Mountain Air - Stars and Storms

top of a little fir tree

I've mentioned the smoke from the Rim Fire, and the stinging of eyes and throat. It all was a bit distracting. The discomfort made any mental focusing difficult, and one thought kept coming back to me: Will I have to cut my time short and go home? By the second morning, I knew I would be able to stay.

Naturally the stars were still there where I'd left them in July, and I did spend some time with my friends, but not the first night - I was a little altitude sick, and spent. Just give me a good bed, and I'll leave the window open so the cool mountain air will brush my cheek in the night, gently. The second night I also did not feel great, because of the smoke and the headache it gave me. I could only imagine that the stars were somewhat blocked out anyway.

But - surprise! - I woke at 2:30 in the morning, quite wide awake. It's not very cold, and I feel good. So I dragged a sleeping pad out onto the deck, shook my sleeping bag (brought just for this purpose) out of its stuff bag, and crawled inside. Hmmm....I am not in the best location; the eaves of the roof are blocking part of the show... so I hauled myself out, moved my bed and scooted back down inside.

I lay there looking up at the Milky Way and noticing again how the tall Lodgepole pines make a kind of ruffled edge to the pool of stars. They also hide some constellations I'd like to have seen, like the Little Dipper. Next I found that the umbrella was cutting into my view, so I rearranged myself and my pallet once more, and then stayed put for an hour and a half. During that time I stared a lot, and saw many shooting stars. Stars appear to be so alive, making the sky coldly electric and exciting with their sparkling. And I felt alive, too.

I tried to go back to sleep out on the deck, which is why I stayed so long. But that didn't work, so I went back to the bed by the window, from which I could actually see the stars a little.

One reason to make one's mountain vacation at least four nights long (or should we make that ten?) is so that you can have more possible nights for star-gazing. In the mountains you never know when a thunderstorm will come through for a couple of days, and that's what happened next. My remaining nights at the cabin were rainy, so I was really thankful God woke me up in the wee hours to have my Star Time.

I was sitting on the deck that afternoon, reading or sewing, when I noticed the sky clouding up. I could see that rain was falling in the northeast, and I heard the thunder very loud. Then lightning...but I resisted being driven indoors until an hour or two later when the sky was completely clouded over, and the temperature was dropping.

The kind of fire I'll build next time.

I had moved inside to the dining table by the picture window when I heard the patter of rain, and looked up to see dark spots appearing on the deck boards...what a blessing to have this Mountain Storm experience! It made me very contented. I thought of building a fire in the massive rock fireplace, but the weather didn't really call for it; I still had the doors and windows open as the temperature hadn't dropped that much.

Me sitting by that window in yesteryear

When the rain had stopped, and it was still not dark yet, I went out and stood looking out beyond the deck to the lake. I smelled the earth and the trees -- for the first time! I hadn't even noticed as I was entering the forest on my drive up, or anytime in the first two days, that the mountain air hadn't pressed its heady aromas on my senses. All I could think was that the smoke had been filling those olfactory spaces until the rain washed things up.


As I looked out and soaked up the quiet, and the moist and piney smell, a small doe picked her way through the rocks and little trees right below the cabin, not aware of me. It's the first time I've seen a deer that close to the house, and I counted it one more gift of the mountains.

Mountain Air - I notice some things.

After reading of John Ruskin last summer, how he recommended that everyone learn to draw as a way of learning to attend to God's creation, I felt it almost my Christian duty to at least make an effort. Normally I don't want to take the time for a new challenge like that, so I had put it off until I knew I would have these uninterrupted hours at the cabin.

An ant visited my sketch pad.

Betty Edwards, in her book Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain, was my instructor. I enjoyed some of the exercises one day on the cabin deck, and the next I walked over to Gumdrop Dome and attempted to draw a very complicated scene.

It was a surprising pleasure, concentrating on all the lines and angles in front of me as I perched on a boulder, soaking up one of my favorite venues in a brand new way, noticing with my hand tranferring what my eyes processed through my mind -- for about an hour. Then suddenly I was done for, too brain weary/bored to finish my impossible drawing.

