Getting Out

Getting Out

   Went for a hike yesterday, a trip to a spot called Albion Basin then up over the ridge to look down on a lake called Catherine, its sides dotted with the golden leaves of aspens, its waters a richer green than the surrounding pines.  At this altitude, the leaves are already changing as if waiting for the signal to fall, ready.  That signal should come within a day or two as the first snows of the season arrive, a bit earlier than usual, at least to our record keeping. 

   Up there, time was visible. The diagonal striations of the mountains layering bursting out as if the earth were giving birth, the scree from the ridges putting our mines and their tailings to shame.  Here, time took on another dimension, a pace so slow and constant that we could only guess at its passing, at what it must have looked like millions of years before, at what it may look like millions of years hence.

   It was renewing, and refreshing to just get out, our legs and lungs recharging as if happy for this opportunity.  Our eyes grateful for this glimpse of time, frozen but moving.  Our minds thankful that we could take it all in.  Up here, the doom and gloom, the wars in distant lands, the mundane and trivial,  our growing older, all took a distant last-place finish...they were there, and we were happy to see that they would appear to finish the race, but our attention was really elsewhere.  It was here, with another form of life, as if earth itself was recognizing its own gratitude, its own fragility.

   Sometimes we all need that, often more than we know.  We are but blips, drops of life ready to fall like rain, blend in with it all and disappear with the light of day.  The crickets chorus their mating, a symphony that runs night after night, as if they too know time is limited.  And it lures us outside, its rhythm added to the leaves clattering in the wind, each in its own way lulling us to sleep, as surely as the endless broadcasts of news and commentary that try to keep us inside and awake...don't go out, they seem to say, for we are much more important, we have more to tell you.

   But when one grows a bit older, and watches friends and parents and animals also growing older, and realizes that the sun is indeed emerging and soon the rains will dry, the leaves will fall, the winter will come and so will the spring of life, that the cycle will begin anew, at that point, it is easy to go numb and watch another movie or dive into a piece of fiction...or go for a hike.  After all, it is just a matter of getting out...