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Once I embraced a giant pine in order to sniff its bark. Jeffrey Pines are said to smell a bit like vanilla but I couldn’t detect it. I did the same another time with an incense cedar, hugging and sniffing. Both times I noticed as I drew my face back an involuntary stroking of my hands on the tree, gently, as I would a loved person. It seemed simultaneously strange to find myself doing this and yet utterly appropriate. Strokes are for the doer as much as the recipient; I felt tender toward those trees and their silent, solemn aliveness.

I think it nearly impossible to pay close attention to trees, whether individually or as forests, and not be affected. So steadfast and graceful, they easily become companions. It seems a miracle they can stand so high, waver in the wind and remain upright. Were I the creator, I’d never have had the imagination to try something that seems so improbable. A freshly fallen, still living tree evokes sympathy and a frustrated wish to make it right again. While a long dead “nursery” tree supporting a linear stand of youngsters makes me smile and say thanks on their behalf.

As John Muir followed sheep up into the Sierra Nevada on his initial foray 141 years ago, he mentioned that “Another conifer was met today—incense cedar…” That “was met” tells that this was encounter with individual life and recognized as such. “I feel strangely attracted to this tree…It would be delightful to be storm-bound beneath one of these noble, hospitable, inviting old trees…”

Earlier than this, in the seventeenth century, an adolescent was converted and brought to God by a tree. He became Brother Lawrence of the Resurrection, a monk admired for his steady “practice of the presence of God” and his humility. Almost four decades after his conversion he described the experience to his Abbe who recorded the conversation. “One winter’s day he saw a tree stripped of its leaves, and considered that sometime afterwards these leaves would appear again, followed by flowers and fruit. He then received a lofty awareness of the providence and power of God which never left him.” Well, of course. Who wouldn’t tend to react that way if he really thought about it? Botany and theology become one. (The Practice of the Presence of God)

J. Krishnamurti seems once to have spent the entirety of several days entranced and enlightened by a tree. At sunrise it became golden leaves filled with life, and “…as the hours pass by, that tree whose name does not matter—what matters is that beautiful tree—an extraordinary quality begins to spread all over the land, over the river.” Each hour reveals new tree qualities: brightness, liveliness, somberness, quietness, dignity. One may sit in the shade beneath it, “…never feeling lonely with the tree as your companion.” At sunset finally the tree rests. “If you establish a relationship with it, then you have relationship with mankind. You are responsible then for that tree and for the trees of the world. But if you have no relationship with the living things on this earth, you may lose whatever relationship you have with humanity…” Later, ending a meditation on the human propensity to kill, he extends this thought: “If we could, and we must, establish a deep, long abiding relationship with nature—with the actual trees, the bushes, the flowers, the grass, and the fast moving clouds—then we would never slaughter another human being for any reason whatsoever.” (My apology to the publisher from whose book I drew these thoughts; I have lost the reference.)

Even Martin Buber, who recognized Nature as a distinct realm of Thou relatedness without being very comfortable there himself, spoke about trees. He knew they could be “It,” a species, a botanical member of an ecosystem, just lumber. “In all this the tree remains my object…It can, however, also come about, if I have both will and grace, that in considering the tree I become bound up in relation to it.” And more: “The tree is no impression, no play of my imagination, no value depending on my mood; but it is bodied over against me and has to do with me, as I with it—only in a different way.” (I and Thou)

To paraphrase an old television commercial, “These are not your father’s trees.” (The vast majority of those have been clear-cut.) But they are real trees and possible relations. I have been to the forest, and with Muir and the others, I have met these trees.

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How I love these mountains and their displays of Nature’s artistry and power. I sometimes wonder that I’m not completely overcome by it, as if I’m missing something inside that prevents my bursting with ecstasy. I walk everywhere and see each time the same granite walls and surmounting domes, columns, spires, and waterfalls. I marvel and bow.