I picked up my tools and hiked a little farther around the dome where there was a simpler picture in view. This will be easier, I thought. So I sat on another rock and started in on this slope of the dome with a tree growing out of it, photo at right.

But no, granite domes and trees are just way too intricate for this beginner, and I gave that sketch up within a few minutes. It was soothing after my exertions to take out my camera and do instead some more familiar kind of focusing on these natural wonders.

tree bark

My primary goal in taking this little walk was unrelated to my drawing exercises anyway. When we'd hiked here with our friends earlier in the summer, while the other three were on top of the dome with the camera, I'd walked around the side and noticed the dearest little tree growing out of the rock and seeming to lay its "head" down on the stone, in a manner reminiscent of the way we children in First Grade used to lay our head on our desks every day after lunch for Rest Time.

 

This is how it had looked to me then:

I had tried very hard to concentrate my mental forces and memorize the way that tree looked, so that when I arrived back at the cabin I'd be able to sketch it. The results weren't satisfying, though, and I'd contented myself with the thought that Next Time I would go locate it again, camera in hand. Here was my next time, a mere two months later.

As I walked around a tree I saw that it's not resting on the rock at all. But the poor thing must have had its bones permanently bent by snow as a child. It will always be a hunchback, but with the honorable position of pointing to a beautiful granite dome, showing the climbers, "This way to the top!"
 
Here is another complex arrangement of nature that I didn't even consider taking pencil and paper to, rock, trees, sky and clouds. This one seems to demand colored pencils:

At last, the picture I know you all have been dying to see, the result of my feeble exploration of the mountainside with the Right Side of My Brain:

Mountain Air - smoke and writing

GJ in the Tuolumne River

I returned this week from a solitary trip to the mountains, where I stayed in a cabin off the grid for four nights. I could easily write a book about my five days of journeying and lodging, probably a philosophical novel. Or would it be a how-to treatise with packing lists and suggested activities and prayers?

I'm always saying, "I could write a book about ____." And it just occurred to me that I am always writing, as I endlessly analyze events as to their significance, and organize my thoughts, composing and reworking the lines in my mind. If I have a pencil or keyboard handy and hands free I might scribble down some of it, often in a notebook or in the margin of the book I'm reading. But the process has begun long before that.

It wouldn't be a lie exactly, when people ask me what I do, to say, "I write." Because I'm a process-oriented type, I can't see a book ever resulting from my work, but no pressure -- no one is clamoring for a discussion of the things in my pocket or the interrelatedness of the last ten books I read.

I thought I might do some sort of scribbling during my getaway, but I didn't make much visible progress on my "books." Many things that are fascinating to my self-centered self consumed my hours and my thoughts, and I do want to reflect on some of that here, hopefully without rambling on and on.

Evening with brown haze in north

Today I just want to mention one sad thing about my experience: Smoke. The brown cinders from that horrid Rim Fire, the largest wildfire on record in the Sierra Nevada, had drifted south and made the air murky around Our Lake. One day was so bad that my eyes and throat and head hurt from the pollution. But I didn't have to come home early, because it cleared up a little by the next morning.

Another bad air day

I can't imagine what the landscape will look like, the next time we visit our beloved Yosemite and drive through the scorched forests. One thing I know: On August 25th the fire destroyed the Berkeley City Camp Tuolumne where my sisters and I as children vacationed with our grandparents.

It has been many decades since I did water ballet in that swimming hole in the Tuolumne River, or even visited the camp, and it won't change my life that it is wiped out. But what a heartache for the people who spent dozens of formative summers in the context of that special place, and those for whom the rustic cabin life in an idyllic setting was a very recent tradition and expectation. I'm very thankful it was only smoke that invaded our family's lake and village.

Camp Tuolumne in the old days

I'll tell you about the stars.

The stars made the biggest impression on me, this time at the mountain cabin by the lake, but not in the usual way.

Normally what strikes me at such a high elevation is the brightness, how the Milky Way is huge and obvious, and how even my weak eyes can see the Pleiades. But last week the moon stole the show with its competing lumens. I'll have more to say about the stars later.

