TIMBER RANCH – EVERY DAY!

As a child I was wont to emerge from my house and cross the “highway” (lake road) and enter the darkness of the forest by climbing the hill of the “Old Town Road.” From the denseness of the trunks and canopy of the evergreens, as I trudged up the hill, I gradually entered the dappled light of the hardwood forest and then as I continued on around the first bend in the road I emerged into the light of the “open road.” The freedom from the darkness to the light gave me an overwhelming sense of joyfulness. I could then see, feel, and hear the all-ness of my being with all the other being of the entire world/universe. I was an “it” wandering in the energy of my youth, expanding my participation in the all of Alls. Many years later, while finishing a run of some 5 or 6 miles at the end of day and the twilight of evening, I sensed the all of Alls again.

TIME

Running through the forest late one fall evening,
I heard the water fall.
And from that gentle sound was birthed
a philosophic pondering.
The silence of the forest gave no answers to my question:
If life falls into itself in each moment,
where does it go?
While musing on this ageless conundrum
a cold chill passed through me
and I pleaded for some truths with the
dusk’s receding forms.
The tamarack stood in silent repose.
The balsam’s shadowed presence shifted in the breeze.
The birch’s stillness touched the soundless twilight.
The hemlock hushed its lacy boughs.
The muted oak pondered in its strength.
The sphagnum breathed in wordless wetness.
The spruce jutted voiceless towards the coming moon.
The bracken shivered in the rising silver slivers
of moonlight.
In that moment, the water fell again…
And as I heard the water fall,
It fell through me.
The slipping of the liquid from place to place,
let me leave myself
and enter the calm of the evening.
Then came the great questions of eternity:
What force in the vastness of the universe
could assist a letting go?
When could a passing thought, or feeling
slip from one sacred place to another
in this bounded physical reality?
And finally,
how do the dimensions set side by side
touch one another in the boundless of it all?

As “it all” still draws me closer and closer to it All, I feel one with the All.

TO DREAM

“La vida es sueño y los sueños, sueños son.”
(Life is a dream, and dreams are only dreams.)

I dreamt about a new skin/membrane,
a multipurpose-universal,
internal-external,
concept-fabric
that is intrinsically interactive
– protective – open.
A responsive, living
(and I know that is redundant)
Holographicness,
that is efeta stuff,
where IT-WE
is always becoming I-WE
and love-life prevails.

Now, as I do my daily reclined stretching exercises, I always embark again upon that Timber Ranch journey of the same path through the darkness to the light. From the energetic gait of a running youth to the shuffling pace of the aged, I find the journey always the same.