There is no distinct trail to follow out to Wiz Dome, more it’s a path that meanders through the trees and boulders, riddled with tiny frogs of gold and green and marked with the impressions of bear, coyote and deer. Over the summer I took that path to Wiz Dome about a half dozen times. At first uncertain of my steps but eventually learning the way and getting acquainted with the natural landmarks and the old trees who wear their bark of ages, showing their wisdom of the world. My trips out there were to climb this incredibly beautiful line so aptly named,”Sacred Fire.” Over the time period of some weeks there I was familiarizing myself with route, learning the moves, unlocking sequences and finding my rhythm.

The day I redpointed we went out in the morning. The air was still crisp and the moon still out. The coyotes were yipping in the distance creating a wild feeling that circulated through the air and gave the perspective that everything was alive. The place vibrated with the energy of life that morning and I was excited to be part of the landscape, to be one with the movement of the rock.

I started up the climb, clipping as I went, breathing heavy and hard and feeling uneasy about what to expect and how it would feel. I was getting ahead of myself, my mind racing towards the future while my body struggled in the moment. I became pumped and I fell, a nice big clean fall. Coming to rest, feeling a bit of surprise but feeling great relief I realized that I had been racing too fast ahead in my thoughts and that I wasn’t fully engaging myself with each move and step, I was caught up in expectation and fear and because of that I lost my power and strength and focus. I lowered down, rested and centered my thoughts on what I had just done, where I had gotten, and what I needed to do to finish the route. I saw myself at the anchor clipping in and then I concentrated on my breathing. I lay at the base of the climb letting my breath relax and connect me with the place, with the coyotes in the distance, the frogs along the trail and the sweet smell of the pines and cedars. I was ready to try again, this time feeling completely free of any fear and expectation. I started up the route, very sure of my movements and completely present in each moment. Feeling incredibly relaxed I advanced up the rock to the anchors. I had learned how to harmonize myself with the route, following it’s lead. It had shown me where to go and what I would find as I got there. Clipping into the anchors and preparing to lower I realized that “Sacred Fire” has shown me my innate and intimate connection to the living world.

The granite rocks where we sat together

on the twinkling, sunlit, river stream.

A gentle breeze blowing the tall grass

and I can see you there with me.

Your body is gone but your spirit lives on

and I can feel the love that you gave me.

I shed tears of happiness for the life we had together

and I know that our souls are intertwined forever.

out in the trees, dirt on our knees
we laid him down forever
and on that hill there it was still
as in the ever after

he lays his rest we knew it best
to lay him down so gently
and now he sleeps where moss does creep
and no more is he with me

the birds did cry, and so did i
to think of life so lonely
and in their song i heard it long
what sadness, and what beauty

your friend is gone, but you live on
in life you loved him fully
but now little streams and forests
dream
and all is made more holy

“Dogsong 2” by: The Be Good Tanyas

What is the value that we place on life?

I feel that I’ve been pondering this question more and more lately.

In early June I had the great privilege to help with a camp for youth in the Foster Care program. The whole goal was to get them out of the confines of the city and into the mode of just being in nature. A goal that was accompanied by the hope that through their time outside they would come to know themselves better in someway, that they would come to have a regard for nature and through that have  a deeper respect for themselves and their own invaluable gift of life.

I think in a small step that goal was met to a degree we weren’t anticipating. Shortly after that week I sped off in a jumbo jet across the continent and landed in NYC. A totally different world – a world apart from what I’ve come to think of as home.  My time there was spent with much reflection and appreciation for all the things I’ve seen and felt in my mere 30 years as a human being.

The last evening I was there, there happened to be a shoot-out in the courtyard next door. Someone was killed. In a way we felt like it was normal, like yeah that’s what people do to one-another. But, in a deeper sense of understanding of life I knew that it was a terrible cause of poor human understanding and lack of regard for what we as humans are suppose to be doing.

The next day I once again sped through the sky, ripping the air with wings of steel and eventually landed back in California. On the drive back to Yosemite I came across a little fox that had been hit and killed by a car. I stopped the van and went to move the little creature out of the road. It was still a bit warm, and so tiny and beautiful. I was deeply saddened as I placed it in the tall grass under an oak tree. The contrast between this little being just trying to cross the road and getting killed by a motorist and that of two humans intentionally shooting guns at one-another was bigger than I could handle. Both instances felt like unfortunate circumstances of human ignorance, both felt like disregard for life.

Yesterday John Bachar died. He died whilst free soloing. Something he had come to be famous for, something that has been glorified through the climbing industry thus failing to portray how really serious it is ; a gamble with living. This was a man who was an icon in the climbing world for his rope-less feats – something that placed him in a realm of the untouchable to his adoring fans. But more than that he was a man; a human with a family, with a son, with lives that depended on his. And, so now he has passed from this human life onto other things.  He died while free soloing. And I’m sitting here pondering what is the value we place on life.