Just below the place that was too steep for my timidity...

Tall and Short climb Gumdrop.

We had friends with us whom I'll call Tall and Short. They are good sports and happy campers, very resourceful and cheerful when challenges arise. I will only tell you about the most fun challenge, of climbing Gumdrop Dome. I failed to surmount it for the third year in a row, and after I gave up I walked around the base to meet the others coming down the other side.
 
 


Of course I found a new plant on my walk, something that looks like a fern and a succulent at the same time, and was growing against a granite boulder, its "fronds" about as tall as my forefinger. I marked it with cairns above and below so that when my camera was returned to me I would be able to find this best of the specimens again.

I have no idea what it is, or how to start researching it. And I need to spend time on other things now, like making small dolls.

Seemingly tiny real people descend Gumdrop.

 
I took along on the trip my doll project that has been in the works for years without a single doll being born. (More than three years ago what slowed me down was stuffing-wool so dirty I couldn't bear to tell its story, but that excuse is long expired.)

And while sitting on the cabin deck in the warm afternoons I completed three tiny dollies! I'll post more photos of them when I have a bigger family to show. But it was a breakthrough that added to my contentment with a vacation that tried to scream "too short!"

More pleasant hours were spent paddling around the lake with my husband, while Mr. Tall fished and Mrs. Short sat on a rock nearby and knitted sweaters for her expected first grandchild.

Gumdrop Dome from the lake

Many rocks are exposed that we normally prefer not to see. It was a year of little snow in the Sierras, so the lake is down. But it's fun to drive out into the dry lake bed a ways and park in the midst of granite drama, as in the photo at top.

We can't imagine that there is another Sierra lake that has so many granite domes and peaks encircling it. As we floated on the lake I studied the variously shaped rocks and tried to come up with names for them. Only one is named on the official maps, but I think they all are deserving.

This picture shows at least four hitherto unnamed domes. The one on the left I want to call Glad Peak, because Mr. Glad and Soldier climbed it one time. In the center of the photo are two domes side-by-side, whom I am calling He and She. Between those in this view is a peninsula that is in a normal year called Ant Island, and which we like to paddle to and around. But not this time....

It doesn't matter if the snow pack was light, or if some trees have died, the sky is unchanged. But on the first night up there I completely forgot to go outside to greet the stars. The next day we all talked about how we must view them together that second night -- but the sun sets so late, and half of our party was in bed before the other half of us remembered again. Then I forgot and put on my nightgown, and then remembered again. Almost dutifully I opened the slider, pulled the door shut behind me... and immediately felt myself in Deep Heaven, what C.S. Lewis wanted to name what we coldly term Space.

The stars crowded me, pressing their quietness down. I was alone, standing on the deck barefoot with the cool night air on my legs, but barely noticing the slight discomfort, because of the great company of beings so close -- just me and them being familar, and me wondering. It would have been rude to leave after only a quick glance, and besides, they were telling me something.

I walked slowly around in the dark, annoyed by the light from the lamp inside, which I tried to keep behind me. Not a human sound could be heard, not even an animal sound. It was the kind of quietness that is roaring -- but with what? I couldn't pin down what it was, so I stood and listened. The host of heaven with weighty silence conveyed the presence of The Holy, and it was almost too exhilarating, that close to bedtime.

Eventually I had to go inside and climb under the covers. But my exciting encounter with the stars changed me in this way: Years ago I did make solitary mountain retreats here at the cabin, for several days at a time, but I haven't felt up to doing that again. Now that the feeling has been revived in me, of being alone and at the same time the opposite of lonely, I am hungry for more of it, I want long days and nights of it, and I plan to return in September. I think those stars are angels.

Lost in a very good dream...

gooseberries

Coming home from the mountains last week, I didn't have the usual thoughts of "That was lovely, but I have lots of things to do at home now and I can't wait to get started." No, this time I was mostly sad to say good-bye, and also couldn't find good words to go with my pictures.

