Sehnsucht: 3

Posted by Linda

I was thinking about the concept of Sehnsucht as longing and longing as sadness.  I think longing also carries in it a known happy experience so powerful that we hope (even against hope) to regain it. I don’t think humans long for something not real and not already experienced.  We might like the idea of living in another solar system but we don’t long to live there. At the same time, we don’t long for something commonly available.  We like sunsets and seek them but don’t long for them, unless we have been deprived of them.  No need to long for a sunset, we can help ourselves almost any day.  I think longing attests to the real presence of life experiences of such profound and fulfilling beauty that they prove the worth of our existence. That may be why Tennyson described longing as “divine despair.”

“Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean,
Tears from the depth of some divine despair
Rise in the heart, and gather to the eyes,
In looking on the happy Autumn-fields,
And thinking of the days that are no more.”

We may feel we long for something past and lost and irretrievable, or that we long for something we have never had nor ever will, but I think longing implies a known thing or we just wouldn’t know it was out there to have.  There is hope then in the ache of longing because it recognizes that the best has been available to us in the past and by extension is now and surely will be in the future.

Blind and deaf from her first year, Helen Keller rhapsodized about things she had not seen or heard since, or had never seen at all.  Through her vibrant imagination, sights and sounds became known things. She could describe the song of a bird through feeling the vibrations of the branch where it perched.  She vivified beauty simply through exercising intuitive instincts available to us all.   It is hard to imagine transcending the weight of longing to see and hear again, but she emancipated her senses and redeemed her loss.

Someone at this moment is having an experience that will one day be longed for again.  Why shouldn’t it be each of us?  We can claim and reclaim joy.

One Shot: Make it Count

Posted by Mike

I don’t like the image nor the use in the advertisement: “One Shot: Make it Count.“ The local personal injury lawyer with signs plastered all over our area is trying to scare injury victims his way. But I was thinking about his advertisement and the notion behind it while I was driving to work this morning, extending just a bit on the idea. The issue for me was life and time. Being rather far along in the second half of my life, time seems much more important to me than it used to. When you’re younger you think that you have all the time in the world, not only to do what you want to do, but also to waste a whole bunch of it!  Time is really very precious.  When you look at it that way, every day is of value — even this hour, this moment. I know that when we’re young we’re not programmed to give a whole lot of thought to this issue, though we all do think of it occasionally. At this point my desire is to hold on to the idea better right now and from now on. But I know something of human nature. I wonder?

At my age too there’s the issue too of regrets and guilt. I like steps eight and nine of the 12-Step programs: “Make a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.” And “Make direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.“ Lots of time we can’t make amends, but we can respond differently in the present and offer intangibles to others as well as tangibles to make up for past offenses. We harm others, of course, through acts of omission perhaps more than those of commission. Sometimes the omissions are far more significant than the commissions. Obviously, there’s no way we can really fully “make up” for what we have or have not done in the past; and therefore it seems to me that we do need to find some way to relieve ourselves of the excessive burdens of the past. Although we need to make amends as well as learn from our past mistakes and change the ways we think and act, carrying massive excess emotional baggage from our past does us no good whatsoever. We become mired in the past. When you’re like that, you’re just treading water, waiting for death  and of little value to yourself or for others. One of the big issues for older persons is that of maintaining their value, and trying to accomplish that while being burdened with the past is an impossible task.

Speaking of death, I got enraged at Death today. For some reason I was thinking about a woman psychologist I knew years ago, with whom I was friends as well as having a professional relationship. I ran into her accidentally in a work setting maybe fifteen years after our work together. A few years later I heard she had died of cancer. What I felt this morning was anger, not only about her premature death, but I thought of the others I have known who have died too soon, and I‘m also talking about people in their 70‘s and older too, who had a lot of life left in them. It’s not fair. It’s a loss – somehow our very personal loss, even if in some cases the relationship was only of acquaintance. Then I thought of those almost 5000 young Americans who have died in our current unnecessary wars (not to mention the thousands of non-Americans who have died in these conflicts). It’s not fair.

Of course it’s not fair. And I don’t feel anger now, just sadness – which is the authentic, immediate feeling reaction to loss, that we so often cover up with anger. “One Shot: Make it Count.” Perhaps we can soften the idea to something like “Relationships are fragile: Tend them carefully – with lots of love.”

