Going to the Mountain
...a Fragments retrospective from a year ago tomorrow, and an image I called Burning Bush.
"Oh, these vast, calm measureless mountain days, inciting at once to work and rest! Days in whose light every thing seems equally divine, opening a thousand windows to show us God." --John Muir
John Muir's nature-religious ecstacies are impossible for some to understand. And those of us who do are reluctant, perhaps, to confess it. But I have been to the mountaintop.
And from the mountain crest yesterday, came the strongest sense of metaphor--the copper sun as God's eye peering from behind me, over the edge of earth. He was watching. And I was known by the Light.
I will show you images this week of both the dawn and the dusk, from misty creek's edge to the rim of the Blue Ridge--from yesterday: a day of immersion in the Range of Light.
"These blessed mountains are so compactly filled with God's beauty, no petty personal hope or experience has room to be ... the whole body seems to feel beauty when exposed to it as it feels the campfire or sunshine, entering not by the eyes alone, but equally through all one's flesh like radiant heat, making a passionate ecstatic pleasure-glow not explainable. One's body then seems homogeneous throughout, sound as a crystal." --John Muir
Comments
Amen.
Posted by: Dave | October 30, 2005 8:22 AM
Muir said it all...on top of the mountains is where we can wash our souls clean of the world, and be as close to God as we get in this life. That's why we make 14 plus hour drives to experience the majesty, so that we can go back home and live in the mundane until the next trip.
Once again, Fred, heartfelt thanks for your sharing.
Posted by: Anne | October 30, 2005 3:37 PM
I cannot imagine why I have never read that quote before, but it is beautiful, as is your burning bush photo.
Posted by: kenju | October 30, 2005 5:21 PM
Muir's "measureless mountain days" quotation is one of my favorite. Thanks for sharing your beautiful part of VA.
Jane
Posted by: Jane | October 30, 2005 8:14 PM
John Muir took Teddy Roosevelt camping in Yosemite and convinced him that our country needed a national park system. We really need someone like John Muir now to raise the level of discourse on the environment and preserving wilderness.
Posted by: Myke | October 30, 2005 9:13 PM