FEARFULLY MADE: Notes from the Field

The Fearfully Made presentation went off pretty smoothly. Friends and family, some unexpected, sat through a whole worship service to see this audio visual foray on a beautiful sunny day (which offered lots of other recreational temptations). I was touched and honored by their support. I've incorporated the live recording of Shirley Brendlinger's piano arrangement (from Sunday's presentation) into a video version available now on YouTube.

Curious to know where some of the pictures in the presentation were taken? Unsure of what some of the pictures are? This annotated timeline might prove to be helpful.

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EARTH DAY, APRIL 22nd, 10 AM @ REEDWOOD FRIENDS CHURCH

Beauty from Chaos has been the working title for the presentation of images I’ve assembled over the last month, but the thing that sparked this endeavor in the first place was the night the Eagle Creek Fire sprinted down the Columbia Gorge with the capriciousness of a tornado, obliterating some treasured landmarks while leaving others unscathed. Standing in the smoky darkness atop the Cape Horn Viewpoint, I was awed and horrified all at the same time. While I knew that lives and the works of lifetimes were hanging in jeopardy, I also knew that beauty, whose loss I was mourning, was itself a product of volcanic ‘disasters’, geography altering super floods, tectonic-plate-level seismic events, and countless fires through the eons. Indeed, from a cosmic perspective, life was born from stars and it has contended with fire from the very beginning.

The Reedwood Friends have posted the publicity for FEARFULLY MADE: Notes From the Field on their website:

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FEARFULLY MADE: Notes From The Field is the second audio/video collaboration between photographer Scott Dietz and pianist Shirley Brendlinger. Scheduled to premiere on Earth Day, April 22nd, at Reedwood Friends Church (during the worship service), the presentation utilizes Scott’s images of the Pacific Northwest and Shirley’s classical music arrangements to explore a suspected correlation (albeit a paradoxical one) between chaos and beauty: Does beauty spring from chaos? Is chaos beautiful?

FEARFULLY MADE: Notes from the field

I was sitting at a funeral reading the verses to the Sending Hymn (sung to the tune of Beethoven’s Ode to Joy). “Field and forest, vale and mountain, flowery meadow, flashing sea, Chanting bird and flowing fountain, teach us what our praise should be.” And I thought to myself, that’s what I was trying to explain to Dwight, except that with Dwight, I was relating the story of a Catholic nun who was explaining to me that there was another gospel, the testament of nature — the Artist’s brushstrokes (as I’ve said before).

Implicit in my title, I’m suggesting that the pictures I’ve taken are my notes from the field (of study). I began with an assumption that beauty arises from chaos, but after reviewing my notes, I noticed that this does not always seem to be true, especially for some individual trees. So, in an effort to follow where the data leads, I’ve picked a title that I hope allows for the emergence of beauty from chaotic scenarios, but recognize (from my limited perspective) it’s not a sure thing.

I’ve divided the presentation into four segments. The first segment deals with Cosmology. I have to say that, on my budget, it is extraordinarily hard to take pictures of the beginning of the universe. I had to use lentils as stand-ins so technically, some of my ‘notes’ are re-iterations of other people’s notes. My intention, though, was to establish the context of our world by sharing the narrative that stretches from the ‘Big Bang’ to the development of human consciousness. It’s a fascinating story that stretches 13.7 billion years. I had to leave a few parts out.

The second segment deals with geology broadly, and volcanoes in particular. From the lava vents that repeatedly flooded Central Oregon with molten basalt, to our temperamental strato-volcanoes (all fueled by the activity of migrating, earthquake causing, tectonic plates) volcanism has played a significant role in the shaping of the Northwest as well as dictating how our environment works today. The land we stand on, the weather we experience, and the water we drink are all keenly related to the formation of the Cascade Range.