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Later, another fine touch. Walking down from Nevada Fall on the John Muir Trail I come to an area where trail descends with high granite wall rising almost vertically to one side and steep falling slope on the other. Water flows gently down the wall. A narrow lip transects the wall fifteen feet above me and drinking-straw-sized waterfalls arc out, descend a few feet through the air, strike granite, and shatter into bursts of droplets that spread gaily out, some in free fall and others back onto the wall. These too captured the sun and shone diamond-like. Even more enchanting, the granite wall had a multitude of tiny garden spots all the way down, anywhere there was moisture to nourish them. A slit here where purchase could be got, a hole there, and often moss and lichen had gathered sufficiently to lay down a welcoming bed. A bit of grass, a tiny flower—these were randomly scattered over the surface and all seemed to flourish in their precarious perches. Such liveliness… What happens in a few weeks, though, when the water dries, how long can they last? I suppose they get their work done quickly—sprout, seed, spread their energies around; enjoy their floral being and allotted time; bedazzle passersby with their courage and beauty and improbability. And then pass on.

If someone asked if trees and flowers could grow out of a granite bed, what would you answer? Obviously not, you’d probably say. But the Sierra Nevada proves otherwise. Look at domes high above and you see they have tree “follicles” where none would seem possible. Up close I have seen 50’ high trees sprouted out of what appeared inhospitable rock. All over these granite mountainsides and mountaintops I see exuberant growth. It astonishes. Again and again, look!

As with the physics of light, botanical and geological science can explain all this. The nature of these plants is to reproduce; birds and wind scatter seeds; water and minerals and sunlight do their jobs. I understand all that and appreciate what it has to teach me. But I hear more, for empiricism is only one party to the conversation. Why the exuberance, this clear determination to spread life and beauty to the four winds? Why does Nature bother? What is the point? I don’t know for sure, probably life is its own purpose, but as I stand before that wall, water droplets falling on my face, eyeball to tiny leaf that homesteaded this granite wall, feeling (strange to say) a responsive love for that water, that rock, that sunlight and air, that adventurous, eager little plant, I do know that a lot goes on – on this Earth that doesn’t fit our categories, but for which I earnestly give thanks.

There are sometimes funny little paradoxes on the trail. I looked down toward the Merced and saw a placard on a stand in what appeared an odd location. So I diverted and made my way down. It looked as if it had been there a long while, a quote from John Muir posted on it: “…rocky strength and permanence combined with beauty of plants frail and fine…water descending in thunder, and the same water gliding through meadows and groves in gentlest beauty.” A few feet away, on another stand planted on the riverbank (amidst boulder and steep slope and trees—a lovely spot, no wonder someone chose this place to put Muir’s placard) was another: “CAUTION: Slippery rock surfaces.” Someone feared that Muirian lyricism would make people careless.

At the top of Vernal Fall, a bush reaches out over the cliff and looks down 300 feet. Among the leaves and branches, foraging obliviously (and making me nervous) was one of the ubiquitous ground squirrels. After a few minutes he returned nonchalantly to rocky solidity. I want to know how he appraised the danger. Brave and agile, he may not think it worrisome.

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Today I carry a liter of it in my pack while its generous source sails past as I walk upstream along the Merced. The trail is dusty, shaded, littered with horse droppings. The flow is rapid in this stretch and frequently squeezed along even faster by bouldered constrictions. It is absolutely transparent to its rocky bed and beautifully reflective of its surroundings: Stream flowing over bed of rocks that came from elsewhere and are now settled in place, stabilized though immersed in change. Water astonishes with its protean, forgiving, implacable nature; its manifold generosity seems endless, though 21st century humanity sorely tests it.

As I sit watching, it reminds me of a film reel, scene changing slightly with each frame. The ancient notion that “you never step into the same river twice” seems true only in a limited sense. Coursing water molecules are new every moment but they are only partial representation of river being. River begins in hidden notches at its highest reaches, gathers, welcomes feeder streams and meltwater all along the way, follows its bed (which persists even when water has temporarily dried), and forms a braid of continuity from beginning to end. It is whole with shifting aspects. I meet the same, though changed, River whenever I visit.

Zen master Shunryu Suzuki visited Yosemite Valley several decades ago. In Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind, he speaks of Yosemite Falls and how it recalled to him other streaming water in his Japanese homeland. The book is a collection of his teachings, and one, “Nirvana, the Waterfall,” has had special meaning to me since I first read it. He tells of his former monastery and of two practices there: when Dogen-zenji dipped water from the river he always returned the unused portion back to the river; and when monks washed, they filled basins only partway and then emptied the water towards rather than away from their bodies.