But one of our guests up there managed in her thank-you note yesterday to take away my sadness with her response to the few higher-elevation days we shared. I'm making her my guest blogger today. (Her thoughts in brown.)

Mountain time is a time-out from time, 

like the timelessness of being 

lost in a very good dream.

little lupine plants

When we came down from Gumdrop Dome the ground under the forest was scattered everywhere with tiny lupine plants. I wonder what month I would need to be there to see the slopes covered with tiny purple spikes?

... the dilated twinkle of 100 billion stars in the night sky (which reductionistically would take 3,000 yrs. to count.)

Of our three nights at over 8,000 feet elevation, we had only one night's opening in the clouds to see the star glory. We missed most of the meteor shower -- still, we saw a few shooting stars. And we gawked at the Milky Way, and were happy that the air was unbelievably warm all during our stay, day and night, so that we could gawk longer.

overlooking a canyon

All the sweet consolations of fragrant fresh mountain air, delicious soft water, 

warm sleepy nights... 

...laughter, storytelling, hiking and/or trying to chase Mr. Glad up Gumdrop Dome (in a loony-tune cartoon, some of us could take a running start up a sheer vertical rock face, hauling a low center of big gravity, our momentum so great that we actually overshoot the summit –beating him to the base – but unfortunately, not in one piece).

swooping in to join the fray

...the terrible joy 

of ecstatic hummingbirds 

a-feeding.

I consider my difficulties.

My current difficulties stem from these realities:

1) The world is so full of a number of things
    I'm sure we should all be as happy as kings.
     This rhyme has played in my head a million times since I learned it as a little girl. Maybe even then I suspected in my childish way the layers of truth in the sing-song, the irony of too-muchness.

2) I have been traveling a lot, and that brings me into contact with even more numbers of "things," like real people, people in books, ideas in books, and new places I've visited. This summer, for example, I sat on airplanes for more than ten hours, and many of those hours were spent in the company of Alain de Botton as I read his book The Art of Travel. As I drifted off to sleep at night in a house not my own, I was soaking up the coastal delights of George Howe Colt's childhood summer place, The Big House.

In the spaces between these literary adventures my more physical self was learning to reach right instead of left for a stirring spoon, and to relax in the hot tub of the Eastern summer atmosphere.

3) I need -- o.k., I feel the need! -- to write about at least some of the experiences in order to process the information and be restored from the overload/exhaustion of so much excitement. As Alain and I were musing together over the meaning of our travels, I scribbled notes in the margins and made a list in the back of the book of all the blog post ideas that were generated from our "discussion." Every night for a week or two I have spent at least fifteen minutes writing and rewriting in my mind, in the dark, my review of the Colt book.

Even Archimandrite Sophrony is reported to have said, "Arrange whatever pieces come your way." I don't know what the context of this quote was, but the urge is a basic, human, compelling one, and applies to just about everything I know.

The Milky Way

4) When I am on the trip, just returned from a trip, or packing my bags and boxes to set off again, there is less time than ever for this kind of writing, and also less mental energy. When I hear Thomas Mann say, "A writer is somebody for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people," I feel that I am certainly one of those. I could coin my own saying: "A homemaker-writer with a large family is somebody for whom writing is even more more more difficult than it is for other people."

I hope I am not complaining, by using the word difficulties. I could say challenges, or pieces. Or thoughts, as in "Bring every thought captive to Christ." In my mind I have more challenging pieces of thoughts and prayers and connections to be made than there are dust bunnies floating up and down the stairs.

This morning it all seemed too much, as I add another item to the list of things that make us happy as kings: We are going to the cabin! There will be stimulating conversation on the way, as our numbers will be doubled by the presence of our dear Art and Herm. (That will add pieces, to be sure.)

Stars will shine crisply in the black sky at night, and in the mornings chipmunks will scurry in the brush below the house. Humans will eat cookies and bacon and drink coffee on the deck while we watch the hummingbirds squabble, and we'll paddle our canoe quietly over the lake.