The third segment briefly touches upon evidence of Ice-age floods. After the land was in place, water and ice went to work sculpting its face. The failure of ice dams repeatedly allowed the sudden entirety of vast Missoula Lake to pour across Central Washington creating the scablands, incredible scooped out coulees, and hanging waterfalls. Much of the distinctiveness of the Columbia Gorge is dependent on these episodes when the river’s peak flow-rate was ten times the combined flow of all the rivers in the world.

The final segment centers on fires I’ve seen in the Columbia Gorge with some examples of what occurs in the aftermath.

It’s a conundrum. The world is unbelievably beautiful. And if you aren’t careful, it will kill you.

I have a confession. Sitting at funerals, I sometimes have a suspicion that my dead friends are truly dead — that there may not be a life everlasting.  As one who values the fruits of a scientific worldview, I long for evidence or proof. Out in the field, with my camera, I see hints. The repeating, renewing cycles of the seasons and perhaps even the cleansing, refining work of fire are patterns that suggest Nature is constantly recycled. And though I would like to fit into this pattern personally — to be renewed — I am afraid it is likely to be quite painful.

I have camped on an island that has all at once tried to exhaust, freeze and drown me. Alternately, the same island has cradled me in a warm summer evening while providing me with all the oysters and berries I could eat. It’s the same island — only my experience and understanding change. I guess that’s why, when my loved ones lie in their final repose, I sing (Well, O.K., I don’t really sing – I follow along in the hymnal) those relentlessly optimistic songs. It is an exercise of hope. It is faith that my unbelief will be helped. I latch on to the conviction that, “Brothers! Above the canopy of stars, must dwell a loving Father.”

In the meantime, the world is unbelievably beautiful.

Finally, I’d like to point out that I am not technically a Quaker and I would be remiss if I didn’t point out that the synthesis of ideas presented in this article are my own and do not necessarily represent the views of Quakers, real scientists or members of my family.

According to a very old story, God makes a wager with Satan and calamity soon befalls a good man named Job. Abandoned and in considerable pain, Job asks questions that occur to him, like why do the wicked go unpunished? There follows considerable debate among Job and his ‘friends’, but eventually, God speaks from out of a whirlwind and berates Job with a flurry of rhetorical questions.

Where is the home of the east wind?

Who cuts a channel for the torrents of rain?

Who laid out the path for the lightning?

Who makes the rain fall on barren land,

in a desert where no one lives?

Who sends rain to satisfy the parched ground

and make the tender grass spring up?

God seems displeased that Job has questioned his wisdom. God’s strategy seems to be to direct Job’s attention to His creation. “Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth?” He asks.

In Fearfully Made: Notes From the Field, the audience will see the channels cut for the torrents of rain, the barren land where no one lives and the parched ground where tender grass springs up. What do these landscapes shaped by cataclysm reveal about the creator?

When I revealed the title to my presentation, I promptly received two emails from my Mom asserting that it’s, “…fearfully AND WONDERFULLY made.” She didn’t explain why this distinction was so important to her, but I suspect she wants to counter my emphasis on the fearful part and remind me that God is good. So without further ado…

GALAPAGOS PILGRIMAGE - PART ONE

WHY THE GALAPAGOS?

A blue-footed booby. This picture is inexplicably composed to exclude the signature bright blue feet.

By then, I had already watched boobies ham-footedly seducing each other with incongruous bright blue feet, disappointed pirouetting sea lions with my graceless, spastic snorkeling — unable to join in their joyous dance — and seen the fork-tailed silhouettes of magnificent frigate birds gliding beneath a near full-moon. That evening, we (me and eleven other travelers) sat in the common area of a 75 foot catamaran being introduced to the crew. 

Crew of the Nemo III with our guide Veronica acting as translator

Through our guides, the crew asked us, "Why did you come to the Galapagos?"

Up until that point, I'm not sure that I had ever put my reasons into words — and as I stuttered and paused too long looking for the right ones, I began to realize that it wasn't just for exotic 3 species tacos, it was because I wanted to articulate a story of discovery and revelation — to flesh out an account of a scientist deciphering the underlying truths of our existence in the universe. But I felt like an evangelical missionary who hadn't and couldn't read Greek or Hebrew texts — or a witness at a trial who hadn't actually seen the crime.