We men on earth are probably on a very low level, but we have our task…that task is to bring consciousness to the life of earth – or, as Jung wrote in his old age, “to kindle a light in the darkness of mere being.”   –   J. B. Priestley, Man and Time

By embracing life’s fragility, that this moment is all you ever have, you awaken to life’s fullness and possibility.   –   Gary Buffone, The Myth of Tomorrow

Let us look lovingly upon the present, for it holds only knowledge that is forever true.   –   Gerald Jampolsky, Love is Letting Go of Fear

Life is a Quid Pro Quo

Posted by Mike

Linda and Barbara were talking about buying a gift for someone,and I interjected the comment, “Life is a quid pro quo.”  They were taking about relationships and the issue of giving and receiving was relevant to the context. What I meant was that in relationships we give something and we get something. In most cases we don’t do an accounting, but in general, I think that people tend to expect, consciously or unconsciously, to get back from others – in relationships – something roughly equivalent to what they give. It seems obvious. Isn’t everyone aware of this aspect of relationships? We all have known of people in relationships where it seems that one person is the primary giver and the other person is the receiver. Such relationships can certainly last a long time, but it’s likely that in most cases the giver develops some resentment. And the receiver develops a sense of entitlement, a specialness not justified by reality, but only by the character of the relationship. One can only give so long without receiving. For most people, the giving becomes burdensome; the giver can become resentful, angry, withdrawn, become isolated, feeling unloved. Of course, we’re talking about intangibles as well as tangibles – and I’m not saying one or the other is the most important. We’re talking about practical things like preparing meals and shopping, looking after and caring for and spending time with children, and about intangibles, like thoughtful and kind acts -  relieving someone of a simple task or a responsibility- affection, and generosity.

Why does it have to be a quid pro quo? I suspect that it has to do with the human animal. We humans, as much as we like to think we’re independent, are family/group/tribal animals. There’s no way we can survive alone – or perpetuate the species alone! To survive we must function in groups with others. Yes, we no longer live in tribal units with close contact and interaction with our tribal families like our aboriginal ancestors – and there’s no doubt in my mind that some losses have accrued to our corporate sensibilities as a result of this change – but to get along in the world and function in whatever group and society we find ourselves, we are interacting daily with multiple other persons and we are dependent on others in so many ways at every minute that we would be astounded if we really became aware of our dependence. For the group and for society as a whole, the process becomes an interdependence. Everyone is expected to share the load, to do his or her part. Obviously children, the sick or infirm, and the elderly must be done for at times, but in general the necessary demands of living are expected to be shared by all. Life is a quid pro quo.

Quid Pro Quo – Oh, No!

Posted by David

“Life is quid pro quo.” Is that really the way life is? I hope not. Most people take life to be that way. They expect outwardly and inwardly that if they do their part, they will get the other side of reciprocation. Is life just a series of subtle and not-so-subtle contractual engagements? I hope that’s not the case.

Here are some types of quid pro quo thinking:

“I’ll smile and be polite, then…”

“If I give her the job…

“If I take care of her kid this afternoon…”

“If I marry him…”

“God, if I believe in you…”

Expectations such as these are a setup for disaster, because life is not quid pro quo. Life isn’t so mechanistic, at least not the life I know. If it was, there would be no hope, no grace, no joy, no love. We’d be bound in slavery as Quid-Pro-Quobots.

We have a self-determination that allows us to choose and ask and grant and love. With that comes responsibility. My three-year old boy and I were talking about responsibility recently. And he was wondering if Magpie our cat was able to be irresponsible. He had noticed that she would get on the table and clearly she knew that she wasn’t allowed to. As with many of his deeper questions, I had to think about how to respond. I explained that cats aren’t able to be responsible, but that Magpie still isn’t allowed to get on the table. I probably hedged a bit in my explanation. Then he went on to ask about other animals and whether or not those animals were capable of being responsible or irresponsible. Neither of us were completely satisfied with the conversation. Even so, I still hold that animals don’t have the ability to be responsible, yet we do. We make willful choices and that characteristic places us under an umbrella of Justice: God’s justice, that is.

God’s justice is perfect, but that doesn’t mean life is an eye for an eye, or if I rub your back you will rub mine. Relationships aren’t so simple. God’s relationship with us isn’t that simple. If relationships were, where would the friendship be? Friendships aren’t so rote. But isn’t that the contract we see established with most relationships. Those relationships are doomed to fail or become drudgery. True friendships don’t work that way. They don’t care what the other has done for them recently. They act in love. True friendships are much more like water flowing in a river than life living under the bondage of quid pro quo.