This expresses respect for the water. This kind of practice is not based on any idea of being economical. It may be difficult to understand why Dogen returned half of the water he dipped to the river. This kind of practice is beyond our thinking. When we feel the beauty of the river, when we are one with the water, we intuitively do it in Dogen’s way. It is our true nature to do so.
…When we see one whole river we do not feel the living activity of the water, but when we dip a part of the water into a dipper, we experience some feeling of the water, and we also feel the value of the person who uses the water. Feeling ourselves and the water in this way, we cannot use it in just a material way. It is a living thing.

One knows: Water is, all that it is. I understand this response.

As I walk the two miles toward Vernal Fall the grade steepens, the bed narrows, and car-sized boulders become more common. Water is white with turbulence and alive with energy and grace as it surmounts and circles, bends to the rocks’ demands. Pools, eddies, chutes, and then at the Fall, splash, spray, mist; I’ve traveled from silence to cacophony, from transparency to prismatic colors as the rising sun plays with floating droplets.

I don’t remember when water began to affect me as it does now. It is difficult even to describe the effect. The material nature of water seems to manifest spirituality more than other substances, even when they assume the most striking forms. Valley wall formations, backcountry peaks and domes, forests and wildflower meadows: there is no resisting any of these, no doubt that they also speak clearly of invisible forces and realities (and of the water that has shaped or fed them). But there is something more in water that eludes me, something totemic.

Since I came upon it a couple decades ago, John Muir’s account of raindrops has remained my favorite expression of enchantment with water. He was enjoying his first time in the Sierra Nevada, in the high country north of Yosemite Valley; it was 1868. Thirty years old, he had recently arrived in California after a long trip begun by train from his home in Indianapolis to Louisville, followed by a long walk across Kentucky, Tennessee, Georgia, and into Florida. Laid low with malaria, he delayed for recuperation, and then continued by boat to Cuba where he stayed several weeks. Then to New York to catch another boat which took him to Panama, crossed the isthmus by train, and then on to San Francisco. Altogether, about a seven- month journey.

Muir had been in the mountains six weeks, a time of daily rapture as he immersed in the landscape, when a rain storm thundered in just after noon. “How interesting to trace the history of a single raindrop!” Two pages of lyrical transport combined with immense attentiveness to raindrop travels then follow. He reflected that the first such drops, geologic ages ago, fell on barren granite, but now they have peaks and domes, forest and garden, to receive them. Some join streams and lakes, falls and cascades, while others merge with meadow and bog where they “…creep silently out of sight to the grass roots, hiding softly as in a nest, slipping, oozing hither, thither, seeking and finding their appointed work.” Some sift downward through leaf and needle of tall trees while others attach to minerals and shine upon mates drumming through broad-leafed plants of countless varieties.

Some happy drops fall straight into the cups of flowers, kissing the lips of lilies. How far they have to go, how many cups to fill, great and small, cells too small to be seen, cups holding half a drop as well as lake basins between the hills, each replenished with equal care, every drop in all the blessed throng a silvery newborn star with lake and river, garden and grove, valley and mountain, all that the landscape holds reflected in its crystal depths, God’s messenger, angel of love sent on its way with majesty and pomp and display of power that make man’s greatest shows ridiculous.

Then the storm ends, “…and where are the raindrops now—what has become of all the shining throng? In winged vapor rising some are already hastening back to the sky…” Others are nurturing plants, or if they fell in the highest mountain reaches have locked into ice crystals; and finally many, through spring, stream, and river, make their way to ocean. “From form to form, beauty to beauty, ever changing, never resting, all are speeding on with love’s enthusiasm, singing with the stars the eternal song of creation.”

No one but John Muir can talk like this and get away with it. This and much more in similar vein are found in his My First Summer in the Sierra, which was my earliest encounter with him and it. I was enchanted and have remained so. When Martin Buber speaks of “hallowing the everyday,” this is one instance of what he means. When we speak of gifts and reciprocity, this exemplifies; mindful adoration is its highest expression. Water falls and flows, is drunk and absorbed, cleans and cools, moves in and out of countless forms and conditions, and yet, so far, it abides and continues to replenish. I sit by the Merced River, honoring the mystic flow.

Photo by Photo by Cedric Letsch on Unsplash

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