My short answer was, that while there are some who journey to Jerusalem, and some to Mecca, I was on that boat, 600 miles off the coast of Ecuador, because I wanted to see the peculiar islands that jarred something in Darwin's mind — something that years later shaped his thinking in regards to the origin of species. I wanted to affirm Darwin's observations. I wanted to feel the blind hands of nature shaping life as if by design

Early mariners noted the Galapagos would often disappear into the mist caused by the cold Humboldt current spilling into the tropics earning them some references as the Enchanted Islands.

As Darth Vader said, "... let me... look on you with my *own* eyes."

So there I was on a naturalistic pilgrimage, not to retrace the stations of the cross or purchase relics, but to follow in the metaphorical wake of H.M.S. Beagle to study the ripples left by its passage through history.

As David Byrne said, "Well...How did I get here?

THIRTY-EIGHT YEARS EARLIER - AM I A CHRISTIAN?

The Elephant of Surprise spots my Dad.

I was away at Bible College one year, learning to present sermons via Pastor Jim Cook's patented 3-point-outline method. All the while, unbeknownst to anybody, the Elephant of Surprise trampled roughshod through the ranks of my family.

Later, as the recipient of increasingly ominous news, I found myself surrounded by people who optimistically saw God as active in their daily lives, helping them to prepare for tests, providing money for them just when it was needed, and (in some fashion that was never explicitly clear) helping them with their life decisions. Often, daily existence was viewed as just another day of spiritual warfare, in which we young Christians were encouraged to gird up our loins (http://www.artofmanliness.com/2014/10/02/how-to-gird-up-your-loins-an-illustrated-guide/) and enter the secular fray wielding the sword of the Spirit — His word (or as narrowly defined by my conservative college, the Bible (hence the likely etymology of the term Bible beaters)). Kind hearted people (some of them strangers) prayed for and otherwise cared for me and my family, so much so that it was hard to tell if it was God working, or just kind hearted friends and strangers. It turns out there are all kinds of Christians and they all have slightly different versions of what they think God is like, and what they think God wants us to do. 

Left to right, top to bottom: 1. Traditional kind of oily Jesus. 2. Rugged Jesus. 3. Pretty good singer Jesus, but kind of bitchy. 4.Whitest Jesus ever. 5. White haired man in sky. 6. Scientificly ethnic Jesus. 7. God as a Lion. 8. God as a cheating wrestler (Still loses to Jacob). 9. Ganesh. 10. Burning bush. 11. Popular idol in 2017. 12. Elephant of Surprise.

But you never really "see" God, unless he looks like the people of faith who feed the hungry, heal the sick, and welcome the stranger. In fact, that's my big take-away from my year among the Baptists. If God works in the world, he uses human hands. Well... I say that's the big take-away, but there was also this joke. Why don't Baptists typically have sex while standing up? Because they're afraid it might lead to dancing.

"But Scott!" you exclaim, "Why are you bringing this up at the beginning of your Galapagos story?

Well, because there's another elephant in this story — the elephant in the room. It's the elephant that pits Bible believers against science — creationists against those who, through science, are learning how life evolved on earth. This year's political climate is accelerating the already extreme polarization between liberals and conservatives. Much is being done to cast doubt on our institutions of learning. Agencies that have marshaled our best technologies to examine the earth and the life upon it are being muzzled and defunded. Some of this (certainly not all of it) is happening because sincere people of faith believe they must stand up for God. It doesn't escape me that my whole-hearted excitement regarding what's being learned about evolution will be seen as heretical and threatening by some of my conservative friends. For them, I'd like to propose a temporary suspension of disbelief.

Consider this allegorical aid. Imagine a potter sitting before a potter's wheel (Personally, I like to imagine Demi Moore).