Sehnsucht

Posted by Mike

Wikipedia defines “sehnsucht” as meaning “longing or intensely missing,” but goes on to state that the term is “almost impossible to translate adequately and describes a deep emotional state…similar to the Portuguese word, saudade.”  And that “It is one of those quasi-mystical terms in German for which there is no satisfactory corresponding term in another language.” The author Georg Tabori is quoted as suggesting that the “ardent longing or yearning” that is implied is closely related to the “addiction…that lurks behind each longing, waiting to turn the feeling into a destructive, self-defeating force.”

I have this notion that virtually everything that we think or do has its costs and benefits; consequently the suggestion above that beneath the overwhelming feeling contained in sehnsucht lies a counterface, a shadow side that might contain hidden costs appeals to me. I’d like to hasten to say that generally the major costs likely to be associated with most of our behavior that we would consider commendable is that in thinking about and doing action “a,” we are are using up time and energy that could have been expended upon “b” to “z,” to the power of infinity. Nevertheless, the costs-benefits notion not only seems to have validity but also usefulness at times. One other aspect of this notion [and the issue of what might be considered a notion rather than an idea, concept, construct, fact, or truth is also obviously something we could explore in these columns. Personally, I tend to consider as notions ideas and beliefs of others that I am completely unable to abide and for which there is no verifiability. I admit that my use of “notion,” referring to ideas of others, is often not a pretty picture] is that our ability to predict all of the consequence of our actions varies from excellent to rather iffy. Fortunately, few of us are so severely obsessive-compulsive that the conflict related to the consequential costs and benefits of our activities ends us in stasis. To survive not only as individuals but as a species we are “designed” by natural selection to consider these issues, mostly at an unconscious level, and then to act. That’s one of the myriad of design features of the human animal that has been adaptive. Come to think of it all organisms must have it, or they wouldn’t be around.

But I’ve gotten off the topic and need to get back to sehnsucht. And I must relate my own personal feelings here, because it seems that there’s no other way to go, except to relate what others have had to say about this aspect of the human condition. My own experience with intense longing for what is missing – and this would be something from the past, some things never attained, something missing in the present, ineffable “things,” is that such feelings that I have had that seem to fit the meaning of the word come and  go and change considerably over time. Right here I’m not about to be so personally self-disclosing to go into detail, but I can certainly relate to the notion, having experienced intense longing myself. I can also relate to the idea of a kind of low grade longing that propels us into exploration and learning experiences. This is likely often a longing to know and to understand that which we don’t know or understand but which is knowable or in any case that we believe it to be so. I expect that journalists, medical students, scientific researchers may often be motivated by such longings, though I admit that this idea itself is just my notion.

Philosophers and theologians have an intense desire to know and to understand. At what point does the need for the satisfactory meeting of the need – for understanding, resolution, finality – lead to premature conclusions as to the nature of reality, in order to attain that feeling sense of completion? Humans seem to eschew not-knowingness and tentativeness. It seems that we are truly uncomfortable living in the state of anxiety of being unsure or uncertain. I suspect that often we move to one polarity or another of an issue primarily because we can’t live with that anxiety of indecision. We are always seeking answers. Fortunate we are that we are able to ask the questions.

I suspect that we all will continue to experience sehnsucht periodically throughout our lives. We can learn that we are able to live with such feelings and that they propel us to consider, explore, study and that the outcomes for us can be truly greater understanding of ourselves and the world around us. Knowing that we and those around us experience this same feeling that we each have difficulty in articulating and understanding – one of Carl Rogers’ terms, “felt meanings“ seems appropriate – cautiously talking with each other about our own very personal and well guarded longings would likely slowly edge us solitary souls a little closer toward each other.

Insanity in individuals is something rare – but in groups, parties, nations, and epochs, it is the rule.  -  Friedrich Nietzche

Sehnsucht

Posted by David

I recently came across the curious word, Sehnsucht, while reading an article by C.S. Lewis. It forced me to look it up. It’s German and doesn’t seem to have an adequate translation in English. It’s the sort of word that’s difficult explain in any language. The closest word I know to it is nostalgia.

Wikipedia states, “Sehnsucht is a German word that literally means ‘longing’ or in a wider sense a kind of ‘intensely missing’.” I get the feeling that this word may refer to a peculiar, fleeting mood that overcomes me every now and again.

