Reflections on the Long Walk Home - #28 Look Up. Wonder. Seek Joy. Part 1
The Dance of Weather and Landscape
Dear Readers,
This post begins a new chapter: Look Up. Wonder. Seek Joy.
The landscape of a wild earth has experienced loss and trauma many times – through storms, fires, natural events we humans often call disasters. The same landscape also has the capacity to regenerate, even to achieve natural glory – grasses and forbs move in; wildflowers bloom in colorful displays attracting pollinators that help the entire system to flourish; magnificent trees reappear given enough time. Nature manifests images of both loss and recovery, sorrow and joy.
Walking in Nature over lengthy periods of time, I’ve felt a link between natural landscape and what people experience. To find joy no matter the sorrow… Embedded in the land itself, I think there is a message to us: “Peace, be still.”
Diane
The sky is very much involved in the landscape’s processes. Storm clouds are shaped by a mountain landscape, producing micro-systems unique from one valley to the next. The clouds, of course, have the potential to bring renewal to the land below, but they also might tear it apart first. Watching this conversation between sky and land has been one of the great blessings of hiking for lengthy distances and periods of time. Whether one is a cloud, a mountain, or a person, being fully entwined in life means there will be times of breaking apart. Breaking apart is part of life’s cycles. It can be hard to accept, but perhaps breaking down has to happen before we can grow to all we can be.
A gathering thunderhead.
Mountain and clouds would not be the same without the other. Watching them interact is like watching a couple who know each other well.
To watch a thunderhead gather along the Continental Divide…to hunker down in a grove of trees while hail hammers the ground nearby…to watch clouds in misty form rush through the notch between mountains…to laugh at the clouds circling a peak as if they are about to chase me down…then to shiver in the cold when the storm is on me and I know the rain is not going to stop anytime soon…on and on the mountains and the clouds shape each other and I am there as witness. How fortunate I have been.
Mountain and clouds…I do believe they dance.
The mist above Monarch Pass, Colorado
I hope to take in this dance, to even become a partner with it. To be able to dance in any landscape or storm would be such a gift.
Cirque
It takes millions of years for a glacier to push and drag rocks across the face of a mountain to scour out the bowl-shaped feature that is called a cirque. The top of the cirque can be quite steep. Where the sides meet at the bottom is a pile of rocks that the glacier left behind when it melted. In the mountains along the Continental Divide, it is not uncommon to hike across the face of cirques. Some of them are spectacular in size. Sometimes I’ve been the only one there when I crossed, awed witness to the grandeur.
The first cirque that grabbed hold of my memory was in the La Garita Wilderness in Colorado, before I dropped onto the wide-open space of Snow Mesa. My llama friend, Red, had hiked with me before. He was a docile companion and a good follower. I gasped when we topped a ridgeline and entered the curve of the cirque. I was on my third day of a four day trek and wasn’t going to cross paths with anyone until the final day. To be walking through such a large and ancient place – the scouring of millennia visible at my feet -- made a lasting impression on me. In silence, I crossed the rock with Red in one long semi-circular contour. My first cirque crossing. It wouldn’t be my last.
One of the most spectacular cirque areas in North America — this is part of the Cirque of Towers in northern Wyoming, facing Texas Pass. The carved out bowl with a few spots of snow at the bottom is a cirque. My brother and I hiked from the lake, through the cirque, over the top of the pass and down into the valley beyond.
Several years later, Mike and I were in the glacial landscape of the Wind River Range in northern Wyoming, pocked with small lakes where glaciers had scoured out small cups and large bowls, most of them now holding water. (Such a pleasant reprieve from desert hiking!) We reached the Cirque of Towers and bushwhacked over Texas Pass, whose reputation resounds among hikers for the lack of a trail in a brushy ascent into the cirque on one side, and the slippery rockslide on the other. Proceeding north up the valley the next day, we paused at the top and looked back. It was powerful to see where we had come from. Progressing at walking pace through such a large open landscape, it’s possible to lose perspective on how much ground one has covered. Perching above what we had walked through was mind-blowing.
Mike reaching the top of the valley north of Texas Pass and the Cirque of Towers. I’m looking back at where we had come from.
Is an image from an elevated perspective useful in the day-to-day climbs and descents? Well, why not?! The view looking back marked our progress. And that progress was worth celebrating!
Walking through a challenging landscape, I’m also reminded that others have been through here before me. Embedded in this image is a metaphor for life: Some of what we find challenging, even devastating, even ground-shifting and requiring a whole new perspective, has probably been experienced by others who have been here before us. Life is an ancient journey. As difficult as it is sometimes, remembering the ancient heritage of what we do should be encouraging: we can do this.
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Hail in the San Juans
I first met Heather while I was writing the funeral ceremony for her grandmother Joanie. I got to know Joanie’s family well while writing her story. They all dove into that process, sharing memories with laughter as well as tears. Heather was just 25 years old then.
One of Joanie’s passions in life was gardening. Having a special skill with irises, she grew a massive number of them, so a big bouquet of irises was nestled next to Joanie at her funeral. When I looked at them before the ceremony, I noticed that they were closed tight, like green and purple sticks. Why hadn’t the funeral director asked the florist to replace them? But Heather, ever upbeat and seeing the good in things, wisely observed that both the irises and her grandma were ready to bloom into the fullness of a new life. At the close of the service, after we had released Joanie to her rest, Heather came up to the casket and I stood with her…wide-eyed. During the course of her funeral, Joanie’s irises had bloomed.
That was the beginning of a long friendship with Heather and her family. She and her dad both took the Celebrant course so they could lead ceremonies. They were the first father-daughter duo to take the class. I was as proud as an auntie.
I’ve accompanied Heather in many ceremonies since then. I helped honor her “coming out," when she literally walked out of her parents’ house brandishing her new driver’s license. I also led a ceremony celebrating her marriage to John. It had a Marvel hero theme that was quite a stretch for me, and I loved it! I had been adopted into a family that was creative, spiritually aware, happy, and just zany enough to be fun.
And then a year after their wedding, I led the funeral service for Heather and John’s first baby. At the beginning of the pandemic when the size of funerals was strictly limited, a small group of us gathered, heartbroken. Some who walk across the bare landscape of such a loss, storm-tossed by grief, manage to cling to the goodness of life. That describes Heather and John, who believed the blessing of this baby was enormous in their lives and always would be. The essence of who they are inspired so many people. We knew the light would return to them one day.
And it did. Five months later, with more family and friends present, a fellow celebrant and I led a ceremony honoring their first child’s brief but impactful life and announcing that her little sister was on the way. Heather and John and their youngest daughter go forward now as a thriving family of three. Upon filling his new grandpa role, Heather’s dad said, “I never knew a little person could bring such joy.” Amen to that joy, that light, and the cycle of life.
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Following the rain
in Glacier National Park
Time in deep nature and time in deep listening reveals that the heart of it all is love — swirling, shaping love. In winds, and water, and mist — the landscape changes, endures, renews…but love remains.
Reflection: Have you looked back lately and reviewed where you’ve come from, and what you’ve crossed through? It’s good for the mind and soul to do that now and then.
Be encouraged. You can gain new insights and even become a beacon to others. You can do this. You can make it. You can grow.
I’d love to hear from you. Click on the Comments link if you are a subscriber. Or send me an email at dhgansauer@gmail.com.
Another great description of landscapes that makes me want to get out there
At first I couldn’t see where this wonderful hiking story was going. Once again you have touched me deeply and opened my eyes to a new view I never thought of from this perspective. I like the idea of such a unique, yet so natural connection to our tangible world. I have never thought of it that way. Thanks for giving readers something to contemplate.