Water | Camino Bay Books

2022 The Northern Route – Fjaðrárgljúfur

Robin — Fri, 16 Jun 2023 13:30:04 +0000

4 September: The day began with a continuation of the plethora of water falling in its diverse ways from the mountain edge. They’re all different and all appealing. One began with a long fall that was unusually vertical presumably because there was no wind to disturb it and it remained out from the rock wall behind it so there was no spray from water-rock encounters: a long descending relatively thin column of water, remarkable in its way, and then a couple of intervening collisions with rock, pond, another fall, and off in a stream to the ocean. Then falls became fewer as glacial tongues filled valleys looking out to the distant ocean. I think I passed a half dozen or so; it’s quite an unusual sight yet becomes almost normal. A couple of these fed into “ice lagoons” where water gathered and bergs floated. Naturally, tourists feasted on these; I was able to park, even eat at the café, and walk up to the lagoon on the smaller and less popular of the two. The second was impossibly crowded so I moved on. In one area there was a display about a 1996 event when sub-glacier volcanic activity erupted causing massive melting and then flooding combined with who knows what volcanic debris and the sweeping away of bridges and roads and scattering of boulders. It would have been a frightening and astounding thing to see. The latter part of the drive, then, consisted of outwash plains, some of them with moss but mostly not (and the moss was gray indicating an insufficiency of rain), the moss seeming to prefer lava rock to other varieties, and the long escarpment broken at times by glaciers and a few falls. The mountains were often striking and the glaciers always so. The mountains were somewhat different than the earlier ones in that they were less green. The sides that more or less aimed southerly toward the Atlantic were green, although not densely, but the front edges were mostly talus slope with no apparent growth. Steepness, different kind of rock, or whatever, these faces had changed.

The lagoons could have been places of quiet appreciation—silently floating bergs, glacier a stolid, slightly ominous presence across the upper side of the lagoon, mountains framing the scene, stream maintaining balance between melt and outflow—but were taken over by guided tour vehicles and the hordes waiting to ride them.

Photos via Unsplash

Thoughts From My Journal – Beauty Imbued Spirit

Dr. Brestrup — Sun, 10 Apr 2022 13:42:39 +0000

8-31-2021: If it were possible to believe that gods created the Universe, the next belief might be that they had decided to use Earth for the indulgence of their artistic talents. To see just how much beauty they could create in, from their perspective, a limited space. When the god of Genesis stepped back from day-to-day creation and pronounced that “it was good,” this might be what he meant. From my own more limited perspective, I don’t see how they could have done better. It really was a work of art. In today’s parlance, I guess we’d have to call it performance art since it doesn’t just sit still; its parts all interact in ways that replenish itself as needed, dispose of detritus, maintain, and heal and renew. It’s really quite a place. Of necessity, it had also to be useful, meaning that it provided the conditions and nutriment for rebirth and evolution, always changing, always restoring, always beautiful. Since beauty is imbued with spirit, it is also a spiritual place where love, identification, entanglement abide and enrich.

Photo by Leo Rivas on Unsplash

Non-Attachment

Dr. Brestrup — Tue, 26 Oct 2021 13:00:26 +0000

9-13: Since I wrote about non-attachment, I read this: “A certain recluse monk once remarked, ‘I have relinquished all that ties me to the world, but the one thing that still haunts me is the beauty of the sky.’ I can quite see why he would feel this.” The writer continued: “You can find solace for all things by looking at the moon. Someone once declared that there is nothing more delightful than the moon, while another disagreed, claiming that dew is the most moving—a charming debate. Surely there is nothing that isn’t moving, in fact, depending on circumstance.” A few sentences later: “Then there is Xi Kang, who wrote how, roving among mountain and stream, his heart delighted to see the fish and birds. Nothing provides such balm for the heart as wandering somewhere far from the world of men, in a place of pure water and fresh leaf.” (pp. 31-32) This is from Essays in Idleness by Yoshida Kenko, an early fourteenth century collection of anecdotes, observations, and commentary that is said to be considered a classic in Japan.

Photo by Eleonora Patricola on Unsplash

Sounds in Silence

Dr. Brestrup — Thu, 21 Oct 2021 13:00:54 +0000

9-11: We walked again today, this time west until we crossed the bridge and turned east and eventually found a fallen pine a hundred yards from the River where we sat in silence for a while. Twig seems an unusual dog in that she can sit still as long as I am observing and appreciating her surroundings. We were in the midst mostly of black oak, ponderosa pine, and incense cedar; a fire, probably prescribed, had been through a few years ago and trunks were scorched fifteen or so feet up. Grass, forbs, and bushes along with other dead woody debris cover the land. Soughing of the River made for completion. Sounds probably don’t get nearly the credit they deserve as sources of delight; this beautiful landscape would be diminished without River’s patter. (I read once that the supposed taste of celery was actually mostly its crunch synesthetically merged with its intrinsic flavor—this is like that.) Sitting as I am, I always close my eyes for several minutes to better notice unobtrusive sounds: the few birds calling, breeze and leaf, insects when they’re speaking, and in this place the River. The trees, especially as I have come to know more about their relationships, above and below ground, with one another and with fungi and microbes, become an ashram of sadhus permanently meditating while surreptitiously managing their needs for moisture, nutriment, protection of self and community. They are admirable in so many ways and easy to love. No creature on this Earth is for use only.

Photo by Thomas Haas on Unsplash

Sierra Nevada Water & Trees – Part 3

Dr. Brestrup — Tue, 31 Aug 2021 13:00:18 +0000

I moved camp this morning and caught a ride to the intersection of Porcupine Creek and Tioga Road, several miles north of the Valley. Fourteen miles hiked and a late afternoon return to camp. I’d have stayed out longer but storms rolled in at noon. I was high up on North Dome preoccupied with seeing everything from an astonishing perspective thousands of feet above the Valley—far and near, way down to the forested bottom—when a booming thunderclap shook my composure. I moved back off the Dome into a rocky pocket with a perfect view of Half Dome, ate lunch and watched a hawk glide and circle between the two Domes, which seem about a mile apart, though estimating distance is uncertain at this scale. I think these birds often fly like this for the pleasure of it, just as I hike for pleasure, and we both do it as our response to the spirit of the place. I walked a little under five miles through forest to get here from my drop-off and then west through deeper forest about the same distance to Upper Yosemite Fall. The trail crossed several charming little streams in miniature valleys. One in particular made home for a host of ferns and delicate flowers. I stopped to take it in but thunder rolled loud and close, so I left sooner than I wanted. A mile before the Fall, rain whipped in carrying bits of sleet. I saw streak lightning to the north only a couple miles away and heading south so I donned rain jacket and hustled. Twice, dramatically, as I peered down for footholds on the trail, I saw flash of lightning reflected on the ground around me and in a split second thunder broke over me and brought a strange sense of exaltation and vulnerability. Ominous storms with dark, heavy clouds above and wispy white ones drifting among the trees through mountain and valley to the north. Gloomy and gray and cool. Then down the slippery path from Fall to Valley, once landing on rear rather than feet—fourteen miles and almost 4,000 feet of elevation change behind me.

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.

Photo by Ned Dorman on Unsplash

Sierra Nevada Water & Trees – Part 1

Dr. Brestrup — Tue, 24 Aug 2021 13:00:24 +0000

The day begins with hours beside flowing water. The walk starts near the confluence of Tenaya Creek and Merced River. Late June, and the high country snow is fast disappearing, but the watersheds of both these streams still send down a generous flow, a gift of water I always consider particularly pleasing. Whenever I leave Yosemite I do it with full jugs, which remind me of this place whenever I drink.

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