It's a spell of very pleasant midsummer weather, and I've just left my job as a midnight-shift security guard on the waterfront, after a little more than three years of alternatively interesting and boring work at the pseudo-military veterans' organization formed to keep us off the streets (and out of our beds at nights) to supplement our less-than-ideal pension incomes.
My recently purchased Japanese-made minivan seems almost ideal for a camping vehicle for one, meaning me, and I know a few places to explore, so away I went, off into the still-functional Tree Farm. It had nicely-built roads, well maintained, and some being now abandoned, those made ideal camping sites in locations of operations past. One such past location is an old volcano that erupted maybe ten thousand years ago - back around the time Ug and Mug, those intrepid Cavemen, were perfecting their communications skills with variations of grunts and groans, much like those replicated in the movie "When Dinosaurs Ruled The Earth"...
Mmmmm!......There I go, digressing again. Where were we, before I so rudely interrupted myself? Oh! Yes, of course....at an old volcano. Now I remember...
The now-abandoned logging spur, as those are called, runs about a mile in off the main along a creek, which it crosses before beginning a switchback climb up the steep sides of what originally had been a very large and impressive mountain. The remains of that mountain now form an eliptical rim of mountainous ridges around the crater formed when all Hell broke loose here about ten thousand years ago. Those ridges, long ago overgrown with prime timber, are very steep in most places, some almost cliff-like, and their underlying rock has been thoroughly and finely fractured into cubistic shapes averaging a couple or three inches on a side, with finer material in the joints.
Exploring such a place during a spell of warm summer weather, without another human for miles, as best I could tell, invites doing so in the same fashion as the other animals in the neighborhood - namely without any 'fashion'. They weren't wearing any clothes, and neither did I. There's an obvious advantage to that when out in the wild among possibly aggressive animals whose 'home' you are invading. It allows the breezes to carry your scent well in advance of you as a warning to the local wildlife. And it works, but only if those others are downwind. Walking quietly uphill one morning at a point where the old logging road was too steep for my minivan to climb, I was suddenly startled by a deer who had been feeding in the roadside underbrush, and hadn't been aware of my presence until we were only 20 or 25 feet apart. That was partly my own fault, because in such a situation, I am usually moving quietly, and stopping every few paces to listen for anything nearby. So I had crept up on it very quietly without either of us knowing the other was near. After it jumped out into the road it stopped, and so did I, and we just stood there, looking at each other for maybe a minute, during which I took its picture with the throwaway camera I carried.
Throwaway cameras of the 1990s with their plastic 'fisheye' lenses weren't the greatest for capturing shots to later be assembled into a panorama, so this above example of one leaves a lot to be desired, but it does give you the general 'lay of the land' so to speak. And that was spectacular, mysterious, thought-provoking, and strangely very spiritual - more spiritual in many respects than I've ever felt in a church.
Let me only say that communing with the cosmos from the midst of an ancient volcano crater on a clear summer's night with the Milky Way brilliantly above, and the fifty-some-foot 'statue' of 'The Witch' gazing down upon me from the second highest point on the most impressive parts of that volcano rim, with both us just the way God made us, with nothing more encumbering us, is truly a memorable experience. Communicating with Nature at a time like that is a two-way conversation, with Nature implanting thoughts and ideas in your mind as you are asking your silent questions. You leave there reluctantly, and wiser than you entered. And you wish to return, even when that is not practical, but you never forget that experience. "Thank You, Heavenly Spirits, Everywhere You Are!"
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