Life is an adventure

What you won’t find sometimes!

So this is my story of how it came to be that in a blizzard I found a dead person.

It was a long haul up a popular mountain in these parts. I won’t say which mountain for reasons you’ll soon understand. One non-caching friend and myself, out to show him the joys of what it is I do. This was early on in Geocaching. I don’t think he ever went with me again. Two or three thousand feet of up with no views. Near the top it opens up, but on this day it opens up to more than just a view. It opened up to the weather. Bitter cold! Blowing wind and snow! A blizzard. There were two caches here. We’d found one. A big jar snuggled in the rocks. The other was in an area that was very exposed to the weather. Between an open rock field and a sheer rock mountain wall. Our noses and hands were freezing! We looked everywhere. Turn rocks here and there, ran back to the trees to warm our hands and bodies, then out amongst the rocks once again. The snow whip along feeling like sandpaper on our faces, but it was not heavy enough to build up much in the exposed rock field. Not having much luck we spied a crevice on the rock wall. Not terribly likely. It was higher than our heads. Maybe 8’ up. We decided to give it a try. I braced against the rock wall as Mark climbed up on my shoulders and used them as you would a ladder. He succeeded in getting a foothold at the crevice, a break in the rock about 6’ long and a bit of a lip to it.
“See anything?” I yelled up.
“No. Wait a minute.. I think I see it. A box. Under some loose rock. It’s wood.”
“Yes! That must be it! Can you reach it?”
“Mmm, just barely. Umf. Ahh. Got it.”
“Awesome! Toss it down!”
“It’s got a funny lid to it. Plastic.”
He tosses it down. It appears to be a hand-crafted square wood box with laminated pieces and rounded well-made corner joints. But it has this funky thin white snap in plastic lid to it. I pull the lid out of its setting.
“What the.. What the heck?”
“What?” Mark says.
“Its someones STASH!”, I say.
I reach in and pull out a hefty clear plastic bag of white powder and show Mark who is still 8’ above.
“That’s not someone’s stash….. That IS SOMEONE!”
I look at it closer. The off-white powder is quite granular.
“OH MY GOD!”
We look at each other and burst into uncontrollable fits of laughter! In the middle of a blowing snowstorm we had found someone’s cremated remains! We must have looked like fools. Laughing our heads off, holding up a bag of human remains in the middle of a blizzard.

But this is where Geocaching takes you.

Of coarse we returned the poor fellow traveler to his proper place with all due haste and respect, and shortly after found the correct cache. Life is an adventure.

Halfway To Ika

Halfway to Ika

The world spins. A spinning world, within a spinning world, within a greater world yet.
The Sun exerts, the Moon pulls, and thus the ebb and flow of the tides.

It was on this day I chose, during the ebb of the local seas to make my way to Craft Island, and from there, all the way to Ika Island by means of footfall and staff-probing across barren tidal flats and through brackish sub-channels of various depths, temperatures, and dubious character to plant a cache.

It is the sort of travel I enjoy most. Desolate. God-drenched. I would do it all naked if the world included fewer people. Let the sun bake me, the rains wash me clean, the wind dry my hair. Deserts or endless emptied sea, mountainous crags, abysmal canyon. It is my spiritual alchemy; leAd to goLd.

I saw him once before this day. Spoke to him. Said “Hello”. Wide brimmed sun-hat, lawn chair in hand. It was he who led me to the idea. Gave me the thought. Made me see the possibilities. I climbed up Craft Island, he continued on. I sat and watched. He walked till he was no more than a speck. And there, where “Nowhere” IS, he unfolded his lawn chair. And sat. And read. What an incredible idea! I knew I must myself do the same someday soon. I waited. Hours passed. I could see the tide returning from my higher vantage point. When would he stir and rise? Would he realize what he could not see from lower down, and beat the fast advancing tide? It appeared not. It became evident not! Finally he rose, picked up his chair and began the long walk back. The channels widened and deepened. The day as well began to fade. One more channel to Craft Island. But it had become the sea. He carried his chair, with book high above his head, seawater up to his armpits. I left before he reached my island, but I felt certain he was ok and didn’t want to disturb his aloneness. I saw him again, another time, lawn chair in hand, headed half-way to Ika Island.

