rode away from Horse Pens I did not realize just how much I actually loved them. Seriously. I am not joking.
I think rock is one of the most beautiful and intriguing things on the planet. It's just... unfathomable. Don't you wonder what the rocks have seen? What kind of worlds they have known? Whenever I find a random rock in the forest or the desert or the sidewalk I ask myself: where did it come from? I find myself picking up STONES as small tokens of places I have visited rather than postcards or photographs. Rocks somehow say so much more than a store-bought photograph. Could it simply be the fact that they are solid and real? And that despite their straight-forwardness they radiate unanswerable questions? I mean, even the tiniest and most inconspicuous pebbles likely have their origin in long-forgotten boulders... Did a colossal glacier shatter one ages ago and mill its gravel for 1000 hard miles? Did a riotous earthquake tear it rom the sea, or draw it glowing from an angry volcano? What impossible creatures once lived and died above it? Maybe that rock is the tip of an ancient mountain or the base of my ancestors' caves.
Or maybe the rock is just a chip off the sidewalk. Then it is even more exotic. Think of the potential! The asphalt and concrete components beneath your feet could have come from anywhere. Do you ever wonder what men mined it and arranged to ship it to your neighborhood? Do you wonder who first made contact with that stone? The chunk of concrete you're holding could be laced with granite from Canada or limestone from Kentucky, or even crazy Pre-Cambrian fossils and whispers of plants that from aeons ago.It is a piece of the the ocean, the sun, the air, life, death, the Earth: it is time. It is also timeless. And when you think of it in terms of tectonic plates, it acts as a powerful link between you, the world, and all of existence... such that, you have to wonder if long after you die your OWN bones will someday wind up in the sidewalk.
Anyway, I'll end this particular tangent with a comment about magic: to this day, I never cease to wonder at people who are enamoured solely of gem-stone magic. Or more precisely, I can understand where they are coming from, but not why it is they choose to come from there. Adventurine is breath-taking, it's true, but isn't gravel equally astounding if you look at it like I do?
To each their own, I guess.
Could it be that my concept of magic is ridiculously primitive? :)
---
In addition to rocks, I really like fire. It stirs a curious feeling within me when I think about how fire was once essential to life. It still is in some forms, I suppose, but I mean raw unadultered flame. Just think about it.
I didn't think about it at the time, but as I remember how bitterly cold the first night in Horse Pens was an image comes to mind. A small group of people huddle so close to a bonfire that their faces are nearly scorched off, bright eyes tense with residual cold but reflecting the warmth of the fire they have created. A chill wind howls at their backs: they ignore it. They find strength in the towering light of their white-hot fire. They feed it far more wood than they should, driven by a need for warmth and for light, and there they stay for hours drinking, talking softly, and simply watching. Now the time for climbing and hard excercise is over, and the soreness settles in. Increasing sleepiness is compounded by the fierce reluctance to move away from the fire, to leave its comforting warmth and hunker down in the tent for a frosty night.
Fire has been proven to induce a state of calm among groups of people. Brianne made this comment to me and I found some merit in it. People seldom argue long in the immediate presence of a bonfire... they simply watch, inexplicably mesmerized and often lulled into comfortable silence. Heh, just thinking about fire is calming me right now, which contrasts strangely to the usual all-consuming driving-force I tend to see it as.
I tried to see it as Brighid and even as the frustrating Vedic Agni, but after a while I found that names and associations always fell away. It was just Fire. It was divine its own right. Maybe there was a god behind it, or maybe it WAS a god. It was irrelevant anyway. Many things are irrelevant in my faith that you would not expect to be... *shrugs* Again, I must be primitive or something. All I know is that I could not look into that fire and pray to a god for long: words just fell away. Fire is not about words. Fire is about communion -- you and the fire experience each other. In a curious equilibrium of temperature and breath, you alternately sing and sit in silence together.
For some reason Scott's comment on the third night's fire is still fresh in my mind: "This the strangest-coloured fire I have ever seen. The embers are golden yellow!"
--
I can't believe I just wrote an entire entry about rocks and fire. Well actually, I can. These things matter to me. But I am now too tired to tell you about Southern weirdness, class-one explosives, being mistaken for a runaway, my date with a boulder, my first ever ambulance ride, seeing a fox, "climb high" whiskey, and the wonderful oddness of bouldering... so later.
For now, happy new year. I may not write tomorrow.
That's Horse Pens in a nut-shell.
