Quest for the Sacred Reality

A gentle breeze moved through the forest under the dense canopy of hemlock and cedar.  Despite the temperatures well above normal, the giant trees provided a shade that brought the temperature down almost ten degrees.  The only evidence of the blistering sun outside this tiny remnant of the  magnificent temperate rainforest that once dominated what is today northern United States were the occasional patches of brilliant white.  One could stop and feel the breeze but had to look carefully to see it move the wildflowers, cottonwood leaves and cedar boroughs. 

The Straightbeak Buttercups seemed to enjoy the open spots and warm sun. Filling moist valleys with their brilliant yellow flowers they are a wildflower staple from the lowest valley to the subalpine forests.  The Indian Paintbrush, another hearty mountain wildflower that strives at all elevations, adds a mix of scarlet to the array of flowers from Sticky Geranium to Arrow-Leaved Balsamroot. Glacier Lilies, although known to bloom from snow melt to August, are usually finished blooming by this time in July. They are a staple for all animals as the snow begins to recede.  The Grizzly will use its enormous claws, that are actually designed for digging, to dig up the Glacier Lily bulbs, but it is not uncommon to see a Black Bear, comfortably bedded down for its afternoon siesta, munching on Glacier Lily and Corn Flower plants.  

The Cow Parsnip seems to be comfortable with less direct light. Abundant in the rain-forest it is relished by herbivores and omnivores alike and is an ancient herbal medicine. Humans, however,  need to be careful because it does cause photodermatitis in humans. Huckleberry, Serviceberry, and Thimble Berry fill out the cornucopia of nutritious delicacies spread throughout the forest. The Elderberry grows tall among the young cedars.  It too stays near open areas.  It causes one to wonder whether the two plants have a symbiotic relationship at this point of their lives.  Of course, it is understandable that moisture and nutrients are much more available to other plants in the open areas as opposed to directly under the Cedar and Hemlock canopy.  Very little grows directly under the arborous giants.

Listening, I hear the rush of a nearby mountain stream.  I move reverently toward the sound.  It is almost as thought I am afraid that were I to approach too quickly or loudly, the wonderful melody of nature might stop.  I need to show respect for a sound that is unmatched anywhere in the homo sapiens world.  For centuries people have created artificial water falls, from ones hundreds of feet high to those small enough to sit on a table top, in an attempt to capture this sound and recreate it in their sterile artificial world, but they have never succeeded.  It is a sound that one can only experience in nature. Whether deafening in its magnitude or a gentle babble, this sound draws the soul; desperate for peace and the assurance that there is actually order apart from the chaos of “civilization”; to the stream to stand transfixed by its beauty.

The water, unsurpassed in its purity with a clarity that surpasses the finest crystal, flows over rocks that are billions of years old, polishing them into fine gem stones that people of all ages will pick up, admiring their beauty while totally ignorant of the fantastic story they tell.  The red and green pebbles tell of times so long ago that they are beyond human imagination. They tell of times before the mountains when naato ksááhko (sacred land – earth) would experience periods of oxygenation or lack of oxygen that lasted longer than humans have been on earth.  The pebbles tell of the power of moving ice over ten-thousand feet thick that can carve mountains tens of thousands of feet high and dig lakes many hundreds of feet deep.  The water tastes almost sweet.  Perhaps it is the purity. Definitely it is flavored by the minerals through which it passes as it is filtered and purified.  Despite his pathetic sense of superiority, there is nothing a human can do to make water purer or taste better than that filtered by nature. It is nature’s perfect drink. It is not the essence of life. It IS life.

For a long time I knelt silently beside the stream before reaching down, scooping up a handful of the life-giving elixir and putting it to my mouth. Like tasting a fine wine I draw the water in, sucking air with it to aerate the liquid and allow it to flow across my palate to experience all of the taste.

The water where we live flows naturally from the side of a mountain. I know where the spring is located but I promised the man responsible for the water system in the park that I would never disclose its location.  Each day he tests the water. It annoys him to no end that he must, by law, put a minimal amount of chemicals into the already perfectly pure water. The result – the water flowing from the mountain is purer than the water after the treatment. So much for human superiority.