They listen briefly

I rock! I roll!
I set hard against my anchor chain.
The duties I have constrain me.
The tides attempt to persuade me.
I wish to flee. I cannot leave.
Those who pass by need me.
Far off lands know of me. They know my name, and what I do, where I must remain.
Some cannot reach me. Others will come near but never touch me.
I plead with a simple voice, a flash of eye.
They look. They listen briefly and pass by.

The Written Word

The Written Word

The written word is a special thing, it creeps across the page like a purposeful worm in search of a final phrase. It stammers and stutters, starts and stalls, lies and reveals hidden secrets. It tells a story where none had been before. Mostly it creates. Images, mostly. But herein is its special gift; the images it creates are not its own -like a painting or sketch- but another’s! It suggests, the reader creates. But of course you knew that. It is like two beings in two differing dimensions. What one does, the other becomes. What one thinks, the other is. So it is with the written word and the reader. Upon this paper, as these words were being scrawled, a yellow and black stripped bee did come and sit upon the right hand upper corner. As I write and you read, you have seen this bee too.

In the Quantum world not much makes sense to us. The rules seem to differ, the impossible occurs. How can a cat be undead, a singular projection appear to scatter, information travel times be instant? How can events be determined by an unattached observer? Yet it seems so. Is it the written word or the reader who creates? Perhaps they are one in the same. Separate, yet they are differing dimensions of one in the same. Together the Creator doth reign.

And thus this written word has crept across this page, and in the seeking has found its final purposeful phrase. Between the ink, the paper, the light that falls upon this page, the writer and reader, letters and letters combined to make a phrase, the yellow stripped bee, the blackbird that I failed to mention, though all can separately be seen, together and more they are an entity, joined with all there is and ever could be, we begin to understand. In differing dimensions of the One in the same, together the Creator forever doth reign.

Listening to the Earth

Listening to the Earth

I stand below and listen. Two ravens catch the updraft, high near the rim of the escarpment, and skirt along it. It is magnificent. The colossal grandeur of the rock, its forms, it shapes, columns and flows; the life way up there experiencing it from that coign of vantage transports me to their perspective… and I am blown away. How do I experience God? For me it is in these moments.

~~~~Henry was a man of curious ways. I have heard of those who can smell colors. Unfathomable to most of us, but true. Henry was one of those. No, he could not smell colors nor see the invisible, but a talent beyond human perspective he did have. He was a Listener. A geologist by trade, or should I say craft, rarely did he, dig, or chip, or collect samples to learn the nature of a place; he only did these things so others could see what he already knew; he “listened” to the Earth.
~~~~Of course we all know that rocks have stories to tell. Past events displayed in how the layers of the Earth lay. The cuts of ancient rivers. The deposits laid down by them or a passing glacier. The layering of volcanic deposits. But Henry just listened. Sat calmly and listened.
~~~~Henry has taken me to places to show… to teach me the forming of a place. I am new to this study. He must point out the most obvious things to me before I see anything of worth. But of less interest to me is the rocks than his gift. I have seen him sit and listen and hear things that I cannot. We have talked about this gift. I have asked him to explain its nature. “It is explaining color to the blind”, he says. All he can tell me is that he hears the moans of the Earth. Its birth pangs. Its sighs. The winds upon it greatest heights. The waters raking its valleys. Its buried dead.
~~~~Me? I can hear the light sigh of the wind in the grasses, the rattle of falling stones, but that is about it. I must look with all my might to see a thing, and listen to wherever I am given. But my gift? It is to know Henry, and all that entails.
---------------
Photo by Parkeharrison
Story by EraSeek

