Watch the sky lighten, the path lengthen, the dark spires of stone and bone take shape and form.
During this Chautauqua Institute week on “the pursuit of happiness,” people spoke of the foundational requirements for a happy life.
Love, family, community involvement, physical well being, tradition, belonging, balance, meditation, prayer, learning, awareness….
But no one mentioned the trees.
The soil.
Catapulted arrays of lighting cleaving the night sky.
No one talked about the susurration of the forest. The melodies of the wrens. The brackish suck of delta mud.
To stand on the edge of a canyon. To spirit down a river. To lay ones aching body against a sun warmed stone, and melt into the space beyond existence.
No one talked about that deep connection we have to the earth, and how it is our first mother.
Born of it. Return to it.
Molecules reclaimed by planets and stars.
But I think of it.
And know it to be true.
Happiness rides on the tides.
Settles in the sand.
Seeps with the springs and slithers with the snakes.
Yes, even the snakes make me happy.
Late June.
The Pacific Crest Trail still with fog.
Quiet as sleep.
The charcoal and silver skeletons of an ancient forest reach into a woolen sky.
Reflect in the flat gray slate of a mountain lake.
-Naseem Rakha 7/25/13
more PCT photos at Naseem Rakha’s photos – Fire and Fog