My wife was looking at a Lopi knitting book a few years back and I noticed a photograph of a house along the sea in Iceland. For a few moments I was overwhelmed with the feeling. It is like deep nostalgia, but because I’ve never been to Iceland, it’s a nostalgia for something I’ve never known. I get the same feeling for the ‘North’ country, whatever that means. High latitude skies, cold winds across the bracken might trigger the feeling in me. I also get this feeling from simpler things, especially good children’s literature. Try the original Winnie-the-Pooh Series, especially the last chapter of The House at Pooh Corner.

I also get the feeling when think about The Hobbit and Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings series. After reading those books in rapid succession, I went through a mild depression when I realized I had left the place for good, the series of books were over and I couldn’t go back. Today, I still long for the Shire in my life. But it can’t be. I know that. There is a purpose of Sehnsucht and its purpose is to point us in the direction of life. We are not supposed to go back or retreat into or relive or even seek out to restore the Sehnsucht in our lives. I expect that one day I will awaken into it. I will learn that it was God calling all along. If I understand correctly, this is how C.S. Lewis understood it, too.

Just a couple of days ago I had another experience with Sehnsucht in the early morning hours. I had one of what I call my ‘Nostalgia Dreams’. It’s always the same. I’m in a beautiful dream, usually of childhood. Then I slowly recognize in the midst of the dream that it’s only a dream. Then it hits me. An intense wave of sadness, akin to depression, sweeps over my body. The feeling is so strong that I’m shocked into consciousness. At first, I can still feel the deep longing and sadness. Within about a minute or so, it is mostly faded. But the feeling never really ever fades completely. My entire being lives partially in Sehnsucht. Today, I know it’s God calling me home.

It makes me wonder if Jesus lived his life on earth with this feeling. As Emanuel, ‘God with us’, how greatly he must have longed to return to his Father.

The light ahead was growing stronger. Lucy saw that a great series of many-colored cliffs led up in front of them like a giant’s staircase. And then she forgot everything else, because Aslan himself was coming, leaping down from cliff to cliff like a living cataract of power and beauty…

Then Aslan turned to them and said: “You do not yet look so happy as I mean you to be.”

Lucy said, “We’re so afraid of being sent away, Aslan. And you have sent us back into our own world so often.”

“No fear of that,” said Aslan. “Have you not guessed?”

Their hearts leaped and a wild hope rose within them.

“There was a real railway accident,” said Aslan softly. “Your father and mother and all of you are—as you used to call it in the Shadowlands—dead. The term is over: the holidays have begun. The dream is ended: this is the morning.”

And as He spoke He no longer looked to them like a lion; but the things that began to happen after that were so great and beautiful that I cannot write them. And for us this is the end of all the stories, and we can most truly say that they all lived happily ever after. But for them it was only the beginning of the real story. All their life in this world and all their adventures in Narnia had only been the cover and the title page: now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story which no one on earth has read: which goes on forever: in which every chapter is better than the one before.

The Last Battle, The Cronicles of Narnia, C.S. Lewis

Art Versus Science – and Bread

Posted by Mike

I’ve never quite clearly gotten the distinction that is often suggested when a reference is made to a skill being more art rather than science. I think I get the general idea: that science relates to a procedure that has been developed through rigorous experimentation and that once obtained has been clearly described and passed on as a well-defined set of steps; whereas when art is predominant the talent lies in the ability of the individual practitioner and either cannot be taught and passed on to others or can only be replicated in a sketchy manner, which would be lacking the subtleties and finesse of the master practitioner.  Does that fit with the way you see it?

Certainly a great deal of skill is dependent upon natural proclivities, learning, experience, and repetition or practice. When I drive to work daily I sometimes marvel at the ability of hundreds of people within my field of vision, driving like me, and who are able to navigate adequately to keep from ramming their cars into others and causing a giant mess. Driving is clearly a skill that requires a lot of practice to perform well, but something that most anyone can do reasonably adequately without getting into trouble. I guess here we’re talking about a normative skill, something that doesn’t require the exactitude of science, but that also doesn’t demand the unique expressiveness of art.

