Nature is bigger than me

I went on a trip up the delta this past week. First to scout, (I wrote about that a few days ago) then to have an annual friend party. We camped at a state rec area up near rio vista and barged around the river enjoying each other's company. 

This time the power of the place came out at night. We had returned to the group site as the sun set. We changed into dry clothes and clambered up the bluff to catch the last rays of the sun. They burned and pressed through the distant haze and windmills and fell welcome on our cold windswept faces. One of our party found a great blonde mantis in the grass. We all looked in fear and wonder. 

The sun set and we gathered wood. Not much to be seen. I spied a widow maker up in a willow tree. Bill spotted as I climbed up and felt like a kid, imagining my booted feet as barefoot, my hands grasped boldly although the light was almost gone. Bill said, "Dave, you're in the sky" and I felt safe and glad. He handed up a long stick and I used it to free the cracked branch. Up in the wind of the willow. 

We spotted an old oak - taken over almost by mistletoe. Great bare branches. "We need a rope" and someone had brought fifty feet of climbing rope. I carefully coiled it over-under and got the feel for it. We chose a little branch to build our confidence. One toss - over. Bill grabbed one side, I the other, we backed up making a triangle. Pulled, snap. Piece of cake. 

Tori joined us and saved us when half the line had made it over a big important branch but it was too high for us to reach. Rowan who had also joined attempted vainly to lift bill on his shoulders. Tori said, "here, Bill, I'll stand on your shoulders." "What!?" "Here, just squat a little bit to give me a foothold. Here" "she's got this Bill, don't worry" I said. She had been a vaulter in her youth. I kindof loved seeing them doing this together. They're steady boyfriend and girlfriend. She literally got up and stood hands free on his shoulders. I was helping spotting - we walked five feet forward - and she got the rope. Yes. 

Rowan and I pulled and snapped the branch. The rope was still around the whole of the big branch and a cluster of others. We tried to keep pulling to get the other little guys but it was the big one that started cracking. "That's the big one guys" bill said adding caution. "Stand clear!" I shouted. I could see in Rowans face he wanted it. He looked at me and said, "the wind would blow it down anyway." "Yeah," I said. And we pulled. And it cracked, and it fell in glory and shattered on the ground. Thirty feet of glorious rotten oak. "Well," Bill said, "the wood problem is solved."

We got the fire going and ate and drank. Sang songs. Danced to 90s house music. 

Later on when it was really dark, I took a walk out along the road leading in. I walked slowly and let the noises of my friends and the light from the fire get smaller and smaller. The noises of the wind and the light from the stars got stronger and stronger. A big tree towered before me, wishing and bending in the wind. I saw for the first time how all the trees here are shaped with the wind. Yearning eastward. And the windmills in the distance and the windswept water and windswept grassland. And windswept me. Out here in it. I had this realization. The realization that really correlates with all my artistic interest. Nature is bigger than me. Nature, the larger system, is longer and wider and more subtle and more complex and more everlasting than me. Trees are taller. Even if I cut them down they - as part of nature - are far more lasting than I am. They go on and on. Out in a wild place like this, the power and magnitude of nature are clear. The human edifices are quaint. Minor. A bathroom and an electric light. A tent about to break loose from its tentative hold on the earth. A twinkling fire. The grass is great. The trees are tall. The wind is traveling for hundreds? Thousands of miles? The starlight? Awe is the emotion I most acutely feel when relating to nature. Awe. Sometimes fear, but connecting and preparing awe. 

I decided that night I need to spend more time in wild nature in the next few weeks. It's like the mainline. The mainline for this feeling that I am cultivating as I look at clouds through street lights and leaves backlit by the sun. This emotional connection to nature.