I am on a quest – a quest to free my spirit from the bondage of an artificial world that is slowly destroying me body and spirit.  My quest actually started far before I was aware I was on a quest.  I know that I went through many periods where I tried desperately to be ‘normal’, or what I perceived and the society around me told me was normal. Each time I had to stop and realize that somehow reality, joy, and peace were missing.  I lived in an artificial world. The vast majority of humans live in an artificial world that they are told, by those who profit from containing them there, is reality. When they begin to discover the truth of their confinement and seek reality, they are shamed as though traitors to their species. So be it. 

In his book Waldon, Henry David Thoreau wrote, “But, wherever a man goes, men will pursue and paw him with their dirty institutions, and, if they can, constrain him to belong to their desperate odd-fellow society.”  Almost one-hundred seventy-five years later and nothing has changed. Well, I would venture to say that the chains that shackle our minds are stronger. 

I believe that the awareness of my quest started to dawn on me when I started running trails and doing ultra-marathon runs.  I began to return to a relationship with nature – unci maka – which had been such a big part of my childhood. I wasn’t running to win something.  I think now that I was actually trying to run away; to run back to the source of my happiness and true life. I ran one fifty- mile trail through the Ozark mountains.  It took me fourteen hours. I ran out of water about half way through the course because a spring had gone dry, and the temperature rose to well over ninety degrees. But I experienced life in a way that I had almost forgotten. Even though I was running I can still remember the trail, magnificent rock faces of the mountains, trees, streams and waterfalls. The next awakening came when I ran diagonally across the Bad Lands National Park, just shy of seventy miles.  I finished my training for this long run by taking almost two weeks to make the trip from Evansville, Indiana to the Badlands. I would drive for a day. Find a place where I could run twenty miles or so of trails. Run for two days, and repeat the process until I arrived at my destination. Running across the desert I soon learned that trails don’t really exist in the desert because the wind blows sand across the path. It challenged not only my sense of direction, but my skills with a compass and map. By the time I finished I was beginning to sense my quest.  My sight was still clouded by decades of indoctrination, but I was having brief and exciting experiences of truly being alive and being a part of true life – unci maka.

Reaching down for a second scoop of the miracle liquid tumbling and bouncing over it rocky path, I couldn’t help but think of how westerners see life as a single thread like a flowing stream. Buddhist see it as a collection of snippets which, put together, creates our history.  I think now that I know the moment – the snippet – when I became aware of my quest. It was when Pamela Sue Smith and I met and became soul-mates. Our personal dreams, ambitions and quests merged, or better said collided. The same, similar and compatible merged as if to prove the quantum physics theorem of unlimited possibility.  Since that time we have traveled well over 100,000 miles together spending half our year in the wilderness of northwestern Montana and the other half exploring the mountains and desert of the southwest. Pamela helped me realize that subconsciously I was on a quest and soon that quest was a conscious effort.  To snitch a line from John Muir’s journal, “I only went out for a walk and finally concluded to stay out till sundown, for going out, I found, was really going in.”

As the sacredness of the moment by the stream permeated the layers of social baggage I couldn’t help but think of a movie called Second Sight.  In that movie a young man endowed with paranormal skills finds that artificial materials and clothing are to him as lead and kryptonite were to Superman. I can relate.  Much of our food is either processed with chemicals or made of chemicals, as is our clothing.  You will generally find me in khaki or denim trousers and a soft cotton shirt. Nevertheless, it is almost impossible to avoid. Try, for example, to find a product in a grocery that doesn’t contain high fructose corn syrup.  We read the contents of a bottle of rice wine vinegar. Guess what? It contained corn syrup.

But it is the destruction of the spirit and nature that perhaps tortures me most.  Some might call this quest a spiritual journey, but for me it is a conscious effort to return to reality.

Reality is that I am, in fact, a member of an invasive species.  I know that, but I had no say in the matter although I often find myself embarrassed and ashamed.  That reality haunts and punishes me.  I want to become a part of the sacred reality that I witness in the wilderness; that naato ksááhko, that unci maka (grandmother earth), which my species loves to deny.  What humans call ‘nature’, as though it is other-than-us, is the one true reality, whether or not you wish to append the description of sacred.  Nature is all things real. Wilderness is the ultimate, the concentrated experience of this reality. 