From the motion picture, Ghost: Paramount Pictures

Now imagine Demi Moore is the theory of evolution. Imagine she is shaping an animal (pot) through natural selection. Keep in mind that Demi Moore is blind, but you can see that even so, she has successfully shaped many different animals on the shelf behind her.

Now, in terms of science, that's all the further I have to go. But for the sake of my conservative friends, lets introduce Patrick Swayze.

From the motion picture, Ghost: Paramount Pictures

In this picture, we'll imagine that Patrick Swayze is God. Demi Moore is still doing all the work, but let's say she works for Patrick. As far as science is concerned, Patrick is invisible. He (so far) can't be measured, and his activity in the world, so far as we can see, looks an awful lot like Demi's work. Since we can't rule out Patrick, and if it helps you to see him helping in some way, say making the raw materials (Universe, earth, clay) or making Demi in the first place (but not so much guiding her hands), then lets do that until I finish my story.

 THREE YEARS LATER - ARE ARTISTS SCIENTISTS?

Bronze pour with: Professor (Vicky R.), Hooker (Mike E.), Guy you can't see (Probably Brian H.), and me driving the crucible.

Our ad-hoc furnace roared like...well, the blower that forced burning gas around the now radiating crucible like a tornado. It sounded something like a jet engine, and as the air above the furnace shimmered and rippled, I imagined the tightly-focused spinning conflagration we engineered was causing the ground to vibrate. We armored ourselves with leather and asbestos garments to protect our skin from the searing heat and to, perhaps, fend off molten projectiles should the liquid metal contact water hidden in improperly heated ingot-molds. Driving the crucible to the waiting molds, bearing the weight of the bronze, feeling the sweat dripping down my forehead, watching the metal flow like lava — it is at this moment that I feel like Prometheus stealing fire from the Gods.

When the crucible is empty, when we who have toiled have commenced eating meat and cheese from great paper platters and drinking cold beers enriched (or diluted?) by tomato juice, the bronze filled molds will still be steaming in the sand, cooling, becoming a new thing. By doing this, I have become a brother to men who worked in foundries over four thousand years ago, sharing elemental secrets that have shaped today's technology and which I now use to give shape to my ideas and emotions.

TOP: Bronze scraps from ancient Greece (on display in the archeological museum in Athens)
BOTTOM: Bronze scraps on the floor from one of my bronze pours and why when I saw the display in Athens, I felt connected to history like never before.

Investing wax piece in ceramic shell, an alternative to plaster.

This is a gift of science. I don't know who the first person was to figure out how to make a crucible. But somebody tried, failed, and tried again. It took insightful observations and repeated experiments. Doubtless, limbs and lives were lost along the way. And now we stand atop a hard-won pile of all the knowledge collected before us. We can do this because the universe though often inscrutable, is also reasonably consistent for objects longer than the Planck length.

TEN YEARS LATER - A FORK IN THE ROAD

When it comes to telling biographical stories, the most salient aspect seems to be that you can't really do a very definitive job unless you start from the end. At the entrance to a fork, a trivial decision based on a whim or intuition may result in finding the job of your dreams on one hand, or death by a rabid beaver who severs your carotid artery on the other. Sometimes, it isn't really a matter of even making a decision.

One year, when I was 14, I was sent to spend part of a summer on a wheat farm in Kansas with my Great Uncle Carl and Aunt Alvina. 

My long suffering Aunt Alvina and Uncle Carl being patient while 14 year old scott tries to pose them like that American Gothic painiting

In one of the outbuildings, there was an old workbench, and tacked to a low lying rafter were rows of rabbit ears. I inquired about the unexpected decorations and learned that during various years and seasons, rabbits, doing what rabbits do, earned themselves a bounty. Enterprising youth, I also learned, could make money in exchange for rabbit ears. This inspired in me a certain Elmer Fuddish compulsion to shoot a rabbit, and it was not long before Uncle Carl set me up with an old .22 rifle.