The Sower

The Sower

“A creature of clay, a thing of dust.” That is what we
are.
~~~
In the year of nineteen hundred and thirty four, when I was 20
years old, I wandered the countyside of eastern Washington, devoid
of hope or purpose. As I walked along on a lonely turn of track a
figure came into view, a man standing on a far hill above the rail
right of way and behind him a plot of paradise, green as the sea
with new wheat amongst the barren hills of scrub and a small shack
or two for his basic needs.
~~~
His name was Henry Solks and he appeared as old and barren as the
surrounding hills. I asked him how he survived in such a place and
he told me a tale that has stayed with me to this day.
~~~
Henry Solks was a Water Witch and an inventor and in his younger
days had traveled from farm to farm plying his trade of finding
well water and devising new devices for failing farmers for a
miniscule fee until he decided it was his time to become one of
them. He sectioned out a barren plot for himself as a challenge,
for he loved such things and found adventure in mere survival. One
who was close to the earth and exposed to an open sky was chaste ,
for one such could not be but an honest man -honest with himself
and honest with God- to survive.
~~~
And so it was that Henry Solks scratched at the earth and found
ways to survive and invented things to help him on his way. His
biggest challenge was water, as he had one small spring and a well
that was filled mostly with hope. Thus he saw this as his challenge
and set about a solution.
~~~
Long and hard he worked with no help but the gifts he had been
given. Like an alchemist in his den, he experimented and tried new
things until little by little small successes grew and blossomed,
and a small wisp became a cloud, and the cloud became a storm. And
so it was he had the basis of his success, but no success is
complete until perfected. When the earth is barren one must look to
the sky. When the earth rejects the seed, one must seed the
sky.
~~~
Henry took me to a shed on the backside of a hill and there, flung
wide the doors set on rusted hinges. There sat the thing of which
he was most proud. A contraption unique beyond anything I had ever
laid eyes on. He called it his “Seeder”. Of its nature I would have
difficulty in describing. A thing of fans and gears and belts but
no wings. An air machine which lifted him far above the ground to
deliver his alchemists mix to the atmosphere above his land, and
thus produce water bearing clouds over a space of several acres for
a period of half a day at a time. Henry Solks, Water Witch and
inventor, was a sower of clouds.
~~~
I stayed with Henry Solks for a week’s time and such a person I
have met never before nor since. If I were wise I never would have
left, for rare is it that you have a chance to sit at the feet of
one such as he. I returned years latter in hopes of renewing the
acquaintance, but nothing remained; neither shed nor shop, field
nor wheat. Not spring nor well, nor Henry himself or any memory of
him with the locals, nor knowledge that he had ever existed.
~~~
And so it is, my friend, that life is but a short adventure. Its
living need not be deemed great or fame producing, but its worth
depends on the unfolding of the fleeting gifts one is given. They
are gems! They are dewdrops falling from a leaf.

*****************************************************
photo by Parkeharrison
story by EraSeek

What a brave new world!

Here I am, starting a blog. My wife started one and I thought "That's cool, I want one!" From there it everything kinda fell apart. First of all hers had a determined focus. Mine..I just wanted to blog something.
1. Be focused. (I'll work on that)

So I talked to my wife and said "Honey, I have no purpose, no focus!"
She said "Dahh!?!"
"No", I said, "I mean my blog. Just what is it I'm trying to do with this?"
So I describe my inner most needs and desires to her and,.. well we won't go there, but the general idea is that she thinks I want to write a column. Well, I guess that's right. Mostly I just want to write. So this blog shall start with little or no purpose (do what you know best) and hopefully evolve into something useful. Mostly the problem is I want to do some fiction, some journaling, some philosophizing. It's like eating olives and ice cream at the same time. What I'll do first is get a little fiction out of my system, and then move along to more purposeful stuff. The next three posts will be fictionalized geocache pages that I already posted, but that are still on my mind. I want to revisit them, both physically and virtually here. I just like the feel of them and their tinge of oddness.
Hopefully this will all work out.