BLOG CARNIVAL: Scenic Scribbles: The Environment of Writing

Levels of Consciousness

I started a hike up Royal Arch and thought of the levels of the flatirons, the makeup of its paths. I thought about these levels and how they were like levels of consciousness or being.

Pre-dawn
Up in the morning before the sun lends its light to the ground. Up and immediately needing. Pre-dawn is a time of instant demands. Survival instincts kick in, and as I trudge up the hill, breathing out visible puffs in the dark, I think of bears. In the dark, I am both vulnerable and cloaked in cover. Sheltered, but wary. The mountain above me hides, and in the pre-dawn hours, I can only know that what's not visible, isn't there.


Awakening
Moving up beyond a man-made path, I am enveloped in tree branches, weighted by snow. The sun begins to share its light with the ground. I've left pre-dawn and arrived at awakening. My senses seek experience. They reach out, grasping onto the rough edges of consciousness. This is a place past immediacy. I can touch the base of the flatirons and feel the dripping ice slide down the rock. Here is a time of noticing and acting on stimuli rather than only needs. My boots fall through the snow, each step sinking down til compacted snow stops it. And up I go.


Curious Activity
Higher still I climb, and the branches dwindle. Light seeps into the trees and bounces right back off the snow, blinding me. The sun holds onto its power even through the haze. Here I question. Here I want answers. How is the snow here so much softer and moist than that of the lower levels? What bird made tracks the size of peanuts in the snow? And what plants besides pine and ivy last all winter? My thoughts scatter from one to another, only landing long enough to take a mental picture.


Surreal
The town below is not real. It's too far away to connect to, and therefore only exists as a picture. The landscape is merely a backdrop to this rock, like evening is for night. Changeable in a moment, but not definable at any time. It's an incoherent sigh of relief. Exhalation frozen in the air. Such silence calms me after a day of curious activity. Thoughts from the day gel and stick in my mind. These are the things to ponder in sleep. Here is where you drift, hoping to stay for good, but knowing it is impossible.


Descent
It's a long way down. Usually, down is much easier than up, but when snow's involved, down becomes literal, and I try not to fall. Descent is the time the sun disappears: when thoughts become only of sleep so that the body and mind have no choice but to obey.

"Every moment of light and dark is a miracle."

Walt Whitman

 

I often wonder about these in between moments, these discrete miracles. What is the single moment that night becomes day. Weather reports say: Sunrise 6:49 a.m, but at what moment does dark become light, light back to dark. What moment does a mountain grow? These are environmental Pinter moments. A communication passes silently, but it's up to us to notice and understand it.

Now go read the other Blog Carnival participants!

http://farinonthewestwindsoferin.blogspot.com/

http://erinbery.blogspot.com/