But I just wish I had'n'a seen that coyote, the one I so aptly interrupted during the private purity of his hunt and who became paranoid of me everafter, though I suppose we shared something during our equally startled meeting of eyes (and up on top of mountains during an eery and all-encompassing fog nonetheless, which made everything magic and arden-like to begin with). So now by the fire scratching my head over how I've long accepted I'm an animal, but now must come to the terms with the fact I'm an asparagus head. Glad to be here now, especially since earlier setting up camp in the quickly fading light with frozen fingers got me all hurried and hectic out of sorts. But of course I realize was just the wild reminding me "kid it'nt all roses and romance up here like you sometimes suppose" and was necessary.
Though thanks to the fog I saw perhaps the most miraculous view I suppose I've ever seen. As earlier in the evening I was traversing a high ridge side and finally beginning to feel all alone (and thus at home with everything) and climbing higher higher higher. And this being during the universal fog I hinted at previously: I could see clouds rolling like waves up the mountain side from down below south, all the way up and right through my hair and keep on going up to the top - but they never ceased, never broke, never gave any hint that there'd be a final cloud, a caboose-end to the misty procession. So here I am plodding along this ridge-road, up there and exposed but really seeing nothing in any direction save for my feet and perhaps a few yards of path ahead. And right about the time I have accepted my lot, have forgotten wishing for anything and have begun to simply carry on with moving and whistling dixie - about this time I suddenly notice a "light" or a presence of change, like when you know someone's staring at you behind your shoulder and get that tingling intuition-sense, I felt a similar (!) from out of nowhere. At which point I turned around and saw the most miraculous view I ever saw, which I attribute much to the power of surprise, for it's one thing to lay eyes on your long lost childhood friend when you've been planning for months to meet, but it's another thing completely to lay eyes on the same friend after turning the corner of aisle 9 of the local grocery store and running suddenly into each other. So I turn around and it's as if Zeus had reached down with big muscly arms and drew the clouds apart like curtains, giving me a perfect window view of all the remaining ranges marching down and eventually into the southern california desert, and at sunset nonetheless! Or, as the peaks were rising high to swallow the smiling sun in all his pride and keep him there out of sight, but in his final struggles managing to cast brilliant fading illuminations over all the world's features and reminding us he'll be back around. I was immediately reminded of a painting at a pizza shop in North Carolina where there's a perfect meadow and a spectacular waterfall and a rainbow over everything and majestic friendly brown bear fishing for salmon in the lake below and all the trees blooming wild fall colors - how I'd always look at this picture and laugh for all of it's outrageous extravagances and over-doings - though I suppose no matter how beautiful a woman attempts to paint or write or tell or act, there's always a true beauty to the original experiencing of the source in the moment that'll outshine any recreation with easy and simple brilliance. So I turn my head around owl-like and get blasted by this sudden view, inadvertently stopping in my tracks and pausing to gape, because I surely didn't believe it. Because here I was hiking along in a gloomy world of dusk and never supposed that anything to the contrary could've ever happened, and certainly not so (!) quickly in any case. So I stand there paining my eyes to please open wider till it hurts, and trying to trace every ridge valley shrub tree rock bird and city light below and every color, blur, sweep and sway of scenery, and a part of me sad because I know soon it'll blow over and I'll never see it again (and even now can hardly see it in memory's eye).
But I don't need the moment back or any moment for that matter. Because holy blessed replacement moments are always arriving on the scene all the time and forever, of course until they don't anymore, at which point we won't mind anyway... So, as I say, and to prove the point: Cowboy Coffee, Can-a-Beans and Candide by the fire, leaning against a hollow log and watching blue-orange outlines of shadowy pine-figures turn to black (how many moods and characters has a tall pine? whether outlined with fog or dusk or noonday sun or what else!) And in fact the stars are out, and looking down on me and my silly little camp, as I'm only able to write these words whenever the flicker flames allow - so really I suppose the fire wrote it all and I'm therefore not to blame. Can you beat it?!
So I wake up in the morning and read these words: "For example, when we sail a boat into the ocean beyond sight of land and our eyes scan the four directions, it simply looks like a circle. No other shape appears. The great ocean, however, is neither round nor square. It has inexhaustible characteristics. To a fish it looks like a palace, to a heavenly being a jeweled necklace. To us as far as our eyes can see, it looks like a circle. All the myriad things are like this. Within the dusty world and beyond, there are innumerable aspects and characteristics; we only see or grasp as far as the power of our eye of study and practice can see. When we listen to the reality of myriad things, we must know that there are inexhaustible characteristics in both ocean and mountains, and there are many other worlds in the four directions."
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