May, 2008
There are things to be learned, and stories to be found only
when you leave the trail. Many of the earlier trails on Tamalpais
are growing back in, and some have disappeared. Much of the
mountain, of the world itself, can never be seen without leaving
the path. Our foraging ancestors worldwide only used trails to
get to other places, but in between, the whole terrain, was where
they looked for edible roots, fiber plants, fungi, dye plants,
berries, nuts, wild pome or wild stone fruits, leafy leaves, glues,
basket-weaving materials, arrow shafts, bow wood, construction
poles, workable bark, medicinal barks and herbs, soap, poison,
recreational plants, decorations, rock outcroppings of useful
minerals, and then all the nests and dens of animals and birds
which you can map into your mind and go back to when needed.
And much else. All this is mostly “off the trail.”
Not to mention, the spiritual discoveries (and frights) that
await in the brush, the boonies, the wild, the bush, the back
country, waste land, the cave, the dark, the places where “human”
presence is minimal.
But we always need trails. And walking on trails can be plenty
hard enough—a good pack on, a switchbacking path with broken
rock and dust in the bed of the trail, bigger rocks to step over,
step / step / step / one goes—not lightly and swiftly—but slow and
deliberate, watching the breath, keeping up a sustainable speed,
pegging steps to breath and heartbeat, maybe humming an old
tune or some chant that matches the pace, and taking it one step at
a time. And this is how you go to the top of any mountain, or
around any mountain, or on any long road—to get to a good camp
by dark, and lay this body down for a rest. But that’s not exactly the
destination. We don’t play music to get to the end of it. Or make
love to go to sleep (I hope). Or meditate and study to become
enlightened. Realization or somesuch might come along, but suppose it doesn’t? So what? Basho said, “The journey is home.”
Back in 1948 off the trail, taking Mount Tamalpais’s lessons
in grateful blessed ignorance, not really looking at the landscape
but totally aware of being beside my (teenage) lady, walking
almost in harmony but different, talking, glancing, hoping; taking the easiest way through the chaparral like a pair of little god
and goddess critters, our souls as big as the sky; did we make up
that great space, or did it make us up?
May we all find the Bay Mountain that gives us a crystal
moment of being and a breath of the sky, and only asks us to
hold the whole world dear. a
What rituals have you developed for the special landscapes in your life?
Share your thoughts at orionmagazine.org.
The Plain Speech
After twenty years the love we make
we braid into the hair of the day.
Sometimes I watch each stitch in the quilt
white hairs pecking the days out,
sometimes I cry and stop you
to talk about death. Still you start
telling your beads of memory
into my hand. That day
next to the slough you say
we napped in the car. Buffalo cows
stepped out of the rocks, stopped the calves
in a half-circle behind us. We could not move
or turn. They loomed at us out of the mirrors.
You wrap me in this story, a man coming home
coat full of red cyclamen. Clay strung to the roots.
After some struggle to find the true north of their lives
great and small wings return. White-throated sparrow
slow beat of cranes crossing Dakota. Orioles take
fruit we have left on a human plate. Like a farmer
suppressing his muscles for church, behind you
the uncurtained window, beside you the iron bed
you stand in your black pants, shirtsleeves,
a patch of wrinkles smelling of damp and the iron.
You call to me in the plain speech we use at home.
Answer me earth, mercy.
Answer me rain.
— Mary Rose O’Reilley
