10/4/95 Ozette River, Olympic National Park
Earlier this summer, as I was leaving Tucson for my
Wilderness First Responder course in Ojai and ultimately heading for the Yolla
Bolly-Middle Eel Wilderness and another SCA program, I started to get the
feeling that I was in need of something new in life. The thought was unformed,
the impetus, however, had emerged and it would resurface every now and then
with greater intensity. I heard a number of people who I really respect say
that they did not believe in life after death and that opened up the question
to me, “why am I believing that?”, “what am I believing?”. Then, up at George’s
in Sonoma, after SCA and after a ten day North Cascades trip, we got to talking
on the way to work about shamans and how I was going to look for some sort of
spiritual sign on my upcoming beach solo in Olympic National Park. George
encouraged me and my resolve to get out there in the wilderness and do some
sort of inner pilgrimage was set. We then went into Starbuck’s down in San Rafael
and proceeded to give our daily dose of jive to the wait persons.
Prior to going out to the Olympic Coastal Strip, was
Steve and Kirsten’s wedding up on Vashon Island. What an amazing party that
was! It was great to see all those old friends and with much gusto and reckless
abandon, we stayed up late and indulged in many excesses. It was a page from
the book of youth, lots of fun but hard on the brain cells. Right towards the
end of this grueling weekend, Joe, Nino and myself took the ferry across to
Seattle and went over to Pike Place Market. We found a fancy restaurant serving
seafood and had oysters, crab and fish, next to the water. The atmosphere was
just great, the sounds of water lapping up, gulls crying, people walking by
with colorful fall clothing, it was cosmopolitan with nice shades of nature on
the side. After a leisurely meal, we packed into my little car and I took them
to the airport.
After a day of recovery, I took the ferry to Ballard
and picked up my custom remodeled pack bag, which looked very sharp, with six
different colors, everything new and which dug $280.00 deeper into my VISA
debt. Then, I went to REI in Seattle and racked up $380.00 more, on clothes to
protect me from the cold and infernal rain. The final preparations found another
$160.00 being removed from my wallet at the Vashon Thriftway, all the future
fruits of my labor being converted and transformed into backpacking stuff, food
and supplies, magically transformed from a plastic card into a rather large
debt.
Then came the ferry across to Southworth. The ride
through the Olympic Peninsula is at once a vision of ancient, natural splendor
and modern political flux. There are the mountains, the ice and snow, water
running down through dark green pathways to the ocean. Volcanoes and huge
islands come through the distance. Nature constantly beckons and graces the eye
with drama and power. The economic and ideological struggle to define a proper
use of natural resources is everywhere apparent, with billboards, posters and signs
proclaiming opinions disguised as truth. There is a siege mentality out on the
west peninsula, and in the Forks area, a sense of real danger and explosive
intolerance from the locals. I arrived at the campground and proceeded to gear
up for an early departure the following morning.
To get to the beach is around a three mile walk over a
slippery boardwalk through the woods. After a short while, you begin to hear
the ocean in the distance. Eventually, you emerge from the forest and onto the
beach, the destination is reached, the power place now manifested, the quest
for that elusive quality of something more in life is now at hand. Now,
relaxing in the driftwood by the river and ocean, it is time to focus on
something new and different. The plan is to take a good look inside. This
journey has been calling me, beckoning me for some time now and here I am, at
the official beginning! The questions are ancient and more often than not
answered with easy faith and spiritual complacency. The plan is to stir the waters
of the soul, find the wellsprings of faith, creativity, meaning, and pour some
new inspiration into the container of this life. After so many years of running
on faith alone, there has come a strong desire for a primary experience. The
faith becomes stale, old, the perceived truths crackle around the edges, turn
brown and begin to flake off. The shining brilliance of yesterday’s truth cuts
not through today. What was once cutting edge has now become dogma.
In many ways, modern life tends to blot out and
obscure the value of seeking along an interior, non-material path. The emphasis
is on so many exterior things. The set-in patterns of society and economy, of
accumulation, status, prestige, power,
seem to have no heart. There may be material security in these things,
but at what cost to the soul? I get swept along by tides of import that are not
of my making. Away from the center of my life lead these paths and avenues,
unexamined societal hubris, and it is easy enough to remain numb and just coast
along. Organized religion does not speak to me, industry and economy seem bound
up in the frenzied creation of unecessary commodities. Where is the nourishment
for the soul and the heart? That is why I am here, in the wilds, to find those
connections, find that nourishment.
Here, the forces of nature rule. Here, on the edge of
the Pacific, on the edge of the world, a sense of global force can be
entertained. Connections can be made with real power and mystery. Here, there
may be deconstruction of the stale and new inspiration gained. To be personally
inspired doesn’t necessarily have to take place outside of society and in the
wilderness. An inner pilgrimage does, however, seem to go along nicely with an
exterior journey into places wild and unknown. Modern freight can be off-loaded
and tossed into the wind and something new invited to come and take its place.
The fresh air and the sounds of the ocean invite the spirit to open up and
divest itself of all those inland things.
The old faith was facile and easy, to believe in a
universe with larger meaning. The belief was projected outward onto exterior
experience and circumstance and I somehow expected that the answers would be
magically revealed and delivered to my doorstep. They were not. The old faith
was mostly intellectual and based on a negative elimination of those things
that did not fit my primary assumptions. I could argue why others were wrong
but did not do so well in establishing any basis for the ultimate truth of my
own stuff. I felt that there were higher beings behind the scenes, somehow
running the show and providing support, forgiveness and cushioning. How could I
ever provide any proof of that?
With faith it is easy to line up the straw dogs with
the color of choice and eliminate the rest as
irrelevant and illusion. What it ends up being is a
closed in path of staleness and intolerance. The old faith sensed a sort of
battle of ultimate truths and the necessity of being on the right side. And,
while I professed an allegiance to the relativity of belief systems in general,
I held onto my own as the top truth.
The result of this trip? There was no hand of God
coming down to show me anything. I saw a marvelous sunset, clouds floating
brilliantly across the horizon, but no dice from the supernatural. The sign was
clear, I had to admit to my inner shaman: this path of faith in things unseen
would have to be dropped. This marked the beginning of a complete switch to a
more practical world-view, no less fascination; I just changed the operating assumptions
at a basic level. My first project from this new place was to study and be able
to name all of life, very fun, and exciting, to break open a whole new ballpark
and feel the surge of energy come on as my soul energies sought to fill this
whole new space. It was great to change the rules of the game, invigorating,
just what I needed, as a world of faith was just not interest9ng enough for me,
not enough meat on the bone.
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