I made camp on the borders of a small lake about five miles up Hessie trail at the base of Devils Thumb Peak, setting tent in a huddled crop of small wind flayed cedars that acted as a partial windbreak. Having never solo camped before, I’d never been so physically isolated. It wasn’t remote camping by any stretch, but still, the closest campers were a mile away down at Jasper lake. Here at Devil’s thumb it was just me, with my tent and cooking gear, my copy of Huxley and a long stretch of hours.
The day before I’d read a great deal and hiked and waded in the ice cold water of the snow fed lake. I’d filtered water and heated dehydrated camping food. The time had passed unmeasured for the most part and almost regrettably quickly. At night I’d crowded in my tent to escape the light rain and fallen asleep uneasily, the feeling of isolation pressing in on me.
I slept well and woke early. I couldn’t see the sunrise behind the eastern side of the valley. But it lit the mountain like a candle and I could measure its progress down the cliffs of snow and ice, then gray granite, then finally the emerald and jade of where the grass and shrubs began. Nothing better to do, I went out to the large stone I’d found the day before that made a kind of natural seat facing the lake and the north western ridge beyond.
Sitting there, a feeling came over me of profound calm. How wonderful that I should be here to see all this? How astonishing really. Me alive and well and at this moment free of pain, alone on the jewel of creation.
In the same breath, I wasn’t an isolate visitor here. How could I think that? I thought of my parents, friends, teachers. I thought of authors and creatives whose work has touched me and left me changed. I thought of the people who walked through some of the most difficult passages with me. Surely I am not me without them. I thought of my children, suddenly not merely as children but themselves vast beings with whom I am so closely woven in the web of interdependence. How lucky I am to have known such people. How lucky I am to have been loved, even a little — let alone so very well.
And this place. Why do I see myself a stranger to it? Why must I be the intruder? Is this not also my birthright? In winter, the passages are deep in snow and the mountain is alone except for the bear and the elk and the burrowing creatures that can outlast the cold. In Spring the passes open and the birds and other migratory animals return. And with them, us, homo sapiens — are we not also a part of this landscape?
Still, I will have to descend both the real and proverbial mountain and be met with a long list of tasks and jobs to be done. To deal with computers and school drop-offs and be, in short, part of what we call society. To be part of a collective bargain where we have traded freedom and flow for safety and predictability and a measure of control over our lives. Responsible again to engineer a life and a schedule, to manage a calendar.
I wish it could be otherwise. That the moments could run together as they do here, undivided, unaccounted for. Light and shadow, cold and warmth, safety and fear, love and acknowledgment, even loss. Like the seasons on the rock face or the progression of a song: lyrical and mysterious and each only a part of it is, each a pebble in that infinite fresco.