My dreams of making money soon evaporated as I began to realize that shooting the wiry jack rabbits was  no easy task. The rabbits were well camouflaged in the straw colored fields, and I only ever saw them if I spooked them by walking too close. When they were startled, they'd leap into action like those antelope on T.V. trying to evade cheetahs. They knew how to zig-zag.  Try as I might, my errant bullets did little but kick up tiny fountains of dust in the rich Kansas top soil, or pinged off stone fence-posts and ricocheted off old farm-machinery so that technically, I was more dangerous to myself than I was to the rabbits. It became obvious that my expenditure in ammunition was going to exceed any foreseeable bounty-income. Soon it simply became a challenge to see if it would be possible for me to shoot a rabbit at all.

Then, one evening it happened. The rabbit took off. It started zigging to the left. I anticipated it's zag to the right, got a good lead on it, pulled the trigger. I watched in amazement, then horror as the rabbit ran at top speed into the path of my bullet. In an airborne instant, the heavy impact of the bullet shattered the graceful rhythm of its stride. It fell from the sky in uncoordinated, sloppy summersaults, like a rag doll — like a race car flipping end for end.

I walked out to my kill. I looked down at my victim with conflicting emotions. I was excited and proud that I had finally achieved my goal, but I was also surprised by the finality of my act, the taking of life. I reached down to claim my trophy. I picked it up by the back legs and headed back to the homestead. The body was limp, but still warm, and as I walked, some last firing of synapses caused those back legs to kick and spasm as if resurrected and angry. It frightened me and I dropped it like a hot potato.

When that rabbit was running, it was beautiful. It had been shaped by its environment over endless millennia to evade its predators. Now it lay in the dirt growing cold — a bloody bag of organs and meat.

 Uncle Carl added the rabbit's ears to the collection with a tack and we looked at them for a silent moment. I looked to Uncle Carl for a clue about how I should be feeling. He didn't give me any clues.

Ol' Blue, the truck in which I learned to drive.

There once was a guy named Steve C. He was a foreman for a construction company — a company that I worked for as an employee of a painting sub-contractor. One year, Steve built a laboratory for a biotech company. He was a handy guy to have around since he was both intelligent and resourceful. As he worked at finishing the building, the client began moving biotech equipment into the new facility, and Steve found he was able to help with setting up the production line and evidently demonstrated an aptitude that won him a new job as the new production manager for the biotech company.

Soon the new biotech company began to grow and Steve found he needed to hire more people to run the machines. He began hiring his close friends from the construction industry. This made sense, because they were people he knew he could work with. However, they all had similar interests, the greatest of which was a common appreciation for hunting. When hunting season rolled around, Steve suddenly realized his mistake. Everyone wanted to go hunting which would leave the production line understaffed. What they needed was another worker who didn't hunt.

That's how I became a laboratory technician.



To be continued...

Part 2 is now available at: https://thenarrativeimage.blogspot.com/2017/03/galapagos-pilgrimage-part-two.html

...a sound of sheer silence.

I'll be honest with you.
I've tried to pray.
But I don't think I do it right because, while my part of the conversation can often be lengthy and verbose, I find that I'm always ending up supplying God's end of the conversation too...through fairly creative attribution.

I can remember back to my college days when I got the phone call that informed me that my dad had finally succumbed to cancer and how I ventured out into the freezing cold night and climbed to the top of the bleachers at Lindstrom Field and beneath a heaven of harsh twinkling stars, concluded the conversation I'd maintained for several years regarding a possible healing miracle. I don't know what I was expecting...maybe an apology... maybe a pat on the back, or a hug.  I had to settle for the usual ambiguous silence.

I'm always jealous of the Old Testament characters who actually got to talk to God.
Here is part of a story about Elijah who is on the run (in fear for his life), and seeking a dialogue with God on the top of the mount of God.

He (the Lord) said (to Elijah), "Go out and stand on the mountain before the Lord, for the Lord is about to pass by." Now there was a great wind, so strong that it was splitting mountains and breaking rocks in pieces before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind; and after the wind an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake; and after the earthquake a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire; and after the fire a sound of sheer silence.