In Buddhist philosophy there are two types of truth. One is ultimate truth; true or real reality.  The second is our common reality, called “conventional truth”, which is what we have decided for a variety of reason is real, even though it may be the farthest thing from true or real.  According to this philosophical position, one of the main reasons that we can not comprehend ultimate reality is because we are so engaged in our common reality that we can’t see the truth when it is right in front of us. For example, we believe that human beings are the most important thing on the planet when we are one of the few species that could totally disappear and have no negative impact on unci maka. To the contrary, the planet would begin to heal.

The Buddhist seeks ultimate reality, enlightenment, through meditation.  I seek ultimate reality through nature. The wilderness is my school, my laboratory, my sanctuary, my place of meditation. There is no other sacred reality, so I search for some bit, some sense of that primordial relationship when my species was not only non-invasive but was a functional part of nature.

There is always the possibility that homo sapiens have always been an invasive species. However, that would be debatable, not because one can argue that homo sapiens are not invasive but because one cannot be an invasive species in one’s original habitat. That would mean that homo sapiens only became invasive when they left northeastern Africa and began to spread throughout the world.

Close to my home is a lake fed by snow and glacial melt. There are no waters more pristine.  Almost five-hundred feet deep it is like an enormous jewel sparkling and shimmering with a gentle breeze and reflecting the great beauty around it like a mirror when the wind is still.  The lake has many wonderful species of trout and other fish that are native to the lake. Sadly, humans purposely introduced the Lake Trout into the lake for the sole purpose of human enjoyment. Lake Trout are not bad fish where Lake Trout are indigenous. But in Lake McDonald the Lake Trout are killing the native Bull Trout. The Lake Trout are invasive, disrupting unci maka’s balance of nature, and destroying the lake.

As one enters Montana, Idaho and other northwestern states that are yet unaffected by the infestation of Zebra muscles and other AIS (aquatic invasive species) that are destroying lakes in Minnesota, Wisconsin and other States to the east, all vehicles with boats are stopped and inspected.  I have seen inspectors carefully washing and wiping boats before they are permitted to go in our waterways. Our northwestern States are terrified of the devastation of the AIS. I know that, on a world-wide basis, my own species is just like the AIS except there are no watercraft inspectors to stop us.

The interdisciplinary study – biology and anthropology for example – of the issue would undoubtedly identify numerous possible factors for this reality. I have long concluded that humanity has lost its corporate, as well as individual, spirit.

For me, spirit is our true identity, the essence of who we really are.  When we, either as individuals or as a group, lose our spirit we lose our true identity. If that loss continues, does it not arrive at a point when there is no one left who remembers what it was? 

I notice a reflection of a deer in the water. Looking up I see a Mule Deer doe standing on the other side of the creek. She is watching me as though she understands the struggle I am experiencing. Her eyes are soft. They belie more than a naïveté of the human world. There is a depth of wisdom beyond human comprehension.  The gentle look is like a compassion – a sadness – for the naïveté and ignorance of my species.  

Unlike me she knows her reality; her spirit.  She doesn’t need to be able to rationalize, talk or do quantum physics to know the spirit of the deer. It was never lost.  The spirit of the deer is who she is.  She doesn’t have to rationalize, calculate or study. She doesn’t need a committee. No matter what each day brings she has the spirit of a deer so she will be the best deer possible, and all that is needed to be the best deer possible is contained in her spirit. It is actually that simple.

 “Hello, beautiful,” I said quietly.  The doe stood and watched.  She was a beautiful animal. Her eyes were large, dark and piercing.  Her coat was healthy and had a semi-gloss sheen. Her tail was long with the typical Mule Deer black along the outer edges. Her ears were large and well-shaped. The ears and the mule profile is what earns them the white-man name Mule Deer. Her name in the Blackfeet language is Issikotoyi, black-tailed deer. I like that better. For some reason that seems more appropriate to me. Such a beautiful animal should have a name of its own not named because it resembles another animal.  Or perhaps we should call humans ‘naked apes.’      

