Sitting on the Rim of the World

In my youth and early adulthood I spent many summers working up in Yosemite at various family camps.  These were my wonder years. After a devastating fire wiped out one camp, damaged another and destroyed acres and acres of land that I called home (and in my heart still do).  I wrote this out of sadness.  Just outside the camps, there is a vista point.  When you sit on the edge of the wall looking out to the vast forest that lay in-front of you it's as if you were sitting on the rim of the world.  This letter is in response to that destruction.

Dear Mother Nature;

Time travel is possible.  Smell alone can be the transportation back to a time that was so concentrated, awesome and unexplainable to someone who had not experienced it.  No one understands how by the mere sight, sound, smell and feel of your unbridled ability to take structures and make them breathtaking yet in the same breath destroy all that has become known, seen, felt and tasted by those who dare tread. 

Waking from an uninterrupted slumber in the back of the old Datsun not sure where I was and fumbling out of the car I managed to gain my traction only to be greeted by standing at the bottom of nothing but shear rock towering over an ant like presence caused my heart to skip a beat and I fell in love.  For the next six years I rekindled this love affair only to have that pure white hot sense of mutual respect appear and blanket me in warmth, love, laughter and surrounded by like minded people.   You served as the backdrop of my initiation into adolescence & early adulthood.  You gave a wide birth to me so I could learn how to become part of community, and laid the foundation for my work ethic that is still etched into my being.  You showed me to let go and do what scares me most (even if it means STILL being grounded).  You showed me that a life not well lived is not a life at all.

From 15-21 I'd spend months in your blanket.  Waking up to the smell of trees that have been sprouting long before I even could walk, taking in the fresh clean air permeating my lungs and giving me new appreciation for life and experiencing your frigid yet refreshing mountain waters as I dip into the welcoming pools of liquid euphoria.

I understand what you do is for the good of the planet, SOMETIMES.  I also understand that we, the human race, have failed you in our ignorance and disregard for all that is within your realm.  Standing idly by watching a love singed and frayed with remnants of what was and seeing images of tall ghosts impregnating the ground blackened by Tej and left smoking of Akasha is a reminder of your wrath.  You have played a big part in me finding acceptance at a time in a young teenagers life where anxieties, need for fitting in and learning about life, love and what it means to belong to a community of like minded people is teetering on the high wire between finding bliss and self loathing.  The gifts you have bestowed are never far from my memory or heart.

To not have you within a few hours reach is devastating.  I agree that it is important to not have attachment and I don't, physically, but I can't seem to sever my spiritual attachment to you.   My heart is aching for you and I fear that as time passed and life went on our connection is quivering; a mere mirage of a waking dream.   I'm asking you to not feel abandonment and I have not abandoned you, I simply needed a gentle reminder that time travel is possible and standing on the rim of nature and nurture is a living breathing entity that is not to be taken for granted. You set a new kind of fire, one within me that was extinguished by materialistic thoughts and objects of which I am just now beginning to question.  That part of me that was wild, untamed, while seeing with eyes wide open is slowly re-emerging pleading to not let fear become an adversary against possibilities.

In awe,

Romny