Ptarmigan Peaks Wilderness
A crisp sixty degree day feels a great deal warmer under mountain sun, especially heading up a bare, exposed scrub-hill towards a distant rock outcropping. Remarkable weather for a hike this time of year, the aspens in the infancy of their turning, the conastoga pines already half-russet from late bark-beetle attacks. The way in marked by a lashing out against oblivion. Near a dilapidated section of wooden fence that stands alone, two horse ties in the distance falling over slowly like the wounded in a gunfight. & the white bark of the aspens gouged in shoddy script with names scrawling vertically down that have already come to mean nothing. A quarter mile past & it is forgotten, the interlopers on prosperity cordoning themselves off to the first feeble climb. & after, pitch after pitch of aspen grove, expanding vistas of the Dillon Reservoir &its unfortunate environs (condos, etc.) that one can glance over in focusing on the jutting peaks that delineate the horizon. Willa & I, but for one couple, have the trail entirely to ourselves for four fulgent hours. Just over two hours of ascent & you stalk the bald top of the mountain, its tundra scrub brittle, its few pines paltry against the gaping open fields, its wind fierce & cold. Cairns dot the peak, though few stones seem readily available anymore. Another holding-off of oblivion, another momentary triumph, the evidence of which is at least thankfully nameless. We lunch on pbj’s, Willa sitting dutifully by my side behind a flattened, low deciduous bush & looking towards the south. Easily twenty degrees colder, & the sweat on my back beneath the pack no help.
The solitary walk down I lectured the air on fear & systematization, returning to themes already familiar, themes I expound upon when I am put face to face with myself. Fear attends like cockle-burr, insinuates itself as logic. We hold Reason as we would a shield, thrust against the gaping stare of the unknown, our gazes down-turned behind it, There is much that I would have myself remember, copious notes I’ve taken over years of academic pursuit, quotes & lines from poems, justifications & excuses, an arsenal of rational thought to which I can turn each instant I am presented with a novel phenomenon. We yoke our present in conjunction with out past, rendering it always predictable, always same. Its other-ness, its fundamental alterity, its complete unknowability too vast, too fraught with unimaginable peril. I am paralyzed before the unknown. I tremble, I stutter to speak. I withdraw.
What is clear to me, & what wilderness teaches, is that any value that we find in our lives, any efficacious meaning, finds its beginnings in forays into the unknown. There & there alone does wonder breath, & only in wonder do we find ourselves enervated, enthralled, sensate & present in the truest sense. It is not cusping upon Possibility, but throwing oneself into it that allows for the extraordinary. The recognition of the extraordinary then renders the mundane anew, lends it life, endows it with a potential wonder that the kinetic pursuit of the unknown excites to animation. Our present thus engaged, our past thus inspired, we meet & dispense with our fears in favor of life’s simple undercurrent of awe.
This is precisely what Wordsworth achieved in his most elevated moments; pitching the present against the past until a reaction ensured: “an emotion, kindred to that which was before the subject of contemplation, is gradually produced, and does itself actually exist in the mind.” If the past finds itself fomented into a new fury, its systems fall from it, leave it as bare suggestion, as trace, as a ghost caught in a hermeneutical Penetralium. The past does not rest upon fact; there is no facticity in subjective remembrance. That with which we defend ourselves against the unknown is itself only a facsimile of knowledge, a random assemblage of breathing moments dissembled as order & Reason. & yet we turn to it for shelter against an oncoming storm the rains of which would offer a fine ablution.
& by we I mean me, of course. I hesitate before change, seeing in it such a familiar pageantry, thinking that having moved thirty times I know what each new move will bring. This is absurdity at its finest. Our imaginings, whether bred of hope or fear, are simple illusions, parlor tricks of courage & motivation. The notions we have of our futures are all equally ludicrous, univocal renderings as fanciful as the tooth fairy or Santa Claus, lent credence only because they fall in line with a familiar brand of logic. They are defenses, only, against our fears. & our fears ought to protrude upon our lives, ought to tangle our steps & slant against our quotidian rhymes. They ought to disrupt us, ought to challenge us beyond reason. Instead, so often, I tremble.
