The Digital Potlatch hits just keep on coming — this is one of the best ideas I ever had. It’s only been two days since I posted one, but here’s another GRACK!, “The Spring,” from September, 2005.
This is another “transcendental hike” column. On my birthday (August 9) that year, I followed a mysterious clue you’ll read about and climbed well over 11,000 feet to the timberline. It was one of the most outrageously mystical outdoor adventures I’ve ever had, as well as being incredibly hard. If you’re at all sensitive to the symbology of natural springs, this may ring a few bells.
Oh, and get yer raven on!
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The Spring
It was the evening before my 60th birthday.
I stood outside in the pre-sunset coolness, watering the garden with a hose. It was very quiet and still except for the way the mint and sunflowers giggled when I sprayed them, and the sound of the water on their leaves. Then in one of those moments that can’t be mapped, I happened to look up at just the moment a kestrel flew directly overhead, glowing in a slice of sunlit sky above the hilltop’s shadow. Hawk medicine, I thought to myself, grateful for the surprise.
Ninety minutes later I had another one. I was playing my guitar, standing in a corner so I’d feel the sound, when I heard a shouted "JOHN!" and stopped. At the open screen door in the dark was my 73-year-old neighbor with a bottle of wine and a birthday card. "Don’t get too close," she said, eschewing the usual Taos hug, "I don’t feel too well and might be coming down with something." But we stood outside and talked a while in the pool of yellow from my bug light by the door. She asked if I were doing something special for my birthday, and I said I’d thought I’d take a hike up Gallegos Canyon, a place I’d never been. That prompted her to mention her own favorite hiking trail, and I paid close attention.
Nothing happens in isolation. That was evident when I realized that my neighbor, who’d been living here for 40 years, had just described a place named after the same bird I’d seen earlier. Naturally, I changed my destination and told her so. As she headed back into the darkness, I made a stupid joke about getting older. She turned to face me and declared,"Oh, you’re just a BABY! You’re a good-looking guy, you’re strong, you have your health, you have a sweetheart who loves you. That’s a lot to be thankful for." Afterwards it hit me hard, how others see the things that we’re trained not to. "You’re strong…" she’d said. I am, I wondered? But how come I hardly ever feel that way? Shimmering like the echo of a gong, her blessing stayed in my head all night.
The next day, there were no other cars parked at the trailhead in the dense pine forest. "You’re strong," I heard again as I stepped down from the truck and adjusted my gear. All right then, I could take this hike, much steeper than the one I’d planned. I was already at 9,000 feet. The turn-around was two miles up at 11,800, ye gods! But I didn’t have to go all the way, certainly not alone and on my birthday. I’d also promised my wife I wouldn’t even think of going the distance, but just enjoy myself. Amazingly, that’s what I did.
The trail was well-maintained and followed the course of a roaring mountain stream. As I climbed up past giant moss-covered trees, the sun disappeared and a steady light rain began to fall. There were loud rumblings of thunder. I tried to judge which way the clouds were moving, in hopes of knowing whether I’d be struck dead, drenched, or merely inconvenienced, but quickly found the forest was my umbrella. Here and there were places where I felt no rain at all, though I could see it coming down in sheets way out across the canyon. The rain and thick humidity were novel to me anyway, after six years at mostly lower elevations in New Mexico. How different
it was up here in the mountains, I thought. Out on the mesas, water vapor expands and disappears, a stimulating effervescence like a dream or fragrance from a foreign land, but the mountains really were another world. The granite, trees, and topsoil gathered the humidity, soaked it up and held it for a while, then gave it back as meadows, flowers, tumbling water, and the clouds that formed each summer afternoon above the peaks.
I never got too wet to be uncomfortable, and eventually the sun came out again, while the air stayed damp and pungent. Whenever I felt the least bit out of breath or about to break into a sweat, I simply stopped, and stood, and watched. I’d never hiked like this before, alone without a goal, never allowed myself the pleasure. Hawk medicine meant to look for signs and omens, too, and so I did. There were mosses, mushrooms, and wildflowers of all kinds along the trail: I collected 14 different blossoms and stuck them in my hat. I marveled at a Ponderosa pine so huge, it could have held half a dozen tract houses stacked one atop the other in its branches. To see these things, you had to go way up, I knew. And slowly but surely, without trying to, I was climbing higher all the time.
After several hours, the going had become absurdly steep. I was still in the woods, but now I had to stop and rest a moment every 20 feet or so. Happily, in the absence of anyone sturdier to keep up with, I was unembarrassed and felt quite special, even liberated… And there were other things to notice while I rested, namely grouse: nine separate times I saw the large gray-brown birds, either exploding from the ferns beside my feet or walking calmly along the edge of the trail, once as close as 10 feet away. These showed no fear whatever and merely eyed me sideways as they ambled by.
I kept going, a few steps at a time.
Half an hour later, with no warning save a growing lightness in the space between the treetops up ahead, I unexpectedly emerged from the womb of the deep, dark woods and popped out into open space! Before me was a huge tilted bowl of a mountain meadow, extending up the sides of the valley slopes and into the sloping distance as far as I could see. The effect was simply stunning, after so long in the trees: blue sky and sunshine, enough room for a small city, and no one else around. I took care to scan the treeline for elk or bear, but the only animals in view were me and a chipmunk running across the path. This was pure nature, a cathedral of the gods. No one I know would believe that such a place existed, I thought to myself, much less that one could walk to it and never see another soul.
By this point going on became the plan I never had. I hiked the length of the meadow and found another one just as huge. Beyond that was a third one, smaller now, and at the very top below the timberline, the greatest miracle of all: a pristine, perfect, flowing spring, the source of the very stream I’d followed all the way up to almost 12,000 feet.
I was in the presence of something ferociously powerful and pagan. Every archetype was lit up like a thousand suns. This was the Secret, the secret of the world. The energy literally brought me to my knees, and I wanted never to leave. The purity, the spirit, the overwhelming truth was almost more than I could bear without doing something, so I sat there for the longest time and tried to pray. The words are lost to us (and so are we), but so help me, I tried, I really tried. All of a sudden, I remembered my birthday: reaching down into the icy clear water, I scooped some up and baptized myself, splashing it over my head and face! The shock and pure vitality snapped me to my feet. I stood there, shaking, afraid to leave and lose the connection.
That was almost a month ago. (Jesus Christ, I’m still plugged in!)
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I’m really very lucky. This stuff is gasoline in my tank.
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Wow! Yet another great piece of writing. Thanks for including your readers in your hikes. Our trips to New Mexico/Colorado are few and far between and I miss the so distinctly different landscape that is pure heaven. Makes me want to get in the car and head west!
Thanks, Sherry.
This is why I decided to do the Digital Potlatch thing. A lot of people who know me now weren’t reading my columns several years ago, and I thought it made sense to re-introduce the best pieces. Judging from your response, I made the right decision!
John-Tell me how to get to this trail. Thanks!
I have to protect the spring. It may already have been vandalized. You’ll note that I wrote the column a whole month after my hike, after wrestling with myself over whether I should publish anything at all. There’s a clue or two in the story, but really, almost any trail in the mountains will do: just look at a topo map and find one that follows a stream up (this is nearly universal) and goes up to that altitude, and you’ll see the same things.
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