Mountain: "I Am."

I drafted this blog a few days ago, posted  it, deposted it, and now am posting it again. The Tofino content hasn't changed, although I have more to add in the next entry or two. The personal content.. I remember a night with my friend Jim at "Joey's Place" in Toronto, about 13 months ago (christ, it seems like a lifetime), I was drunk and flirting with the waitress. It was late and I was telling Jim about how my marriage had ended and my subsequent wandering, and he said, "reminds me of Springsteen - 'like a river that don't know where it's going, I took a wrong turn and I just kept goin..' "

It's true, I said, everybody's got a hungry heart. That doesn't make anything I do right. It just is.

the old knot:
cleave to this,
though faithfulness, all faithfulness,
cuts at the heart
(that wreckage carved out by choice, the heart)
& cleave this -
whatever is split
will carry its shadow, that second road,
its yellow leaves falling and falling
in the steep woods of our hundred other lives

I'm not sure about the middle lines, the "wreckage" and "faithfulness" parts, but the end.. I know all too well. The steep woods of our hundred other lives.
I was recently faced with a choice of continuing to be in a relationship (maybe I had a choice..;) or with someone else. The second someone - was me.

Cleave to this, ... and cleave this...

The poem is called Doppleganger, by Jane Hirshfield. My friend Ula has a book of her poetry, it's kind of sexy and sometimes gory, both physically and emotionally. I randomly flipped to this poem when I first realized I had to make a choice.

It eventually became clear that it had already been made, because, as my brother said about me, after being on this adventure for so long - I'm addicted to being happy. So, I'm single again and 'free' on my path. Although after eleven months of itinerance I'm not really sure what freedom means. That is, clearly, to be addressed in another entry.

And headed back to Tofino this weekend. It always comes down to Tofino, doesn't it? Seems to for me. Not sure when I'll give in and just move there. A friend once suggested that maybe loving people wasn't my path, but places in nature. Maybe.
Tofino seems to be getting set up for some sort of showdown, sometime. The provincial government in BC has a pro-mining agenda. We have a conservative federal government. Imperial Metals has done exploratory drilling on Catface Mountain, for copper. They say it's because they want to help the Ahousat, of course, not out of greed. And now they've acquired another property in the area - Fandora, an old gold mine.
This is all in a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve. And one of the most sacred places on Earth.
But really, "nothing's as precious, as a hole in the ground."
I was thinking about how depleted our forests are, how rare and exciting it is to walk in old growth forests, but really - they should be everywhere!
And we think of ourselves as being so rich. And at the same time act like a family fallen on hard times and selling off the last of their heirlooms at the pawnshop - for enough money to buy a couple bigmacs and some cokes.

Cleave to this, ... and cleave this.

Who are we? Flipping through some Deepak Chopra the other day in the bookstore, he said something like; "we never ask ourselves; who am I?" So I did, regarding the decision I had to make. Did I want to be someone who stays in a place they no longer feel is quite where they belong, out of fear or insecurity, no matter how lovely it is?
It lead me to think - what do we want as a society? Because we can't have both. We have to choose one path, and cut the other away: we can liquidate every last place on Earth, for money, and spend it today too. Or we can count our riches differently.
Can we make it so that; the steep woods of Clayoquot Sound, and all the other places that are sacred to us, as a society and as individuals, are not "yellow leaves falling and falling, in the steep woods of our hundred other lives"?

Did they get you to trade
Your heroes for ghosts?
Hot ashes for trees?
Hot air for a cool breeze?
And cold comfort for change?

We don't have to make that trade. We can be our own heroes. We can have trees, a cool breeze. We can change. This place means a lot more to me than money, I've given up a lot to be here. I'll go to Tofino tomorrow and breathe the sweet, wild, cool air, listen to the mountains, the beaches, the birds, they don't say "gracias", but simply; "I am."

And so do I.