Document text
- Subscribe - Contact Us - Rate Card - Place an Ad Archives Revels Classifieds Real Estate Menu Guide Wedding Weather Subscribe Contact Us February 10, 2006 I'll Shut Up — Right After This The oneness that comes with calm John Darling The snow has just dusted Griz and the foothills this Sunday morning and sunlight has made it all dazzling. After coffee at Evo’s, Colin, who just got his learner’s permit and has in the space of four days become better than me at driving a stick, wants to cruise off into the country, up by Payne Cliffs. We get out and hike around. They tower above us, these sandstone monuments, once the seabed for the Pacific which lapped its shores right here 100 million years ago. We come across one of those huge piles of basalt rocks that randomly dot the hills up there. Were they piled by ranchers, so cattle could graze? I think not. In doing research for the Crater Lake documentary, I’ve found anthropological reports that the natives here would go off into the wildness on vision quest and do “ritual labor,” piling branches or rocks for days on end, a practice that empties the mind of everyday thoughts and frees the consciousness to receive understanding from Great Spirit. Wow, they say, you mean each one of these rocks was touched by an Indian? Well, they were here for at least 10,000 years, I say, so they touched everything. I wonder if they would mind us taking a rock with us, says Hannah. Ask them, says I. How do you do that, she says. You ask and you wait for a sign — usually it’s a bird. At that moment, three meadowlarks swoop down and land in a little tree in front of us and begin singing their delightful song. Our mouths drop open at this “whoa” moment. Our little vision quest has been fulfilled and we go on our way, each with a little rock to cherish — a sign from the first people here. I’m telling the story that evening as I make dinner with Ann and Krista and I get to the part about, “you ask for a sign and wait — usually it’s a bird — and at that moment ...” And at that moment Ann’s clock strikes 6. It’s a bird clock, with a different bird singing its song for each hour. And it sings throatily, joining in the story. Mouths drop open. Is this getting more common, these “agreements from the world around us,” as the Yaqui medicine man don Juan called them? We smile and nod at this little miracle. But really, when you ponder it, what doesn’t confirm the presence of Great Spirit — what isn’t a miracle? I take Hannah with me on a story at Denman Wildlife Area, those little-known 1,860 acres of wetlands, desert, riparian areas, oak groves — crammed with egrets, otters, eagles, beavers, packed between the freeway, the Hwy 62 strip and the factories of White City. The photographer spots a grebe swimming like mad but oddly staying in one place, just 10 yards in front of us. It has to be snared in fishing line — no other possible explanation. We’re with Jim Hutchins, who started Oregon Stewardship many years ago, to teach school kids and others about how we’re all connected and all need our habitat and clean air and water. We pause about 30 seconds, until it becomes clear: someone is going in that freezing water and have a duck moment. Jim goes. The tired, freaked out grebe bites him and thrashes in the water, diving and coming up, but Jim gets her free and she swims off underwater, surfacing half way across the pond. I share the story with friends at a gathering on Feb. 2, that midway point between solstice and equinox, known as Brigid’s Day, the time when Celts would light all the candles and welcome the first shoots of spring and the freshening of ewes. It’s remnants are celebrated here as Groundhog Day. We don’t have any ewes but we welcome the first lilting moments of spring’s warmth with spring cleaning and throwing open the door to call in the Irish mother goddess Brigid. In a quieter moment, I cruise the Internet looking for stories on the state of nature, as it’s allotted only its one percent of space in the mainstream media. Here’s Bill Clinton speaking in Switzerland at a gathering of corporate giants on what the big problems facing us all are. Well, he says, it’s global warming, as only that has the potential to “end the march of civilization as we know it and make a lot of the other efforts that we’re making irrelevant and impossible.” Really, now. And this is on some obscure eco-Web site, I mean, let’s not devote a lot of front page press to global warming and Clinton. We’ve heard all this. But Clinton is smart, the smartest of the dozen presidents from FDR on, if we can believe the Lovenstein Institute survey. They put him at IQ 182. Carter is 175, JFK is 174, wily Nixon is 155, FDR is 147, Johnson is 126, Ford is 121, Reagan is 105, Bush Sr. is 98 and the current guy is 91. What are problems number two and three in Clinton’s estimation? The concentration of wealth in a few hands while most of the world, including the middle class now, scrapes out a living — and the “apparently irreconcilable” religious and cultural differences behind terrorism. A gnarly knot there, the so-human needs to leave a trail of carbon dioxide, accumulate bookoos of bucks and get down in absolute righteousness about our particular fast-track to God – regarding others as not just misguided, but blasphemous. I’m on a story with Bahá’í people. Much persecuted by the fundamentalist regime in Iran, they explain their belief in the ultimate unity and peace among all religions and all mankind. I read mad Beat poet Charles Bukowski, who warns against any belief in the perfectability of man and publishes books with titles like “Love is a Dog From Hell” and “You Get So Alone at Times That It Just Makes Sense.” Even the titles are funny and somehow grounding. They give you hope to experience what’s real — and you get that you wouldn’t want to bet the farm on the perfectability of humanity any time in the near future, even after we learn our hard lessons from all the crises Clinton fears. We’ll stop spewing CO2 when we run out of stuff to burn. We’ll stop ripping off the poor when they all get tired of being ripped off and do something about it. And we’ll stop whacking people who trash our God when, over time, we gradually start making love with them, marrying them and having kids with them. John Darling is an Ashland writer and counselor. DailyTidings.com Home Page Archives | Revels | Classifieds | Real Estate Guide | Weather | Subscribe | Contact Us Copyright 2005 Ashland Daily Tidings and Ottaway Newspapers All Rights Reserved Deep Muscle Stimulator Ceramic Piggy Banks FREE Entertainment Guide Women's & Men's Slippers Accelerate Weightloss Products Backpacks Generic Viagra Vegas Travel Guide Search Engine Optimization Sportsbook Absinthe Supply Student Loans Hotel & Airline Reservations African Safari Hammocks Helzberg Diamonds Online Casinos Community Bonus Casino King of Spirits ink cartridges Mortgage Calculator Security Systems Mailing Lists Click Here Advertisement .:Advertisements:. Site Search: RESOURCES - Mail Tribune News - ODOT Road Cams