Maybe that’s it – that art relates to the personal expression of an individual, reflecting his or her inner life and feelings as applied to a medium of expression within the context of the subject chosen by the artist.  There’s a distinction too that is easier to grasp, between art and craft, although it may be that there is considerable fuzziness and overlap between the two. The essential aspect of art is that it is the personal expression of the artist, reflecting his or her inner life – with such expression perceived by the viewer/perceiver of the art as beautiful. You can have art that reflects terribly gruesome aspects of life (e.g., The Scream by Edvard Munch), but beautiful in this instance doesn’t refer to ideal attractiveness, but to “what stirs a heightened response of the senses and of the mind on its highest level” [ American Heritage Dictionary].

Craft and craftspersons have tended never to receive enough credit for their work. The essential aspect of craft is that what is produced is functional and that it is produced by hand, as opposed to mass produced. If the craftsperson is himself/herself the designer and if the design is individualized and unique in some way and reflects beauty in the eye of the beholder, it seems to me that we can call the product art. If the product is mass produced, we don’t have craft production, but may very likely have art in the design. And let us not neglect to say that the ability to provide multiple copies of great art enables it to be shared by many who would otherwise not be so graced. A purist might say that a copy never possesses that certain “je ne sais quoi” of the artist.

Would you say that the Doric columns and the friezes on the Parthenon were carved by craftsmen or artists? Obviously the columns required one kind of skill and the friezes required another. Also, we know that there were people we would now call architects or engineers that designed the structure, and clearly the friezes were designed by artists, though no one would deny that art was involved in the overall design of the structure. Were the craftsmen who carved the friezes artists in their own right? Obviously we don’t know; but we can conclude that the people who did the stonework were all highly skilled, working from detailed designs, and likely not able to individualize their products using their own imagination or creativity, as was seen in some of the religious sculpture adorning cathedrals in the middle ages.

I’ve been cooking bread for four or five years now. Bread making is generally not thought of as an art or a craft, but I’ve been rethinking the issue after reading The Village Baker by Joe Ortiz [1993, Ten Speed Press]. Mama Mia! There’s more to bread making than I would have thought possible! It’s clearly a craft with artistic aspects, and to do it well requires great skill. I became intimidated on the first page, and must confess that I remain, after working at bread making desultorily for several years, a rank beginner. That’s part of the problem, of course – I mean the desultoriness. I think I’m beginning to see (and I’m not learning this just from bread making) that to really become good at anything, what is required most of all is practice, practice, practice – so much so that at some point, one begins to function on automatic. What that means is that the neurological and muscular responses are so well learned that they are managed at a subconscious level. I suspect that though we are unaware of it, virtually all of our well learned activities are controlled and directed at a subconscious level. Our awareness is literally the very tip of the iceberg of mental processing.

The term culinary arts does seem appropriate. Working with and preparing food is a craft, because its products are functional. It’s an art because good food preparation requires personal expression, and though it can be taught, there remains a degree of “je ne sais quoi,” that certain something that comes from the soul of the practitioner.

Okay, I have to admit it: My bread never rises like my daughter-in-law’s does. Could it be that it’s her “je ne sais quoi”?

A Colloquy of Saps

Guest Post by Alan Gibson

Social heresy: stop being so cloyingly, insufferably polite

There are variations, but typically it goes like this:

“How’re you?”

“Fine. How’re you?”

“Fine thanks. Nice to see you.”

“Nice to see you.”

What’s the point of all that? Cordiality? I never feel buoyed by one of those exchanges; I feel diminished. For all the “how are you’s” nobody finds out how the other is.

And that’s too bad because it’s a splendid query—how, at essence, are you? But the question presumes a certain intimacy and investment of time. Ideally, the parties would be lounging with drinks, watching water or a sunset.

A friend explained to me that the casual ‘how are you’ is genuine in that the asker wants to be reassured that the other is ‘all right.’ Which to me compounds the disingenuity since no one is ever all right this side of a lobotomy.

“You’ve go a bad attitude,” my friend remarked. “There’s nothing wrong with being polite.”

There is, however, something wrong with emptiness, with essence being trivialized, with substitute yammer for authentic openness of spirit. It would be a fine thing if more of us told one another how we are. But you can’t fake the discourse, or short-cut your way to that kind of understanding.

Previously published in the Picken’s Progress

Hurricane Hill at Night

Posted by David

For me, Helfa didn’t cross my mind, not once. Our trip up Hurricane Hill at night was a movement into the Sublime. I wanted my dad to go there with me. I have been there, at night in the wilderness, so many times before. I wanted him to experience it with me.