Last month when I was in Bishop a mouse got into my van – she was there the whole time I was out there. But I thought that she was just coming in at night and then leaving and that I had left her there. However when I returned back to El portal I realized that she had come with me. I bought one of these really simple humane traps and actually caught her 3 times – I would go up the back hill to the road and release her or down to the play park but she would come back by 3am and would be back in the trap, I couldn’t believe how persistent she was. Eventually I went to a meadow and set her free there. 2 days later I was in my van and I could hear this little squeak and it was coming from under the fridge. I opened the cabinet there and pulled out the stuff that was stored there and in the stuff was a tiny little baby mouse. I couldn’t believe it! No wonder the mom mouse kept coming back. I felt so bad that I had busted up the little family. In the back of the cabinet on top of the wheel-well was a nest. I looked in it and through all the stuff that was under there and found no other mice. I took the baby inside and warmed it up and fed it milk with an eyedropper. It was so hungry. It had been 2 days with no care! And made a nest for it in a shoe box. The next day I was in the van putting my laundry away and I heard another squeak! It was coming from my bed, the one above the driver cab. I pulled back the quilt and there was another little baby mouse! I was so shocked. How had it gotten up there!? Had it smelt us sleeping there the prior night and made a determined effort to get to us in a means for survival? Nevertheless I brought it inside and warmed it up and it ate a little bit. I put it in the nest with it’s brother and they seemed happy to smell one-another. Two days went by and the first little mouse I found was doing great – eating a lot and really moving around quite a bit. The second little one was hardly eating and really wasn’t moving around too much. The morning of the 3rd day I fed them both, right after I finished feeding the second found mouse it died. Suddenly and with a full stomach. This really saddened me, I wanted him to survive – I was hoping against the odds that he would get his strength. I buried him in the back hill next to the cat. I then packed up the van with the shoe box, and an ice-chest of formula for the other little guy. I went to Mariposa for groceries and a car wash. I left the shoe box on the passenger seat with the little guy in there with a hot bottle of water to keep him warm. I was in the store for about an hour and when I came back I glanced in the shoe box, but I didn’t see the little mouse in there. I loaded all the groceries in the back and then went around to the passenger door and opened it – i was thinking maybe the little guy had gotten out and was on the floor. Right when I opened the door I saw a little mouse on it’s back on the floor. I thought it was the mouse from the box and I quickly picked it up – it was very cold. I put it under my shirt next to my stomach to get warm. I went around to the driver side and turned on the heater and then took the sweater out of the shoe box to wrap the little mouse in. It was then that I realized the mouse that was originally in the box was still in the box! meaning this was yet another mouse, a third mouse. by this point she had been without food for 5 days! I was amazed she was alive and found her drive to survive so impressive. After a little while she was feeling really warm and started to eat and I placed her in the box with her litter mate. They, too, seemed happy to have found one-another. For the next couple of days they did quite well. But, she was smaller than he and was definitely not eating as much. At night they were very active, getting out of their box, running all around me, and playing. Mice are nocturnal. And this was making for really poor sleep at night – that with the fact that at night they eat double what they eat during the day. Sunday morning they seemed like they were cold. I came inside and heated up some water to refresh their water home-made heater and while I was doing this the little girl, the thrid mouse, passed away. She did it slowly and with such grace. I felt sad once again and carried some guilt about the whole situation. I buried her next to the other one. The other little guy was growing and going through some changes – his ears had popped up and his eyes opened. I woudl take him outside in the sun and he would explore around a little bit eventually coming back to me and going to sleep. Tuesday evening after he had eaten and was sleeping soundly in his nest he, too, passed away. It seemed so sudden and unexpected. And so I buried the third little guy with the others. I can only hope that they felt loved. It was really something getting so close to them and seeing what little mammals they are. They really were so much like little humans.

http://vimeo.com/2323323

Stretching through land older than the time we measure – bringing with it the poison and the sickness that we so willingly take on – there is a buzzing sound emanating from them, around them, through them. the wind sounds different when it swings around these giants, the wind sounds angry as it whips them with it’s being. all along the desert taking from  the runoff to fuel lives way way down below. an electric stream of  “progress” so backwards that it takes away in order to create a disconnected way. under these towering, amped up giants lies the evidence of the sickness creeping in. the broken bottles of shattered dreams and the filtered remains of polluted souls.

north fork winding through the canyons warmed by the hues of the life springing forth giving to everything so that it gives back to you. in the ripples of the wake, flowing with the life that sparks and speaks inside in an embrace on the sandy bottom two newts come together to move the story onward. on the banks of your bushy, manzanita surface tucked into the coolness of the earth your medicine plants thrive with the life surrounding. the soft, fury, mint green leaves touching my tounge and closing my eyes i’m transformed, taken into the heart of where i am  tasting and feeling the river flowing past, the sand under my feet, the newts in the water and the air that we breath.                                                           

 One of my favorite things to do with my most loyal companion, Sid, is to take a stroll up the hills behind where I live. Time after time something always reveals itself to me. On one of these walks my attention was drawn up towards this oak that had made it’s home in a rocky, sloped wall of earth. I studied the tree for a minute and then laughed out loud. There in that tree was one of the goofiest faces I’d ever seen. Comical, comfortable and light-hearted. This tree, which had rooted itself in a spot unlikely to be very supportive of such life had really made a home for itself. This tree spoke to me of it’s life and it’s message. This tree was there just being a tree for the sole purpose of just that, being a tree. It cared not what it looked like, because it is living for itself – it is living to be exactly what it is regardless of whether or not it looks funny on the outside. In that funniness was comfort and knowledge. That tree was being a tree for itself and for no other reason or want. In that observation this wonderful  tree told me to live for the self, to live for the act of living and in doing so there is freedom, freedom to be who or what you are, freedom from worry about what the outside world thinks or wants, freedom to live in your own dream.

Getting ready to go to the Bay Area – my friend is giving a slide show. He’s going through his slides now – Yosemite to Pakistan. I’m so intrigued to see these stories that make up his life. It reminds me how unique we each are to our own individual journeys and how great it is to share them.

Imagine if we all had slides of our lives to show – as we sift through the years, the people, the events and the places and recount what it all meant to us then and now – and what were the lessons along the way – we would all probably be better off.