It was a very cloudy day but at moments the sun came out. I was delighted by this double rainbow the sun made in the Talenti jar I use to "cook" (i.e. soak) my dehydrated food. Photo 7 shows the rainbow.
That's rolled oats, dehydrated bananas and blueberries, powdered coconut milk, and powdered peanut butter. Weird but good.
Photos 9 and 10 are more mountains. Mountains after mountains after mountains. Inexhaustibly beautiful.
Photo 11 is a couple of bees frolicking in a flower, and photo 12 is the mountain background I wanted to be able to put in the bee photo.
Okay. Needless to say there are more beautiful mountain pictures. But you get the point ( and I am reluctant to start a part 3, I'm tired and I'd rather be sleeping. )
Today the reverie theme went beyond expressing love to everyone I've ever loved and to the PCT version of myself. Now it was about expressing love to my therapist self. (I knew the blankety blank trail was going to start working on my retirement "issues" sooner or later. ) Couldn't go there. "Couldn't go there - or wouldn't?" asked the trail. I said "love is not something one arrives at through reason or enacts by force of will. It has to happen." The trail suggested I could open my heart to allowing it to happen. Invite in the two little girls I've been imagining as icons of faith and hope (Esperita and Fidelita, I call them), let them dance and curtsy like the little girl at Stehekin Valley Ranch who reminded me so much of them. To cut to the chase, I began to really be aware of the deep deep belief that love doesn't allow harm or hurt. I was an imperfect therapist, hence unlovable. Also, I saw this a more general attitude toward my self. People who love you don't hurt you. People you love, you don't hurt. Ergo, I don't love myself (and, of course, ergo I'm not either loving and lovable). Because who has hurt me more than I have hurt myself? Probably all sounds very baroque to you, but out here on the trail i was doing some serious wrestling with these love-blocking beliefs in "thou shalt do no harm. " I even protested that my self doesn't actually exist, it's a total fiction, as Buddhists are quick to point out. So how the heck could I love it or be loved by it? That got disqualified quickly though, because I really do believe that the imaginary realm is real -- and while I doubt if the gods of any religious traditions exist in and of themselves without help from human imagination, I don't doubt for a moment that people experience love for their god(s) and love from their god(s) as something intense and real. And then there's the Keats quite I've remembered since my twenties "what the imagination conceives of as beautiful is true, whether it existed before or not."
So I let it all in a little. I walked through the beautiful mountains with tears rolling down my cheeks imagining what it would be like to love this self I have hurt and been hurt by. Not just the PCT self, she's easy to love. But the one down in civilization. The one I have to live with when I'm not in the mountains. It was she, the PCT self pointed out, who dreamed the dream and did all the work to learn about the trail and gear and dehydrating food. She/I was the biggest trail angel of all for my PCT self.
So with my head properly spinning (and yours too I would guess if you made any attempt to follow this) I commend us all to our dreams.
I will see you tomorrow on the trail. We will reach the Canada border tomorrow, camp just on the Canada side, then hike the remaining 9 miles to Manning Park Lodge on Thursday.
No comments:
Post a Comment