Walking at night in the wilderness at night has been an important part of my life for many years now, at least as long as I’ve been an adult away from my parents. It makes no difference whether the moon is full or new, if there are at least a few stars visible in the universe above, the experience is the same. I walk out into the vastness of God’s creation and feel as if the universe and I are of the same ilk.

I can touch the moon. I can touch a star. I can reach out and touch the hazy blur of Andromeda. The light in my eye from these distant places is just that: in my eye. Their light is in me. I am a part of them and they are a part of me. In the sublime, I find that the speed of light is irrelevant. Time and space is irrelevant. The stellar bodies, their space, and me are of one body: God’s creation with Christ as our head, as Teilhard de Chardin would remind us.

On that special night, when my dad entered the sublime with me, the stage was set with a grand sunset. The fiery ball had sunk beneath the edge of the earth minutes before we arrived at the trailhead. In its wake a sea of crimson and orange faded upward into the earth’s blue shadow. The light-sharpened and serrated western mountainous horizon provided a pure Gestalt form for my time-boundless psyche to explore. The brilliant light in the sky above and solid-opaque Olympic Mountain below tunneled into my subconscious sparking memories unresolvable, memories that are more akin to the dream of an infant. Those are feeling-stories spoken in color and form, without words, without names, and without knowledge, but full of wisdom. They are the stories worth telling. I wish I could tell them with words or more plausibly with music. They shatter my worldly reality. They are the words of God himself. Jesus tells these stories. Jesus is this story. I am only an infant yet a brother in the Sublime.

The horizon of which I consumed followed us all the way to the top of Hurricane Hill, waning as the stars and quarter moon waxed.  At the top we could see long horizontal lenses and tails of Zephyr cirrus clouds over a small corner of the Pacific. The curve of the earth was detectable, maybe only through logic. I tried to take some photos for my dad. There is no justice in those picts.

I write this now and hesitate to describe what was on the other side of Hurricane Hill. I hesitate to mention the lights twinkling in the cityscapes below. I hesitate to cast your eyes northward upon the array of lights spreading in a linear scatter plot, mapping out the landforms and massive waterways from Port Angeles to Victoria and onward over the San Juans to the metropolis of Vancover, British Columbia. I hesitate because I don’t want to look back into the choppy sea of humanity, but to look forward to the peace and sublimity of the Kingdom of God.

But I cast your mind’s eye on those lights in the cities, towns and houses, because those lights represent the sublime too. Just look beyond the facades, push aside the pride and prejudice, throw off the rose-colored glasses, clean up the self-pity, rip off the dead skin and look. There it is. See. See all the stars. Focus in on one, on yours. It really is.  You’re right. It’s not all that much different than Alpha Centuri nor our sun for that matter. But your star is very special. Keep it uncovered and you’ll see where it takes you. It’s the most important thing God ever gave you. For it is you. No you don’t! Don’t you dare hide it under that bushel.

This little light of mine. I’m gonna let it shine…Let it shine, let it shine, let it shine.

Helfa Reigns

Posted by Mike

Helfa, a Rhode Island Red hen

She’s brown, round and plump, but clearly the “alpha” party in the group.  She had flown the coop one time too many that day. If some chickens insist on being free range, Helfa was one of them. I wasn’t aware that free range chickens actually stick around the home turf, but learned that from Helfa. Generally she would range the yard up to the street or even crop a few bites from the neighbor’s grass, but she never went far.

In exasperation David tried several techniques using additional chicken wire in likely escape  hatches and he clipped her wings so close that she now had little penguin wings. Before that, when we shooed her in from atop the stone wall behind the pen, she was able to slow her landings a little, but now coming down she looked like a 747 with twenty foot wings.  It was always a hard landing.

Along toward evening David reminded me that this was the day, after dinner, that he and I were to drive up toward Hurricane Ridge. He wanted us to be successful in climbing the “Switchback” to the ridge beneath Mt. Angeles. Two years ago I had given up on this hike – apparently with only a couple of turns to go. I think he believed that if I made it to the top this time, it might have some kind of salubrious effect on the aging process – in me. At his suggestion I was immediately guarded. “You know, I’ve been thinking that it’s just too much for me. Let’s just stay down here tonight.” Down here was Port Angeles, Washington, at around 500 feet in elevation. Up there was near the top of Hurricane Ridge, at about 5,000 feet.

David doesn’t take “No” for an answer. “Dad, if that’s too much for you, we can climb to the top of Hurricane Hill. It’s not nearly as steep. It’ll be wonderful.” Sometimes it’s difficult if not impossible to disappoint such enthusiasm. Besides, he needed to get away for a few hours, from both a crying baby and from Helfa.