(Past posts about our Sierra cabin: 2009  2010  and  2011 )

Though I have picked up only a few pieces here to tie in my bundle, it's been quite comforting. Now I can face my lists of more practical things like dinner menus, shopping needs, and what to put in my book bag. That won't be too difficult.

Of Earth and Altar and Lake

Mr. and Mrs. Bread joined us at My Lake for a few days. We canoed and hiked and ate a lot and sat by the fire. On the Lord's Day we sunned ourselves on the deck while singing hymns to The God of Earth and Altar, praising Him for his Wondrous Love that flows Like a River Glorious.


In the top photo you can see on the left margin the brown needles of a dead tree that was the subject of some discussion between Mrs. B. and me.

There's a lot of philosophy and theology in a dead tree, did you know? But I spent so much time doing the nature study while barely tackling the philosophizing, that my time-bucket is empty. Maybe next summer I'll look at it again and write, and figure out what I think.

manzanita

Another dead tree (above), growing out of a hunk of granite that we christened Gumdrop Dome, was more strikingly beautiful. According to G.K. Chesterton, "Anything beautiful always means more than it says." As I was saying....?

A baby manzanita bush was hugging a rock in a most endearing manner. It's amazing how often I find a new and lovable manzanita bush in my view.

One night Mrs. B. was working out on paper what she thought about the meaning of things, as the dinner she crafted for us stewed in the oven, and we all enjoyed the fire her mister had built up to a controlled inferno. The thermometer got up past 60 in the daytime but at night dropped to freezing.

Wax Currant - Ribes cereum

Last year Mrs. Bread and I were roughing it alone up there, without our menfolk. I took more pictures then, though now I am finding that so few images in my Lake collection satisfactorily describe the lake itself. Next trip I'll have to climb to the top of Gumdrop, as I haven't done in years, and get the wide view with my camera. In the meantime, here's a picture we took from there Once.

For me the most blessed part of our stay at the cabin was when Mr. Glad and I paddled our blue canoe for a long time, early in the morning when the surface of the water was smooth. The sky was deep blue, and most of the time the only sound was of our paddles dipping. Peace.

Journal of October Trip South

As we were getting ready to go on a weekend trip, I was more calm than usual, because we'd only be gone one night, then home again. And it appeared to be the last trip I would make for months to come. The occasion was a gathering with my sisters and brother, in a countryside place spread with orange groves. One brother and sister live within a couple of miles of each other, but with mailing addresses in different towns, and neither of them close to even a village. We drove south, instead of my more frequent northward to Pippin's, but about the same distance, 5+ hours.

B. and I stayed overnight with my brother, who lives in the house my dad built over 50 years ago, where I mostly grew up. This morning I got up early and sat in a big stuffed chair in the living room, tucking my feet under me the way I used to as a girl. The house feels so quietly solid. It's a wood-frame stucco house on a concrete slab, and you never hear any creaks walking around the ranch-style layout. A big picture window looks out on the foothills that are dotted with oaks, and behind them shady layers of taller and taller mountains forming the Sierra Nevada. Curving grids of trees like dark green pom poms hug the lower slopes nearby. The first time I went home after living in Northern California for a while, I was struck with how short all the orange trees were, not even as tall as nut trees or peach trees, but certainly dwarfed by the Coast Redwoods and other tall trees we have up here where the rainfall is doubled.

The net effect is of a lush but flattish scene, house and orchards keeping close to the earth. The sky is bigger therefore. This October we got quite a bit of rain; all the autumn landscapes were more beautiful having been washed by the rains, making every tree and bush stand out brightly against the background of greening fields. I had my usual thrill of watching the cloud performances all the way down and up the center of the state. We saw black cattle grazing in a pasture, and in the middle of the herd, a white egret standing at attention.

Over a big dinner, we siblings talked about our mountain cabin and how to manage things as the new owners since our father passed it to us just over a year ago. We hadn't all been together for more than a year, and we aren't big phone or e-mail users, so we had a good time catching up. We always have to hear as well the news of our mutual old school and neighborhood friends, and the goings-on of the farming community there.

