The sun has been shining and we have been quite busy. There are many impressions and experiences....
Northern California and the Oregon coast are the most unusual place I have ever seen. Pictures, of which we have many, do not begin to capture the experience of being here. The weather (now that Noah's Ark is no longer in danger) is beautiful- cool, pleasant humidity. The variety of topography and plants is extraordinary. There are so many beautiful sights that you can't stop to photograph them all. In a single 20 mile stretch you go from ocean front to mountain to redwood forest and right back. There are elk in herds, giant trees, seals, huge waves. Truly indescribable, and so different from what I have ever seen that there is hardly a reference point.
We walked into the Pioneer State Redwood Park on a trail. It is an intense experience to look into a 50 foot ravine, see the base of trees there, and still see the same tree 100 feet over your head. It is intensely spiritual as well. Perhaps I am part Druid; I feel God's presence in the forest, and in the trees. These creatures are far older than I am, far older than Man's 'civilization' on the west coast, and far, far larger. In that forest a person has the status of an insect, a tiny creature wandering about on the forest floor. I could spend much of a day with an axe and not affect one of these trees at all. Many of them show scars from lightning strikes, and are still growing. Even the dead trees are the basis for more life, as their wood serves as the humus into which seeds sprout and grow. We saw many smaller trees rooted into the logs of dead redwoods. I was reminded of Jesus in Matthew- then shall they see the Son of Man coming through the clouds, in power and glory. What I saw today was God in the form of trees.
The entire experience of the coast in numinous. I have walked out onto jetties with waves crashing against them. The Pacific Ocean is overwhelming in its displays of power. We have named our planet from the vantage point of a tiny, earth-bound creature. Earth should be named 'Water'. What we call life is little more than a crusting on the land, like moss on a stone. Even the giant trees are tiny compared to the ocean. The shore is littered with monoliths, remains of the older shoreline. A redwood may be 2500 years old. The last glaciers retreated 6 times earlier than that, the first humans appeared perhaps 40-fold earlier. And the ocean has been pounding the land for millions and millions of years.
In contrast, the human aspect of the coast is less inspiring. We are in the largest city between Seattle and San Francisco- Eureka. It is about 27,000 people, most of them the west coast equivalent of red necks. The town feels desperate and sad, with attempts to cater to tourists, but its actual life based on industry, like all this area. Those industries are fishing and logging. For anyone living here, the natural world is not beauty or philosophy. It is enemy and source of sustenance. Environmentalism is a cause for silicon valley rich people. On the coast, everyone is poor. I see far more trailers than pretty homes, and very few really nice homes.
I have faced many personal challenges here. We walked to the Space Needle from our hotel, and back. I have gone out on jetties. I have walked deeply into the forest. I have been afraid of all these things and more most of my life. My father was a hiker and climber until he got ill. He loved to go on adventures- to Mt. Rainier, or driving in woods. Most of these trips ended badly, with him vomiting, or having cramps, or clots in his shunt, usually with my mother yelling at him to be cautious, a very reasonable attitude given his illness. Looked at now as an adult, the whole thing is desperately sad, the effort of a once-active man to do things he loved, and could not do. I am left with a fear of being outdoors, or forests, lonely outdoor places, etc, and yet I also love them. I feel very close to the world and far away from the agonies and conflicts of daily life, which seem to trivial when surrounded by enormous, pounding waves. The terror of these places is really a projection of my fears. Inside each of these experiences is the numinous.
Like transplant, this trip has been every bit as much about the emotional and spiritual as it has been about the physical.
Ted
Northern California and the Oregon coast are the most unusual place I have ever seen. Pictures, of which we have many, do not begin to capture the experience of being here. The weather (now that Noah's Ark is no longer in danger) is beautiful- cool, pleasant humidity. The variety of topography and plants is extraordinary. There are so many beautiful sights that you can't stop to photograph them all. In a single 20 mile stretch you go from ocean front to mountain to redwood forest and right back. There are elk in herds, giant trees, seals, huge waves. Truly indescribable, and so different from what I have ever seen that there is hardly a reference point.