---
I just thought you should know that I. Love. Rocks. I always knew I liked them -- hence my fascination with mountainous forests, sandstone deserts, and boulder-tumbled plains -- but until I rode away from Horse Pens I did not realize just how much I actually loved them. Seriously. I am not joking.
I think rock is one of the most beautiful and intriguing things on the planet. It's just... unfathomable. Don't you wonder what the rocks have seen? What kind of worlds they have known? Whenever I find a random rock in the forest or the desert or the sidewalk I ask myself: where did it come from? I find myself picking up STONES as small tokens of places I have visited rather than postcards or photographs. Rocks somehow say so much more than a store-bought photograph. Could it simply be the fact that they are solid and real? And that despite their straight-forwardness they radiate unanswerable questions? I mean, even the tiniest and most inconspicuous pebbles likely have their origin in long-forgotten boulders... Did a colossal glacier shatter one ages ago and mill its gravel for 1000 hard miles? Did a riotous earthquake tear it rom the sea, or draw it glowing from an angry volcano? What impossible creatures once lived and died above it? Maybe that rock is the tip of an ancient mountain or the base of my ancestors' caves.
Or maybe the rock is just a chip off the sidewalk. Then it is even more exotic. Think of the potential! The asphalt and concrete components beneath your feet could have come from anywhere. Do you ever wonder what men mined it and arranged to ship it to your neighborhood? Do you wonder who first made contact with that stone? The chunk of concrete you're holding could be laced with granite from Canada or limestone from Kentucky, or even crazy Pre-Cambrian fossils and whispers of plants that from aeons ago.It is a piece of the the ocean, the sun, the air, life, death, the Earth: it is time. It is also timeless. And when you think of it in terms of tectonic plates, it acts as a powerful link between you, the world, and all of existence... such that, you have to wonder if long after you die your OWN bones will someday wind up in the sidewalk.
Anyway, I'll end this particular tangent with a comment about magic: to this day, I never cease to wonder at people who are enamoured solely of gem-stone magic. Or more precisely, I can understand where they are coming from, but not why it is they choose to come from there. Adventurine is breath-taking, it's true, but isn't gravel equally astounding if you look at it like I do?
To each their own, I guess.
Could it be that my concept of magic is ridiculously primitive? :)
---
In addition to rocks, I really like fire. It stirs a curious feeling within me when I think about how fire was once essential to life. It still is in some forms, I suppose, but I mean raw unadultered flame. Just think about it.
I didn't think about it at the time, but as I remember how bitterly cold the first night in Horse Pens was an image comes to mind. A small group of people huddle so close to a bonfire that their faces are nearly scorched off, bright eyes tense with residual cold but reflecting the warmth of the fire they have created. A chill wind howls at their backs: they ignore it. They find strength in the towering light of their white-hot fire. They feed it far more wood than they should, driven by a need for warmth and for light, and there they stay for hours drinking, talking softly, and simply watching. Now the time for climbing and hard excercise is over, and the soreness settles in. Increasing sleepiness is compounded by the fierce reluctance to move away from the fire, to leave its comforting warmth and hunker down in the tent for a frosty night.
Fire has been proven to induce a state of calm among groups of people. Brianne made this comment to me and I found some merit in it. People seldom argue long in the immediate presence of a bonfire... they simply watch, inexplicably mesmerized and often lulled into comfortable silence. Heh, just thinking about fire is calming me right now, which contrasts strangely to the usual all-consuming driving-force I tend to see it as.
I tried to see it as Brighid and even as the frustrating Vedic Agni, but after a while I found that names and associations always fell away. It was just Fire. It was divine its own right. Maybe there was a god behind it, or maybe it WAS a god. It was irrelevant anyway. Many things are irrelevant in my faith that you would not expect to be... *shrugs* Again, I must be primitive or something. All I know is that I could not look into that fire and pray to a god for long: words just fell away. Fire is not about words. Fire is about communion -- you and the fire experience each other. In a curious equilibrium of temperature and breath, you alternately sing and sit in silence together.
For some reason Scott's comment on the third night's fire is still fresh in my mind: "This the strangest-coloured fire I have ever seen. The embers are golden yellow!"
--
I can't believe I just wrote an entire entry about rocks and fire. Well actually, I can. These things matter to me. But I am now too tired to tell you about Southern weirdness, class-one explosives, being mistaken for a runaway, my date with a boulder, my first ever ambulance ride, seeing a fox, "climb high" whiskey, and the wonderful oddness of bouldering... so later.
For now, happy new year. I may not write tomorrow.