Some citrus crops are being picked already, by crews of Mexican farm workers. And olives are at the peak of harvest in the same general area. Cell phones have created changes in the way the picking crews operate. You might say they have created some degree of anarchy, or at least free-lance options that didn't exist before. My sister Farmer Woman told us about how some growers were having difficulties getting enough pickers for the oranges, because they could make more money in olive-picking, at least until the frost cuts off that opportunity.

Because of the shortage, a crew was enlisted one day to drive down from the county to the north, in several cars. At least one car-full never arrived, because on the way someone got a call on his cell phone with a tip from a friend, that a different grower was paying $1 more per box, so they detoured that way. This sort of thing happens all the time now.

Dinner was over, and we were sitting lazily around a big table when Farmer Woman's cell phone rang. The screen said it was her nephew, our Soldier, who was calling. As she talked to him it became apparent that he and Doll were in the area, too, having been to a wedding nearby. Neither of us had told the other that we were making a trip down there this weekend, so it was a pleasant surprise for everyone when they were able to join us for breakfast this morning, and a bigger family get-together than they had hoped for.

After that, they took off northwesterly, and we more to the north, but evidently we both wandered around the next city of over 100,000 population for a while, getting fueled up or something, because when we were leaving town, there we were driving alongside one another. Twenty minutes later, merging on to the interstate, we were right behind them. It was the kind of happenstance that would make a child happy, and it did me, too.

On the way home I read the Forward, the Introduction, and the Preface to a book by Leon Kass that I plan to write about at length later on. It's philosophy, and as I had nothing much else to do, I could put the book down every few minutes and chew on the ideas. I read it two years ago and might need to read the whole thing again before I'll be able to know and express why I love it so much.

Then I dozed for a while, and when I woke up B. was playing parts of his IPod collection. I asked again, for the fortieth time, "Who is singing that song?" It was Police. So I worked on a mnemonic that would make me learn this fact for once and forever. They were singing, "There's a lttle black spot on the sun today," so I imagined that the black spot was a black Police car driving around. I watched them in my mind for a few minutes, and then on the IPod they were singing a different song, "Every little thing she does is magic," very ardently, so I amplified my image so that the Police car driving over the sun's surface was full of Policemen who were loudly singing these very words about a magical woman. I can't lose it now.

Getting closer to home, I was more and more excited about the beauty of the world. Rows of eucalyptus trees form windbreaks here and there, and beneath them the colors of a dahlia farm don't seem to have faded in the rains.  On the slopes in our county it's the vineyards that catch your eye, and they are starting to turn gold and orange. Flocks of starlings were swooping like fluttered polka dots. I understand that they are eating insects as they do their dances. That reminded me of my book, which is about eating, nature, our souls, the unity of reality. There is a wholeness to life, because God in His Holy Spirit fills all things.

I guess that's the reason I'm content to write about our trip without trying to find a theme for it. The entire weekend seems of a piece, a large piece of joy.

Up and Down the Mountain

Last week was the occasion of a blessed excursion to my family's mountain cabin, and this time I shared the time with my dear friend Mrs. Bread.

I've blogged about the cabin and lake before, here and here. The last two years I went mostly for time alone with God in His Creation. This time I enjoyed plenty of that experience, plus deepening of friendship, and working on improving or maintaining the house and property. Now that my father has passed, I am part owner of this place, and I happily but more intensely feel the responsibility to do my part, though I'm afraid I'll never match the hardworking devotion of my siblings who live closer; some of them can dash up just for the day if they need to.

Here I am painting the threshold and doorjamb against the elements of winter. One year--or maybe more than one--the whole cabin was buried in snow, just a lump in the white landscape.

The drive took me ten hours, what with a leisurely detour to pick up J. on the way. So we stayed four nights so as to have three whole days for taking pictures, cooking, reading together, cleaning, admiring giant boulders and listening to the silence of the forest.

How can it be so awe-fully quiet? There are birds flitting and chipmunks scampering, breezes blowing and even the occasional chain saw in the village. But the earth feels peacefully serene up there, weighted with quiet, heavy with a silence that speaks of God's presence. I seem to soak up contentedness and rest.

