Still Water
[August 6, 2025: Sometimes my heart breaks for the depth of love I feel and my inability to share it completely. I don’t fear death necessarily, but I do fear leaving this earth without ever being wholly understood and fully expressed. This land, at least, understands me, and in it I understand myself. In this land I find solace, and those fears which I carried here from the urban world dissolve in its magnitude.]
I awake a moment later, as if through a portal. The moon has set and the sky is still dark and full of stars. I check the soft green glow of my watch— 5 a.m. Rising without hesitation, I wonder how I wake up later than this at home, yet more tired. and again I remember that here on the mountain, sleeping on the cold and comforting earth, I am deeply grounded; I am home. I spent the night cradled in my mother’s arms. Of course I am well-rested.
I want to hit the trail before sunrise so I quickly pack up camp and leave my quiet perch. A few minutes later I’m cruising along the final stretch of highway before Tioga pass, this time with a full tank of gas, catching the first strokes of pastel sunburst on the horizon.
As I turn up the pass I find myself immediately engulfed by vertical walls of granite and towering trees, almost as if they are peering down on me. They lay the perfect canvas for dawn’s early glow. Taj Mahal’s “Shady Grove” plays through my speakers and I can’t help but to smile and shout my delight into the void. Something about this song stirs me, shakes me, agitates me with such joy that I can’t resist singing to the world as I drive. This is a true love song, I think; while some say Shady Grove is a woman, in this version of the tune I imagine it is a place.
“If I can’t have the girl I want, I don’t want no girl at all; Shady Grove my darling, oh Shady Grove my own true love.” Taj Mahal wails, voice cracking beautifully in a way that’s not quite human. I hear my own voice in this song, as I make my way to what often feels like my own deepest love– wild and open nature.
The sun rises and I think of my family. I miss them. My mom, who is gone from this earth, and my dad, who I don’t call enough; my grandma, who I also don’t call enough, in whose lineage I feel a deep connection even though I don’t know my ancestry very well. my brothers, with their life partners and children; my friends– I miss them all. My experience of the human condition is a paradox; I am happy in my solitude yet crave connection and want to rest in the peace of another’s love. As I continue onward into the valley I remember the truth of my life, the raw and beautiful tension between unity and individuation. I am not so enlightened as to transcend my longing, but with each passing minute I remember the abundance of companionship I have in life itself, in nature. I begin to see everyone I have ever loved. I wonder if they know it, even if I don’t call them enough.
Two miles into the trail, my alarm goes off- 6:30 am. I think of myself back home in bed, blinking my eyes awake, and I laugh. How much better I feel to be undeniably alive, ten thousand feet high.
The sun begins to crest over the surrounding mountains, refracting slightly to tickle the branches of pine and oak intermingling overhead. Birds dance in the canopy, rejoicing in this coming of day. But it is more than the birds. Somehow in perfect harmony the entire mountainside comes to life, in ways unseen and unheard. I am at the mercy of this rhythm, swept up in the divine symphony of the wild. I finish the initial climb and suddenly enter into a dizzying trance as the land opens up before me, a panoramic expanse of soft shale and granite, vibrant green meadows, distant ice caps and lakes of varying shapes and sizes. Cool air rushes up from the water below and fills me with vitality. As I descend, I hear one piercing cry rise above the rest, cutting through the air like an arrow, bouncing off the lake and rushing towards the distant mountains. The pointedness of this bird is astounding; the sound somehow pierces any and all resistance!
I listen intently and, scouring the rocky hillside, eventually hone in on the source of this sound– to my delight my eyes rest not on a bird but on a MARMOT, camouflaged on the rocks and persistent in his morning song. I’d never heard such a sound, nor had I ever seen a marmot. 31 years on this earth and there is still so much to experience for the first time! As I study the marmot, I wonder how much novelty I deprive myself of back home. In this age of information we know so much- but at what cost?
This landscape is undoubtedly a marvel. Ambling around the lake, I’m elated to be here, and I take a moment to imagine this place before human intervention, before trails and dams and roads cut through its pristine structure. John Muir once described this valley as “one of the greatest of all our natural resources for the uplifting joy and peace and health of the people,” though part of me does wish it remained less accessible, demanding our full commitment to the relationship. Still, I’d been out here for nearly two hours and had yet to see another person.
I love solitude, and desire connection; how funny it is to be human.
My eyes fall on fresh hoofprints in the mud, evidence of an early-morning commune with this alpine watering hole. The lake collected ice cold and deep blue water trickling down from beyond my vision, up and over an eastward peak. As I cross the stream the air cools noticeably and I feel myself inhaling deeply. The tracks take me through wildflower groves of varying and vibrant colors, reds yellows purples and more, which in any other context would seem unnatural.