1st Kings 19:11-13 (NRSV) 

"...a sound of sheer silence." was another candidate for a possible theme for my photo exhibition. I have to admit, the story above doesn't make a lot of sense to me. Elijah and God evidently talked all the time, before and after God's theatrics on the mountain. I guess what I resonate to is the idea that it isn't until Elijah hears the sheer silence, that he is drawn to stand at the entrance of his cave and...listen.

I suck at prayer. I can't stand before a court and honestly say I've ever heard God's voice. But I have heard the sheer silence...and here are some of the places I listen.

Kansas Cemetery 

White oak in a labyrinth

Moon-rise on Bybee Lake

Goldendale on the way to the observatory

In-between storms in the Columbia Gorge

Wahkeena spring

COLDWATER PEAK 'Thee-Odyssey' – Boundary Trail

4. And the Lord said unto Moses,

“This is the land I promised you,

but you shall not enter. Psych.”

5. And Moses died.

DEUTERONOMY 

(as paraphrased by Shalom Auslander in The Foreskin’s Lament)

I wanted to talk to God the other day.

I thought it should be possible because on any given Sunday, if I go to my church, the respectable people of my community are gathered there addressing God as ‘father’ and there’s a kind of script they hand out that even gives you appropriate words to pray. Sometimes there is even a collective petition – they all kind of do this choral speaking thing - usually to ask for health related things. So it isn’t just some isolated crazies carrying on one-sided conversations on the sidewalks of downtown Portland who talk to God…it’s all those adults who watched you grow up and who made you go to Sunday school and who otherwise seem completely rational.

What I wanted to talk about was the way people you love eventually get old, and then sometimes they get confused, and sometimes they begin to forget all the things they knew and then sometimes they even begin to forget themselves. And then one day you notice that they aren’t even there anymore and all that’s left is some incontinent stranger.

Why is that necessary?

So I started planning.

As I am wont to do for God related things, I referenced the Bible for examples of individuals who had a certain knack for not only talking TO God, but also HEARING BACK from him. Two of my favorites:

Abraham – Schooled God in the art of haggling

Jacob – Wrestled with God and prevailed

What I like about the Old Testament accounts is that the old patriarchs had’t come up with prayer formulas yet (Father, God we just really thank you…)

Oh - and the fact that God actually talks back.

The account that caught my attention this time was the story of Moses, and how God and Moses spoke together like friends.

At a lodging place on the way the LORD met him (Moses) and sought to kill him 

– Exodus 4-24

I have friends like that – who try to kill me. I’m not sure what God’s plan was for Moses, but my friends tend to share straight shots with me.

While reading the Moses story, I did notice a trend, and that was that he often was either accidentally climbing a mountain, or being required to climb a mountain in order to have important conversations.

In the epic story in which Moses receives the Ten Commandments, the mountain he is supposed to climb does things like quake and smoke. In fact, “…the smoke of it went up like the smoke of a kiln…”  It just made sense to me that if I wanted to talk to God, maybe I should seek him out in a similar place.

Generally people speak pretty highly of the Bible. But sometimes it seems to me like the infallible word of God could be just a little bit clearer.  Maybe it doesn’t read so well for me because it’s a translation. I’ve heard from multilingual speakers that you can lose a lot of subtle meanings in a text that’s translated. Sadly, it seems that things like puns and jokes are the first thing to go.

An interesting exchange occurs between Moses and God when Moses asks to see God’s ‘glory’.  I’m not certain, but I have a gut feeling this next bit may be hilarious. God replies:

…Thou canst not see my face: for there shall no man see me, and live. And the LORD said, Behold, there is a place by me, and thou shalt stand upon a rock: And it shall come to pass, while my glory passeth by, that I will put thee in a cleft of the rock, and will cover thee with my hand while I pass by: And I will take away mine hand, and thou shalt see my back parts: but my face shall not be seen.