I needed the rest, as I had come down with a cough and cold in the two days before. The altitude gave me a headache the first night, and we both suffered from the reduced oxygen, our legs uncooperative and slow when we dragged back up the hill after a walk down to the lake.

It's the High Sierra, and up there the mornings start out below freezing this time of year, making you want to lie abed and watch the sky lighten out the window. By midday it can be sunburning hot out on the deck, so we sat in the shade of the umbrella to peruse the several tree guides that have found their way to the cabin's bookshelf.

At first we limited ourselves to studying the general shapes and angles of branches, focussing in on the cones with binoculars. Eventually we walked among the trees below the cabin and noticed where cones had fallen underneath their mother trees.


The pines in the neighborhood are mostly Lodgepole, as illustrated by the picture here. But to be truthful, it took Pippin's later confirmation of that suspicion to make me believe it.

As we walked together marveling at the various beautiful flowers, berries, and stones, J. said, "These little trees grab at my heart!" See why I love her?

  

 What a lot can be seen in this photograph, taken from outside the picture window, while I was sitting at the table inside writing a letter to a grandson. You can see the kitchen behind me, and the lake reflected behind J.'s reflection.

I like having these pictures of myself at the lake, something besides the ones of my feet that I took last year when solitary. Thanks, J.!

These three trees stood out from the pines with their trunks shown off by the granite slabs.  B. thinks they might be red cedars.

The first morning at the cabin I read in the Psalter, "For Thou hast said: Mercy shall be built up for ever," (Ps. 88) and was musing about the image that phrase conjured in my mind, of an edifice being constructed. And why not the image of towers of clouds, that often rain down showers of blessing? From now on, when I see cloud skyscrapers rising fast, piling layer upon layer, I will think of the way God's mercies do the same, every morning.

Someone brought this small remembrance of our father up to put on the bedroom wall. If you click on it a couple of times you can read the labels. I love seeing my father's handwriting, which didn't change in all the years since this collection was made when he was in college. 

J. helped me firm up my resolve to try really hard to come up to this beloved place more next year. It's not available for very long, though: This week shutters will be put up, water turned off, chimney covered, to mention only a few of the many tasks to protect the house from blizzards--and if we can get through the snow to open it up before the first of July we'll be happy. 

I've never been up more than twice in a summer; I wonder if I really do have the liberty to even dream of spending a week, or visiting twice or three times. I'll pray for a miracle, and wait to see how the Lord chooses to pile up His mercies next year.

Mountain Retreat Complete

As I wrote in my last post, I was departing for a mountain retreat. And I made such a big deal of my delight in anticipating it, I also promised a report.

It takes a full six hours to cover the 300 miles to my destination, and most of that time I listened to various things on tape or CD. As the library didn't have anything promising on my last-minute visit there, I was forced to remember that we had taped readings of the New Testament in the cupboard. As with books, I took way more CD's and tapes than I could possibly use....

On the trip down I listened to the latest Mars Hill Audio tape. Please ask them for a free sample if you've never heard their interviews with various authors, teachers, musicians. It's like an audio magazine where you eavesdrop on discussions between thoughtful people. And I heard the whole Gospel of Matthew on tape--what a perfect intro to a prayerful couple of days!

Sierra vinegarweed

My least beautiful photo, but the best of my attempts to capture this flower that graces the roadway, around 5,000 to 6,000 ft elevation, with a misty lavender haze. When you get close, the effect is spoiled as the plants are revealed as dry and stickery, puny individuals. (That sounds like a description of us Christians relative to the whole Church.) I don't know what it might be, do you? It was the first of my pictures on this expedition.

It's about this point on the driving, an hour and 3,000 ft down the mountain from Our Lake, I always have to turn off all recordings or radio and have quiet, so I can focus on the smells of the trees and hear the quiet of the forest.

Incense Cedars contribute one of the aromas. As a child with my family, on trips up the mountain it was filling my senses about the time I got carsick, and it took me most of my adult life to get over this association and develop an appreciation for the tree. But I haven't known just what they looked like, so I found this photo on the Net.

