“When one tugs at a single thing in nature, he finds it attached to the rest of the world.”
~ John Muir
Hardly a minute goes by these days, without my realizing that life is a river of change and inter-connectedness. As I watched this beautiful sky, I rubbed my eyes for five seconds to wake up, and in those few seconds, the skies changed from this brilliant red, to a goldenrod yellow. I’m simply amazed by all the factors that are going on behind the scenes to make that happen.
And I’ve been busy the past few days, watching Tropical Storm Dorian make his way across the Atlantic. Also in a constant state of flux. It’s been fun watching the computer models shift back and forth, both on track and intensity. SO many factors at play, even the computers can’t quite figure it out. They simply adjust.
Last night, we stumbled upon a documentary, about a honeymoon couple, who spent a year out in the Frank Church, River of No Return, Wilderness in central Idaho. Next to Death Valley, it’s the second largest track of unmanaged land in America. Together, with surrounding wilderness, it is the core of a 3.3 million acre tract of roadless land, occupied only by plants, trees and wildlife. The couple was there, photographing and tracking packs of wolves. It was amazingly beautiful.
What struck me was a reflection by the film’s author. He was thinking what life must have been like for the original inhabitants of the land, the Nez Perce Indians. The wilderness was just a part of them. As it is to the wolves. They would not have thought of it as something separate from themselves. Wilderness is a term which we’ve had to invent, as we’ve taken it away.
I had a very clear moment, when I felt what life must have been like for John Muir, considered father of the National Park System. As if I were him. Muir, a highly spiritual man, spent most of his life, roaming free in the wilderness.
Muir wrote: “A few moments ago every tree was excited, bowing to the roaring storm, waving, swirling, tossing their branches in glorious enthusiasm – like worship. But though to the outer ear these trees are now silent, their songs never cease. Every hidden cell is throbbing with music and life, every fibre thrilling like harp strings, while incense is ever flowing from the balsam bells and leaves. No wonder the hills and groves were God’s first temples, and the more they are cut down and hewn into cathedrals and churches, the farther off and dimmer seems the Lord.”
Muir then quotes the great yogi Vivekananda: “The God dwelling in the temple of the body, at last, becomes the temple itself.”
Will there ever be a way, for civilization, to go back to this interconnectedness with nature, where God can be seen dwelling in all things? My heart longs for those days ….
I hope you’ll spend a few moments today, admiring mother nature. To quote Buddha “If we could see the miracle of a single flower clearly, our whole life would change.”
