Out of my mind, back in five miles

July is rushing toward August with alarming speed.

This past weekend was the last one just for D and me for the rest of the summer. I can hardly believe it -- but my parents will be here on Wednesday to stay through Monday, then the next two weekends after that will be devoted to out-of-town weddings. And then I go back to Little U. on the Prairie. Let's not think about that anymore for the moment.

I know, I'm still thinking about it.

I've been pretty good at pushing this out of my mind for the last few weeks, but it's getting harder to ignore. Especially since I'm supposed to be putting together a syllabus for my class, and so far, I've read only the two novels I'm going to teach. Which still leaves the poetry, the plays, and the short stories. But I do keep having ideas on how to organize the progression of the course and make discussions interesting, so there are developments happening even if they're not on paper. Sigh.

Yesterday, we went for a hike along a mountain trail that skirts parts of the Snoqualmie River, which was the nicest area we've explored by far -- wide paths with several overlooks and waterfalls. We didn't hike very long because it was late in the day and there seemed to be higher foot traffic than we cared to encounter, but we did stop along various points by the river to take pictures. D tried some slow-shutter photography (see above), which turned out quite well.

I'd like to go back when there are fewer people, maybe on a weeknight before summer ends and definitely some time in the winter when the river might be frozen in the shallows. We discovered a tiny beach where you can wade right in, and a narrow island of sorts extends down the center of the river (more like a sand bar, but it's made up of big rocks and smaller pebbles). A few trees have taken root there, and some giant boulders a little farther upstream just beg to be climbed and sunned upon or imagined as towers of a lost fortress -- Terabithia in the flesh.

As we trekked, I was also reminded of something I first read in one of my favorite books from childhood, A Ring of Endless Light. I'm normally not a huge poetry fan, nor do I practice a particular religion, but this seemed an appropriate description of my state of mind before the hike:

"Indwelling"

If thou couldst empty all thyself of self,
Like to a shell dishabited,
Then might He find thee on the Ocean shelf,
And say -- "This is not dead," --
And fill thee with Himself instead.

But thou art all replete with very thou,
And hast such shrewd activity,
That, when He comes, He says: -- "This is enow
Unto itself -- ’Twere better let it be:
It is so small and full, there is no room for Me."

~ T.E. Brown

At some point on the trail, I was able to forget August for a while and get completely absorbed in the sensation of putting one foot in front of the other (the path was steep on the way to the falls). Breathing in more deeply to compensate for the effort and catching hints of fir and cedar and chasing the shafts of light from the setting sun as they filtered through the trees let me empty myself of self and be filled with whatever essence was there in the mountain, the air, and the river. I won't go into my position on the question of supreme beings -- that's for another post, if the desire to write it seizes me -- but I will say that the timelessness of that place evokes a sense of the transcendent. And I'd return again and again to be near that, if not to be immersed in it.