Far in the distance you can see a lake that is not our lake. But this photo was mostly for the sake of the manzanita that I love, and in the absence of the wildflowers that catch your eye earlier in the summer, it takes center stage for me, so I made it fill the foreground here.

Ah...the first view of Our Lake.

Other than that purple haze, all the wildflowers I saw at high elevations were white. Like this Pearly Everlasting. I just looked up its name this morning.

Ranger's Buttons on the road going in, where I also made my annual collection of granite for the garden.

Some yarrow was growing next to the cabin. I saw it when I was turning on the water down the hill. There are various things to do when you first arrive: turn on the water, turn on the solar, turn on the water heater. Bring your stuff in from the car. My legs were so heavy and I felt generally exhausted, so much that I wondered if I could resist falling on a bed and sleeping immediately. It must be the altitude. All evening my brain was slow, and I was so sl-e-e-py.

For that reason I didn't start right in on heavy reading, but took advantage of the magazines my sister had left. When my father's mark was more on the place, you would find old issues of California Farmer, National Geographic and Sunset piled up everywhere. Now I find the New Yorker! Well, as I haven't been on the treadmill for some time, where I used to read New Yorker, it was a welcome change, and just the thing for an oxygen-deprived brain. The most interesting article I read was in two parts, on Siberia, by Ian Frazier. His book on the subject is due to come out next year, and it looks to be worth reading.

This old coffee table caught my eye when I walked through the cabin door, the only furniture from our childhood home that never varied or wore out, and the only piece that we have (just since my last visit) installed in the cabin. Either my father or another ancestor built this table, I'm pretty sure, but none of my siblings can remember, so I guess we will never know its origins.

I brought some candles for indoor prayer times, and then was pleased to discover I had a little icon card of Christ the Shepherd in my purse to display with them. I prayed He would shepherd me through my weekend in the way of the 23rd Psalm, and give me light, and Himself as Light.

Speaking of light, I did lie out under the stars in my sleeping bag the first night, for a couple of hours, until my narrow bed (a lounge chair cushion) made it impossible to sleep. The stars and night sky were comforting, like an angelic blanket. This time little wisps of clouds were decorating the constellations; I could smell the trees, sweet and dry and piney-sharp, with a bit of wood smoke from the campground down the hill in the mix.



Much of the time I spent on the deck, reading this book, drinking tea, and watching the hummingbirds battle over the feeder. If the sun goes behind a cloud, or a breeze comes up, the temperature drops, so you find yourself putting on and taking off your sweater, moving under the umbrella and out in the sunshine again.

When I was wearing my red sweatshirt the hummingbirds would buzz threateningly behind my head as long as it took them to figure out that I wasn't a giant flower.


The Inner Kingdom had been on my shelf for a year; I'm so glad I threw it in the box to take up! The author Kallistos Ware was a convert to the Orthodox Church as a young man in Britain and was a lecturer at Oxford for a long time. I have read other books by him, as a catechumen and since, and was able to hear him speak in 2008, which was pure pleasure.

This one is first in a planned six-volume collection of his works. He is a wonderful writer--so scholarly yet easy to read. I'd say he is more teacherly than devotional in his style, and he treats the subject matter so thoroughly that most every intellectual question I might have was answered; I was spurred on to love the God he so lovingly describes. I finished the whole book! What a satisfaction to finish something so nourishing.



P. came up to be with me for part of the time. He also read a lot, and hiked, and played his guitar, everything from Dylan to gospel. It was a rare treat to be just the two of us together.

Here are the books all packed up and ready to carry home again. I only used about half of them, and there is an extra in the box going home, the novel by Jane Smiley that my sister had left in the cabin and that I am borrowing. It looks small enough for reading in bed, but I didn't take the time to dip into it yet.

On the way down the mountain I had to stop and try once more to capture the beauty of the manzanita. I couldn't, of course. And those tree smells wouldn't be bottled up. I could never get a picture of the night sky that would make you feel the weighty silence of the Holy Spirit in it. But you know how it is--I had to try!