We walked into the Pioneer State Redwood Park on a trail. It is an intense experience to look into a 50 foot ravine, see the base of trees there, and still see the same tree 100 feet over your head. It is intensely spiritual as well. Perhaps I am part Druid; I feel God's presence in the forest, and in the trees. These creatures are far older than I am, far older than Man's 'civilization' on the west coast, and far, far larger. In that forest a person has the status of an insect, a tiny creature wandering about on the forest floor. I could spend much of a day with an axe and not affect one of these trees at all. Many of them show scars from lightning strikes, and are still growing. Even the dead trees are the basis for more life, as their wood serves as the humus into which seeds sprout and grow. We saw many smaller trees rooted into the logs of dead redwoods. I was reminded of Jesus in Matthew- then shall they see the Son of Man coming through the clouds, in power and glory. What I saw today was God in the form of trees.
The entire experience of the coast in numinous. I have walked out onto jetties with waves crashing against them. The Pacific Ocean is overwhelming in its displays of power. We have named our planet from the vantage point of a tiny, earth-bound creature. Earth should be named 'Water'. What we call life is little more than a crusting on the land, like moss on a stone. Even the giant trees are tiny compared to the ocean. The shore is littered with monoliths, remains of the older shoreline. A redwood may be 2500 years old. The last glaciers retreated 6 times earlier than that, the first humans appeared perhaps 40-fold earlier. And the ocean has been pounding the land for millions and millions of years.
In contrast, the human aspect of the coast is less inspiring. We are in the largest city between Seattle and San Francisco- Eureka. It is about 27,000 people, most of them the west coast equivalent of red necks. The town feels desperate and sad, with attempts to cater to tourists, but its actual life based on industry, like all this area. Those industries are fishing and logging. For anyone living here, the natural world is not beauty or philosophy. It is enemy and source of sustenance. Environmentalism is a cause for silicon valley rich people. On the coast, everyone is poor. I see far more trailers than pretty homes, and very few really nice homes.
I have faced many personal challenges here. We walked to the Space Needle from our hotel, and back. I have gone out on jetties. I have walked deeply into the forest. I have been afraid of all these things and more most of my life. My father was a hiker and climber until he got ill. He loved to go on adventures- to Mt. Rainier, or driving in woods. Most of these trips ended badly, with him vomiting, or having cramps, or clots in his shunt, usually with my mother yelling at him to be cautious, a very reasonable attitude given his illness. Looked at now as an adult, the whole thing is desperately sad, the effort of a once-active man to do things he loved, and could not do. I am left with a fear of being outdoors, or forests, lonely outdoor places, etc, and yet I also love them. I feel very close to the world and far away from the agonies and conflicts of daily life, which seem to trivial when surrounded by enormous, pounding waves. The terror of these places is really a projection of my fears. Inside each of these experiences is the numinous.
Like transplant, this trip has been every bit as much about the emotional and spiritual as it has been about the physical.
Ted
Numinous experiences take us beyond the rational, beyond what we can adequately express in words. Rudolf Otto's famous book "The Idea of the Holy" explores the mysterium tremendum of "the other," such as can be found (among many other places) along the west coast of California.
ReplyDeleteBeyond Otto's book, the quote that for me captures the value of being open to numinous experiences comes from Christian Wiman's book "My Bright Abyss," in which as a former atheist he writes, "“If you do not ‘think’ of God, in whatever way you find to do that, if God has no relation to your experience, if God is not in your experience, then experience is always an end in itself, and always, I think, a dead end. Not only does experience open into nothing else, but that ulterior awareness, that spirit-cleansing whiff of the ultimate, never comes into the concrete details of existence either. You can certainly enjoy life like this; you can have a hell of a time. But I would argue that life remains merely something to be enjoyed, and that not only its true nature but also something within your true nature remains inert, unavailable, mute.”
Amen.
-D-