Thursday, June 23, 2011

Alpine spring

We shot some footage for a music video darlin' man and his friend are making at the top of Angel Rocks a few weekends ago.  It were loverly: camping on a sand bar, bonfire, and puppy so happy to splash in the river and hike a trail. 

We started the hike around 1 or so in the morning, and arrived at the top to a summer sunrise: light spilling golden pink over the hills.  I twirled and danced and stared soulfully into the light with a camera focused on my eyeball.  Then we (leisurely) hiked back down, getting back to camp by 5 am. 

The hike was long and reminded me how out of hiking shape I am, my knee hurt, and I was middle-of-the-night-grumpy.  But the memory of it is transcendant.  Not only was I reminded how much I love getting out on a trail, and having that solitudinous, passing through eternity experience of nature - so different from the productive gardening relationship, or the integrative living-in-a-place relationship with nature that I recently tend to focus on.  All are equally important to one's humanity and spirit, I believe.

Nearing the summit of Angel Rocks, passing through the angelic boulders, we encountered a fairy land.  Or so I would have seen it as a child.  Out of the shallow dirt edging the path and the boulders, springing above the tundra (the moss and lichen and alpine-stunted low bush blue berries and lingonberries, and the like) were clumps of delicate white star shaped flowers, and brilliantly, almost florescently yellow alpine poppies.  There were bright yellow asters growing out of crevices in the boulders, and near-to-blooming buds of other flowers, they looked like more poppies.
It was so beautiful, and so visibly effervescent: a fleeting, passing show of joy and glory.

The wild roses were blooming too, the briars and the flowers, writ on a smaller scale in the harsher environment, yet seeming to vibrate with life.  Watching the blueberry flowers, little white bells on their green legs, grow smaller and smaller, the membranes somehow more delicate and yet more sturdy the higher we climbed. 
I felt blessed to see that window of (near-) alpine blooming.

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