The trail down quick, my bones thawing, my lesson rendered aloud to the trees. There are wildernesses unpeopled, wilds that know nothing of natural beauty. One need not take a step to plumb their depths.
I think of my love who today walks the shore of the Arabian Sea in Vrakala, who has taught me much of fear & its proper investigation, whose voice over a line stretching thousands of miles is palpably changed, at peace, calm, assured, trilled now & again with such rich wonder; this is what comes of stepping into the unknowable. To her I send my love, & my humble thanks.
The solitary walk down I lectured the air on fear & systematization, returning to themes already familiar, themes I expound upon when I am put face to face with myself. Fear attends like cockle-burr, insinuates itself as logic. We hold Reason as we would a shield, thrust against the gaping stare of the unknown, our gazes down-turned behind it, There is much that I would have myself remember, copious notes I’ve taken over years of academic pursuit, quotes & lines from poems, justifications & excuses, an arsenal of rational thought to which I can turn each instant I am presented with a novel phenomenon. We yoke our present in conjunction with out past, rendering it always predictable, always same. Its other-ness, its fundamental alterity, its complete unknowability too vast, too fraught with unimaginable peril. I am paralyzed before the unknown. I tremble, I stutter to speak. I withdraw.
What is clear to me, & what wilderness teaches, is that any value that we find in our lives, any efficacious meaning, finds its beginnings in forays into the unknown. There & there alone does wonder breath, & only in wonder do we find ourselves enervated, enthralled, sensate & present in the truest sense. It is not cusping upon Possibility, but throwing oneself into it that allows for the extraordinary. The recognition of the extraordinary then renders the mundane anew, lends it life, endows it with a potential wonder that the kinetic pursuit of the unknown excites to animation. Our present thus engaged, our past thus inspired, we meet & dispense with our fears in favor of life’s simple undercurrent of awe.
This is precisely what Wordsworth achieved in his most elevated moments; pitching the present against the past until a reaction ensured: “an emotion, kindred to that which was before the subject of contemplation, is gradually produced, and does itself actually exist in the mind.” If the past finds itself fomented into a new fury, its systems fall from it, leave it as bare suggestion, as trace, as a ghost caught in a hermeneutical Penetralium. The past does not rest upon fact; there is no facticity in subjective remembrance. That with which we defend ourselves against the unknown is itself only a facsimile of knowledge, a random assemblage of breathing moments dissembled as order & Reason. & yet we turn to it for shelter against an oncoming storm the rains of which would offer a fine ablution.
& by we I mean me, of course. I hesitate before change, seeing in it such a familiar pageantry, thinking that having moved thirty times I know what each new move will bring. This is absurdity at its finest. Our imaginings, whether bred of hope or fear, are simple illusions, parlor tricks of courage & motivation. The notions we have of our futures are all equally ludicrous, univocal renderings as fanciful as the tooth fairy or Santa Claus, lent credence only because they fall in line with a familiar brand of logic. They are defenses, only, against our fears. & our fears ought to protrude upon our lives, ought to tangle our steps & slant against our quotidian rhymes. They ought to disrupt us, ought to challenge us beyond reason. Instead, so often, I tremble.
The trail down quick, my bones thawing, my lesson rendered aloud to the trees. There are wildernesses unpeopled, wilds that know nothing of natural beauty. One need not take a step to plumb their depths.
I think of my love who today walks the shore of the Arabian Sea in Vrakala, who has taught me much of fear & its proper investigation, whose voice over a line stretching thousands of miles is palpably changed, at peace, calm, assured, trilled now & again with such rich wonder; this is what comes of stepping into the unknowable. To her I send my love, & my humble thanks.
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