Soon, the tracks deepen in the soft mud of the meadow, accompanied by a pile of fresh shit. I could feel I was getting closer.
At this point my intuition entirely took over and I had no choice but to surrender. It’s something I’ve known about myself for as long as I can remember, that there’s a deep wisdom lurking beneath the surface of my own self-concept. For much of my life I’ve seen it as an ever-burning ember at the core of my being; and the same ember which delivers illumination simultaneously threatens to destroy everything I think I know about myself. I oscillate between periods of intense embrace and stubborn suppression. It’s a terrible awe. The more I resist in the name of control and rationality, the more afraid I become. Yet as soon as I surrender I can’t deny how deeply good it feels to follow my intuition. In my best moments I am nothing.
It has always been the case that whenever I hike I have absolute certainty in my sense of direction without a single thought. Not a day goes by when I don’t know the phase of the moon, and I can feel waves rising up while they’re still out at sea. In a similar way, I can feel an animal’s presence without ever seeing or hearing it. It feels absurd to write but I cannot deny my own experience. In another life, I think, I was a hunter or, perhaps more accurately, a tracker. My ability to navigate the wild is one of the deepest confidences I have ever known. Back at home, in civilization, it is far too easy to forget this; amidst the noise I lose trust in my own intuition and this is undoubtedly the source of most of my suffering and confusion. If only I could walk through the societal ecosystem with the same degree of naturalness that guides me through the uncharted wilderness.
The logistical architecture of the modern world doesn’t quite make sense to me for one reason or another. I wonder if I will ever find my fullest expression, or if I will ever be able to rest in this experience of being alive. Maybe the struggle is the point; but something tells me that the struggle is just the beginning, that I’ve spent 31 years tilling the earth in preparation for seasons of growth & harvest. I let myself feel what it would be like to be empowered in this physical reality, to have the material resources to let myself fully into the world, to have a foundation from which I can offer everything I am…how, how, how can I be so certain of all I have to give and all of my capabilities to give it and still struggle so mightily to realize this? I hoped that the inherently spiritual language of nature would show me the way.
As I fell asleep the night before, I knelt before my little travel altar to pray. I’m not religious, but this year I’ve prayed every day and it’s been the most significant practice for my own self-actualization in recent memory. Under the stars and the moon I prayed to my mom, who still somehow nurtures me in spirit though her body is no longer of this earth. I find her scattered everywhere now, in ways which sometimes feel deeper than how I knew her in the physical world. I prayed for clarity in my direction; I asked for the maternal spirit to meet me in the woods and help me find my way.
Under the spell of the hoofprints I fall into meditation; morning light filters through the trees. Walking without thought, somehow speaking the language of the air and the Earth, I begin to understand that this is the answer I was looking for, the clarity which I sought.
Suddenly I hear a loud snort, and then silence. I peer slowly around the tree in front of me and no more than 50 feet away stands a young buck staring back at me; I was awestruck. I didn’t expect to get this close. We hold eye contact for a few seconds before he snorts again and disappears into the forest with a few powerful bounds.
Firmly unconscious, I had found my way through time and space to arrive less than a stone’s throw away from this magnificent creature; I’m certain I couldn’t have arrived here if I tried. Following my wordless, thoughtless nature I was led to commune with this woodland companion against all rational odds. Those few seconds with locked eyes seemed to be an eternity; I felt as if I was looking into my own spirit. In that moment, somewhere in Tuolumne, there was no distinction between me, the buck, and the land that held us.
And as he leapt into the overflowing unknown, and the trees shook in the breeze, and the marmot’s cry echoed off the lake and the bees danced among the flowers, I heard my mom speak softly, wordlessly; I knew I had found my answer.
Not much later I begin to hear other, more human voices shouting in the distance, and chuckle at my reactionary irritation. Reluctantly, I had to accept that these noises were as much a part of nature as the birdsong which I love so dearly. Making my way slowly back along the trail, back through the woods now awash in mid-morning light, and back to my car, I smile, determined to follow the feeling wherever it leads.
Before I go I wonder: if through my deepest wisdom I can find my way to a buck in the middle of the High Sierras, surely I can navigate the civilized world and realize the sort of material abundance that I desire. Contrary to so much of what I’ve been taught, perhaps my deepest wisdom and truest strength lies in my transcendent self, beyond thought and concept and rationalism, firmly in my natural intuition. Letting this sink in, I hit the road once more, again unsure of my next destination, content to trust in nature and let the way unfold as I go.