Smith Rock Diaries

On the shoulders of Misery Ridge, overlooking the famed Monkey Face, there is a trace of either skunk or reefer. Up high, I am high-- but not that kind of high. Looking down, every thing is brown below. The water, dark green, olive-drab, is not yet reflected by a springtime sun. The fields below, last week, were burning. Today, a John Deere tractor is plowing under the ash. Spring is coming.

Black Butte's bald head in the distance is still a snowy skullcap. The rest of the Cascades are draped in windswept snow-filled clouds, still holding on with their last fingers, still icy.

Finally, I am getting back out into the wild, finding sanctuary, wheezing for oxygen, blood pistoning through my body, rapid fire. And I am beginning to remember heights from a long time ago; sacred heights in California, Washington, British Columbia. Today, standing on this Smith Rock precipice, I am beginning to remember how tall I used to feel, how high, raised upon the shoulders of sacred rocks, able to see further, like on the sturdy shoulders of my father--

This is my palace. This sanctuary. These rocks tower like any cathedral spires I've seen--

A whisper from the wind. Simple, no words, but truly some language, a chilled breath, breezing where it will. The syncopated rhythm of the wind.

Maybe there will be nothing to write from beyond Malibu, that British Columbia shoreline, mountains swelling up from salty inlets, sharply carved by ice for thousands of years, and swollen inside of me, calling out, carving out my past, on a reconnaissance mission to find something I may have misplaced, something I could have lost, even if it is merely the illusion of something I thought I had, but never had. Should I look into this well, once so stocked with treasures, to find them all evaporated--receded?

Oh, who cares? Who cares if I have anything to say anymore? I know how I feel, at this moment, and I know how it will shift into the next. 'Tis the season between seasons, the holding on, the letting go, the hope for a new tomorrow, the surrender of what lies behind. All make for temperamental weather. I know the lack of knowing in my journey. There is no need-- to ramble about it any further.

And there is my liberation. No more need to be important. Except to my sons, my wife, my family, my friends. But in the end, not even to them. Liberation and Grief. I am the small speck of an unimportant soul, someone who sneaks into the party unnoticed and uninvited.

So be it. Now I can write--