A Simple Gaze Across the Lake
This is rough and unrefined, but I don't care. I don't know if I will ever be able to aptly state what actually occurs in the moments I attempt to describe below:
Regardless of how often I move away from this place seeking the potential of other regions, I will always return to the constant thrill and inspiration, the only true consolation and contentedness I find amongst the Olympic Mountains. Nowhere else has the early morning before sunrise maintained an ever increasing importance to my day, which without I never quite feel awake. Nowhere else can I look to the top of a nearby ridge, and turn to a friend to say, “let’s go up there” only to return 12 hours later scared, cut up, and quieted. Nowhere else do I feel an unrelenting disease at gazing across this landscape as I survey ridge after steadfast ridge, knowing that perhaps no one has ever stood upon that summit. Staring across the lake from LeSage, these slopes are close enough that I can see individual trees clearly. I trace drainages as they sweep up the mountainsides, mentally preparing for some future summit, until I see the thin ribbon drainage disappear into the sheer cliff faces that somehow remain forested. I stare at these slopes, barely more than a mile away, yet my body as it is cannot take me there.
Nowhere else do I fumble for words to describe they way this land moves me to stillness. Anxiously, I stare across this lake each morning, seated upon my yoga mat. Sometimes I begin to shake before it is finally time to get up and drive around the lake to work. It is as though this land is a mirror for the spirit. Stunning the body into motionless, the spirit is forced to be recognized. This land imposes a solitude that melts away any sense of a fellow humanity. The immensity of this land envelopes any sense of reality. In fleeting consciousness, the enveloping forest dissolves all perception, and suddenly in silence of the mind the boundaries between self and surroundings no longer exist.
From such moments, you emerge wide-eyed and speechless; the burning in your chest jogs the involuntary response to resume breathing.
Those who were not able to join ask, “How was the hike,” and I am forever left wondering how to explain how it feels to peer through this cloudy veil, beyond which the duality of our existence dissolves understanding. I will forever return to this place, seeking to unravel this internal mystery that wells up within me with every simple gaze across the lake.
Regardless of how often I move away from this place seeking the potential of other regions, I will always return to the constant thrill and inspiration, the only true consolation and contentedness I find amongst the Olympic Mountains. Nowhere else has the early morning before sunrise maintained an ever increasing importance to my day, which without I never quite feel awake. Nowhere else can I look to the top of a nearby ridge, and turn to a friend to say, “let’s go up there” only to return 12 hours later scared, cut up, and quieted. Nowhere else do I feel an unrelenting disease at gazing across this landscape as I survey ridge after steadfast ridge, knowing that perhaps no one has ever stood upon that summit. Staring across the lake from LeSage, these slopes are close enough that I can see individual trees clearly. I trace drainages as they sweep up the mountainsides, mentally preparing for some future summit, until I see the thin ribbon drainage disappear into the sheer cliff faces that somehow remain forested. I stare at these slopes, barely more than a mile away, yet my body as it is cannot take me there.
Nowhere else do I fumble for words to describe they way this land moves me to stillness. Anxiously, I stare across this lake each morning, seated upon my yoga mat. Sometimes I begin to shake before it is finally time to get up and drive around the lake to work. It is as though this land is a mirror for the spirit. Stunning the body into motionless, the spirit is forced to be recognized. This land imposes a solitude that melts away any sense of a fellow humanity. The immensity of this land envelopes any sense of reality. In fleeting consciousness, the enveloping forest dissolves all perception, and suddenly in silence of the mind the boundaries between self and surroundings no longer exist.
From such moments, you emerge wide-eyed and speechless; the burning in your chest jogs the involuntary response to resume breathing.
Those who were not able to join ask, “How was the hike,” and I am forever left wondering how to explain how it feels to peer through this cloudy veil, beyond which the duality of our existence dissolves understanding. I will forever return to this place, seeking to unravel this internal mystery that wells up within me with every simple gaze across the lake.