“I bet you’re not lost, are you?”   I smile to myself as I sat down on an outcropping of rock to watch her.

“You see, lovely one, I’m very lost.” I continued.  “Oh, I know where I am physically, but I haven’t the slight idea of who I really am, where I’m going or what I should be doing.”   The doe cocked her head.

“You’re lucky, Issi.  You know exactly what it is to be a deer. Even if you don’t understand it, you have a very important role to play in the cycle of life in this forest.  You don’t even care and you have all the things which humans don’t have but want . . . . meaning and purpose.  If you weren’t here, this forest would suffer greatly and probably start to die.”  Issi didn’t react. I laughed out loud. My laughter caused the deer to prick up her ears and take a couple of steps backwards. 

“I didn’t mean to startle you,” I apologized. “It’s just that you take your important role in the health of this wilderness like ‘no-big-deal’ while my species thinks we’re so all-fire important when I’m not sure we’re worth anything at all. It just struck me funny.”

“I just wish . . . .”  I stopped.  That, I realized, is a very harmful human habit; viz. wishing.  As far as I know, humans are the only animal that wish. Actually, that is pure conjecture since I have not had the opportunity to discuss it with any other species, and humans don’t seem to care if other animals think or what they think nevertheless whether they might wish. I conclude that wishing is a harmful habit because it distracts from dealing with reality and the world around you. The more one becomes obsessed with the dream world of the wish, the less they consider the marvelous possibilities and wonderful gifts of nature around them. But I digress.

As Issi took a bite of some nearby greens and was calmly chewing, I was reminded that at this point of my quest, my goal was to find a place to fish and face my real aversion to catching a fish thereby causing its death.

“I guess I need to get on with my fishing. You wouldn’t have any recommendations?”  Issi looked up and began to amble along the stream.  ‘It’s as good a direction as any,’ I thought as I walked along on the opposite side of the stream from the doe. Issi moved quietly. In looking back I realize that I talked the entire time. After all, I had someone to listen and she didn’t criticize or call me crazy.  Maybe I am crazy by human standards. After all I am a bona fide tree-hugging preservationist who believes that other animals have as much right to life as do humans and am so totally ashamed of my own species that, while I don’t really hate anything, they’re definitely at the bottom of my mammal list.

Our ambling took us to a deep pool that must have been two or three yards across. Peering into the depths the dark blue gave the pool the impression of being bottomless.  I couldn’t see any fish in the pool, but, at this point, I still wasn’t all that sure I wanted to catch a fish.

I got out my fly rod and began to put it together. Many years ago, before I dedicated myself to the first Buddhist rule of life – ‘do good to all sentient beings, and if you can not do good, do no harm’ – I was a somewhat skilled fly fisherman. I tied my own flies and was rather good at catching bass in Midwestern lakes.  After I stopped fishing I really missed flying.  It wasn’t catching the fish that I missed. I had mostly done catch-and-release anyway. I missed the sensations of casting.  It would be interesting to analyze. Is it the long back cast, especially when you have several yards of line out, with the line, leader, tippet laying out across the water, dropping the fly gently right where you want it that gets you – forgive the unintended pun – hooked?  Perhaps it is just being out on the water sitting in a little inflatable dingy or standing along an isolated, rushing stream surrounded by forest. I haven’t had waders for years but I stand so near to the streams edge that I can practically feel the rush of the water. Dropping a fly just above a section of fast water and watching it bob through the rapids like a white-water kayaker to gently float across a deep pool as you watch for the suddenness of a strike is mesmerizing.  In the Midwest I tied a small fly that looked like a mayfly.  I’d sit in my little dingy and literally bounce the fly off a limestone wall into the water and wait for the thrill and the suddenness of the violent attack by the large striper bass.

As I threaded the tippet through the line guides I began to wonder if I would be able to kill a fish if I caught it.  I had not done that for many years and, as I said, even back then I usually practiced catch and release or didn’t even have a hook. The thought of having to kill the fish honestly caused some very real distress. I didn’t like the idea of killing anything but I know that fish is an excellent source of protein. No matter what I thought of taking life, I knew that this was a part of the cycle of life.