No, the funny part isn’t that Moses maybe caught a glimpse of God’s ass. The funny part, to me, is that Moses insists on calling it a face-to-face encounter for the rest of his life. It almost becomes his epitaph – the man who saw God face to face.

I’m not trying to be profane here. I love the idea that God and Moses spoke together as friends…and based on the mortal friendships I’ve been fortunate enough to experience, it tickles me that those two might have been intimate enough to call each other names like ‘ass-face’.

As my plan to talk to God began to coalesce, I started getting cold feet. I don’t stutter or anything, but sometimes it takes me a painfully long time to come up with the right…um…words. Not only that, but I have a dismal history when it comes to prayer. When cancer and chemotherapy took turns whittling away at my father, I prayed long and hard for healing. But he died. When Mr. K. couldn’t get a diagnosis for the pain in his gut, and when he grew scared and had some of us gather round and lay hands on him and pray for healing…well, he died too. And I prayed for Mr. T. when disease started cutting parts of his body away…but…you get the picture.

The conventional wisdom on these kinds of prayer results runs something like this:

Scott, you do not have faith even the size of a mustard seed.

Scott, you are not a righteous man, so your prayers aren’t effective

Scott, your prayers were answered, but God said ‘no’.

Scott, you should have prayed for God’s will to be done and not what you wanted.

So, taking another cue from the story of Moses, I decided to feign incompetence and hire a talented graphic designer to speak on my behalf. 

Here, the talented graphic designer is introducing a specialized font. I like his flashy presentation style. His experience in graphical alphabets may come in handy if we should get within seeing distance of God. Something else I consider is that, because of the bold actions he’s taken to pursue his ‘art’, I suspect he may very well have ‘faith’ the size of a mustard seed.

Fortunately, the graphic designer is also young and strong so he gets to carry the powerful radio transmitter (plan B). Because the young graphic designer has taken on this job pro bono, he has asked not to be identified.

In legal terms, I think this whole area is considered one giant ‘act of God’. It isn’t a faith statement so much as an excuse not to pay out any insurance claims. Call it what you want, it still seems like an excellent place to go if you’re looking for something like a burning bush… that talks.

Scientists assert that our continents are giant plates that float upon a magma core, upwelling out of the core, spreading and cooling, then migrating until a collision with another plate sends its edges up toward the sky like Everest, or back down into the forge at the center of the earth. Our species rides on temporary geologic conveyer belts, glimpsing visions of creation and destruction at points along the ride. Moses took his shoes off when he walked on holy ground. Maybe it is all holy.

Our destination 

Coldwater Peak

The Boundary Trail threads the eye of a needle large enough for a camel to pass through.

Remember that inspirational Footprints in the Sand story that you can always find in Christian supply stores?

Guess how many sets of footprints are in the snow?

Far beneath Coldwater Peak, we thought we saw the glint of sunlight off metal (perhaps the remains of the last powerful radio transmitter brought up here and struck by lightning) but I concluded it was probably pools of water accumulating at the edges of the melting snow field.

Late in the afternoon, we think we see God’s ‘glory’ approaching.

The talented graphic designer springs into action.

…and as usual, the resulting silence leaves me the ambiguous answers I’ve come to expect.

The talented designer heads back down the mountain.  I have a hard time keeping up with him and I’m reminded that I am getting old. 


I’m beginning to forget things. 


And sometimes, I am worn down and I begin to forget myself.

But damn it if this place isn’t beautiful and …life… any life is a gift, and …

…I wish I’d stop losing sight of that.

The talented graphic designer had the foresight to bury 2 liters of water in the snow at St.Helens Lake before we set off for the peak. When we return, the water is ice cold…and it tastes like a miracle.

As night falls, we are enveloped in clouds that drift and dance over Spirit Lake. For the most part, “We don't yet see things clearly. We're squinting in a fog, peering through a mist. But it won't be long before the weather clears and the sun shines bright! We'll see it all then…”

1 Corinthians 13:12 – The Message