A View of the Mountain - Autumn in my Life

Looking out my kitchen window this afternoon, I caught the first glimpse of White Oak Mountain in the distance that I've seen since late March, maybe early April. In spring and summer, the trees completely block the mountain view, so much so that you wouldn't know the mountain was there if you didn't know the area.

Not exactly earth-shatterng news, is it? Trees shed their leaves every fall, graceful branches standing naked and unashamed, revealing sky and views hidden when they're all decked out in foliage. What struck me as I was looking out that window was how the trees and the mountain view were mirroring my own life right now.

I'm 52. My birth daughter is days away from 28, and my two step-daughters will soon be 20 and 18. The nature of my role as Mom has changed dramatically in the last few years. My baby girls are now beautiful young women, quite self-sufficient most of the time, and are actively pursuing their own interests. There are spaces in my life now that used to be crowded, spaces that reveal views I've missed for a long time.

I've reached the early autumn of my life and the leaves are falling. As those leaves drop away, the me that I used to know when I was a child is coming back into view.

I like her. She's creative, thoughtful, a writer and a photographer with an eye for beautiful things and a desire to share them with others. She's smart and she has a sense of humor She loves to cook and likes to eat, sometimes too much (some things never change). And she's learned a lot of things through her life's spring and summer, stories and lessons and memories that beg to be told, so she writes daily and loves it.

My friend and fellow writer Sitara says, “Give me an eight-spoked Wheel and I’ll show you the wisdom of the world.” She's so right. I can feel the Wheel turning, through the day, through the year, and throughout my life. The wisdom is found in paying attention, listening, and staying in synch with the Wheel.

I'm paying attention as the leaves fall and the views are revealed, some familiar, some new. Unlike the seasons, my own life is not infinite. My wheel will eventually stop turning. Time is short and I'm going to enjoy every vista along the way.

Ups and downs...

...on the road of life.

Yeah, I know...couldn't be cheesier if it was melted over a pizza...but sometimes truth is cheesy. There's a reason phrases become cliches. Words that capture truth resonate with us; they encapsulate something complex into a compact package we can wrap our minds around. In the best of times, my life resembles the ups and downs of a mountain road; at other times, it's been more like a roller coaster. In any case, the photo made me smile and the cheesy cliche holds true yet again.

My husband and I spent the weekend with friends at a cabin on Lookout Mountain. We hot tubbed, ate too much, and took time to enjoy the most beautiful fall I can recall since childhood. My friend Peggy and I took a scenic drive and hiked up and down hills, over rocks, and across No Trespassing signs to get better views, leaving me with sore thighs, good pictures, and great memories.

As good as the weekend was, I found myself a bit overwhelmed on Saturday night. Even the best of sounds - good music, honest conversation, and the laughter of friends - can be too much if delivered in an unbroken stream, and by Sunday morning, I needed to recharge my batteries.

I rose before everyone and took a walk, enjoying the cold and the gentle morning light. Finding my way into the woods, I was invited by a centuries-old rock to have a seat, and for a half hour or more he and I enjoyed wordless companionship. Have you ever felt a rock's pulse? It's slow...deep...like a throbbing, basso profundo wave that begins imperceptably and rises gradually so that you're not aware of when it starts or stops but you feel it. And if you sit long enough and listen with all your senses your own energy rises and falls with the wave and your thoughts slow down... slower... deeper...until finally you're heart and breath and mind are humming with the rock and all else fades to the background. When the press of time once again quickens your senses and you rise, you realize that the rock, while aware of you and maybe even grateful for your company, is not diminished or troubled by your arrival or your departure and will be right there when you come back.

And if, like me, you find yourself without anything to offer in thanks for that most precious gift except the grateful tears on your face and the wordless song rising in your throat, you tilt back your head and sing to the rock and the morning and the light and leave your song behind as an offering, knowing without a doubt that it was heard and welcomed and remains for the next person who comes to draw strength from the rock, to be heard not with the ears but with the heart.

I hope they'll sing along.

Paradise is...

...different things to different people.

As I was hiking in the Muir Woods on Friday, I overheard conversation among a pair of couples walking the trail. I recognized them as Jehovah's Witnesses right away. Having been raised in that arena, I'm fluent in the language (that language is a subject for another conversation some time).

The conversation centered around what they wanted in the New System. For Jehovah's Witnesses, the New System is the world as it will be after Armageddon, after Jehovah removes Satan's influence from the world for a thousand years so the earth and all its inhabitants can return to paradise and perfection. The comments were about what kind of homes they wanted, what kind of amenities. "I want a two or three story house with a window that opens onto a slide so I can just slide down into the lake right out of the bedroom window."

The thing is...we were in the middle of an old growth forest. It was clean, deep, quiet...the trees, some four or five stories tall, were graciously welcoming us into their homes. We'd just been graced with a doe and her fawn crossing our path; a birdsong symphony played in the background, and a gentle creek babbled merrily within earshot of most of the trail. We were already in paradise, and they didn't appear to recognize it.

Have we all become such expatriates that we don't recognize our native tounge? The world was speaking the language of paradise and people were talking about building a three-story house. Or maybe the constant focus on the future, the paradise to come, blinds people to the paradise that is.

It was a bit sad really. Maybe I'm making too much of it; they certainly seemed to be happy and enjoying themselves. But for me, caught up as I was in the rapture of ancient redwoods, blooming oxalis, and the humming energy of that beautiful place, there was no need for a new system. The old system was paradise enough for me.