This was a good example of the cycle of life.  I am an omnivore. That gives me a lot more options that my new friend, Issi. For many years I had chosen not to kill sentient creatures for food.  I got my protein from soybean and other plant protein. Many such foods are extremely high in protein, but they are not readily available in the wilderness.  I had to admit that I might have to actually participate in life in a way which had long made me uncomfortable, although I understood why it was important.  Humans stopped participating long ago. My home country wastes enough food each day to feed a small, starving nation. Subsistence living; being a participant in the cycle of life; was something only a few crazy, fanatic environmentalist or preservationist would do.

I didn’t have to worry about the trauma of killing. I didn’t catch anything.  Happily, I spent my evening lost in the splendor of the wilderness, casting my fly into the rushing water.  I had two hits.  On my way back to our camp site I watched a Beaver lazily swim across the lake into which my fishing stream flowed and dive down into his lodge. It was exciting because as much time as I have spent in the wilderness in my life, this was one of those experiences I’d never had.

It was getting well into the evening when I returned to camp. We had a spot that looked out across Upper Stillwater Lake.  We were camping in our truck in a remote area of Lincoln County, Montana. We have a cap on our big Dodge Ram 4x4 half-ton heavy and we had thrown our sleeping bags in there and taken off to enjoy our days off even farther into the wilderness than we live and work. 

Pamela was enjoying the solitude. The sun was setting fire to the clouds hanging over the mountains to our west. Twilight in the summer mountains this far north is a long and glorious process.  It begins with the sun disappearing behind the western mountains creating, when the conditions are right, the brilliant orange and fire red clouds which we were enjoying.  Since, if the land were flat, the sun would still be above the horizon, the sky is light for several more hours.  Even under the heavy canopy, real darkness would not come until midnight.  In the openness of the lake and our campsite the light was soft, like a room lighted by a candle. When darkness does come the night sky, before and after the moon rises and sets, is spectacular. Many people have never seen the Milky Way because of ‘light pollution’.  That is so sad. What is even sadder is that most people don’t know what they’re missing and far too many don’t care unless it’s on television, Youtube or Netflix.  Here in the big sky of the Montana wilderness the Milky Way can be seen in all its splendor. One is made aware not only of the magnificence and magnitude of the universe but our place in this tiny remote corner. Perhaps some people don’t like to look up at the night sky filled with an uncountable number of stars because it bursts the human egotistic bubble. How can anyone witness this and still believe that humans are the most important thing in existence?

We could feel the coolness of the evening setting in.  It had been a particularly hot day but it was late-July and the night-time low would most likely be down in the low forties. That is one of the things which I love most about the northern Rocky Mountains. No matter how beastly hot it might get during the day, the low humidity makes it bearable if you get out of the direct sun and the nights are almost always cool and frequently cold.

Morning comes early in the mountains. At least the sky will become light just before five o'clock. Surrounded by high mountains, it was after nine o'clock before the sun was actually visible

. Because it was our day off, Pamela and I lay in bed until almost seven-thirty.  The lake was placid with the occasional expanding circles of micro-wakes created by ducks landing on the still water.  A perfect image of the magnificent mountains and forests around us reflected off the mirror-like surface. I didn’t see Issi, but I knew she was out there being the best deer possible.    

    

The air was still cool enough that steam rose from our coffee cups. We were surrounded by nature in all its perfection, giving us life, and calming our minds stressed by the human world. In such moments I can sense the heartbeat and feel the breath of Unci Maka.  For such brief moments I do not feel like an intruder, an invader that brings death and destruction.  In moments like this I can feel the forgiving compassion of Unci Maka in the sights and sounds of the wilderness beckoning us to return to reality with arms as wide open as the big sky above us.  At such times, deep down inside where it was buried and suppressed for countless generations, I can feel the stirring of the true human spirit. My true spirit that knows without training or lecture the reality of what it is to be a true and faithful creature of nature.  Whether the wilderness is mountains, prairie or desert, in times like this, I know that I am home.        

 Like so many times in so many other places Pamela and I sat side by side silently taking in the awesome vista, naato ksááhko.  There was no need to speak for no words could possibly express what we were seeing and feeling.