By the time supper ended Helfa, the other hens, and the maybe rooster were safely ensconced in their coop, secure from the claws of local raccoons and other predators, and David and I were ascending the road to Hurricane Ridge. The ridge tops out at about 5,200 feet, not far from the tree line in the Olympics. It actually is a ridge. The road rides along the very top for a mile, then dips down and rises again ending at a parking lot where the trail to Hurricane Hill begins. I had hiked the first quarter mile several years ago. It’s flat with little rise. The only problem is that there are places not more than five or six feet from the path where the drop-off is — shall we say — only a few thousand feet or so.

When we arrived at the trail it was already dusk. It was a relatively clear evening and the sunset to the west over the northern edge of the Olympic range was spectacular. It was the autumnal equinox and fortunately at that time of the year (actually probably most of the year) at that latitude twilights and sunsets last a long time. I had hoped that we would turn around at the end of the flat trail – about a quarter of a mile – but no, we were going “to the top” of Hurricane Hill. “It’s not very far, just a few switchbacks. Nothing like the steepness or distance on the ‘Switchback’,” said David, providing the reassurance that would prevent me from refusing to budge at the end of the first quarter mile.

We trudged onward – and by now steeply upward. At six-two David was ambling. Being shorter and a  flatlander I was taking what seemed comparative baby steps, grinding away at the gravel, pacing my breathing and steps so I didn’t start puffing – and beginning to think that I’d show this whippersnapper Western guy, my son,  that despite all I had what it takes.  I want to say here and now for posterity that I only asked, very calmly, “How much further is the top?” twice. If you hear anything else regarding that issue you can disregard it immediately as disinformation. We continued to trudge onward and upward. The light and sunset were really fading now. The valley to our west was pitch-black. Fortunately there was slightly more than a quarter moon in the western sky that would be good for another four or five hours and it provided just enough light to see the path. The trail switched back and forth. It steepened. I asked if that clump of trees above us was the top – where we were headed. “No, we’re not going  there.” No! We were going further up!

Finally, the path narrowed, became indistinct and strewn with much larger boulders and we arrived at the top of Hurricane Hill. By now it was almost completely dark. But we were indeed on the top of a peak, with a commanding view of the Strait of Juan de Fuca. From our perch at 5,757 feet, we could see beneath us to the right all of the lights of the city of Port Angeles. Across the Strait were the lights of Victoria, B.C., and it seemed like we could see beyond the western edge of Vancouver Island to Barkley Sound and the islands beyond as well as half of Vancouver Island, though I know that couldn’t be possible (it’s 300 miles long!). It was striking that to the north of us there was visible the lights of at least several hundred thousand people. To the west and south of us there were no lights. The vast wilderness of the Olympic Mountains was essentially uninhabited for 30 miles to the west and at least 50 miles to the south.

The time exposures David took really don’t do the scene justice. The ghost in one of the pictures is me! The trail up had been 1.8 miles and I had stuck with it.  The result was rewarding. The next best thing would be to do it again, next time during daylight, when you really would feel like you are on the top of the world.

I’d like to say coming down was easy. And I guess it was. I had prepared for emergencies by secreting a very small flashlight – like someone might carry on a key chain. David was ambling back down the path seemingly with the night vision of a cat. I never let on, but I was unable to see anything but his vague shadow ahead of me, at times fading out completely in the shadows only to reappear later in a minimal shaft of moonlight. Later I said that I only used the flashlight briefly three times coming down and intend to stick to that story regardless of any other opinion. We arrived back at the car after hiking about three and a half miles in two hours, with the flatlander none the worse for wear. Driving back down to Port Angeles I heard tales of mountain lions and other animals bounding across the road on previous late night forays, but alas the only thing that crossed the path of the rented Ford Focus was shadows.

The next day Helfa was at it again. David was constructing yet another Maginot Line. That one too was not effective. This all occurred only a week ago, so I don’t have current information regarding Helfa, but it might not be a pretty picture!

[see map at http://www.nps.gov/PWR/customcf/apps/maps/showmap.cfm?alphacode=olym&parkname=Olympic%20National%20Park Enlarge the section of map south of Port Angeles. You will see the road to Hurricane Ridge and the trail to Hurricane Hill to the northwest of the Hurricane Ridge Visitor Center.]