“Pursue some path, however narrow and crooked, in which you can walk with love and reverence.” Henry David Thoreau
The path I tread over and over again these days is very narrow, very crooked, very jagged. It leads me to that which I am in love: volcanoes. Well, not just any volcano, and not so much the lava spewing caldera (though I have dawdled in awe near such a one) but rather the five or six volcanoes sitting in a southerly row on the west mesa of the Rio Grande rift valley.
I do not visit as often as I would like. I would live on one of these ancients if I were allowed. JA, Black, Bond, Vulcan, Anam Cara (soul friend), all beckon, ...a tiny hut would do, a one-room cabin like Thoreau’s, or a simple cave from which to safely watch the weather unfold.
Power dwells here, along with peace and possibility, but also danger. Tread nonchalantly at your peril. This rattler is but one example of the many inhabitants:
But where you might find hell, you might also find heaven. The noisy world of the city is replaced by silence…..the air sometimes so still, so serene…where solitude, ceremony, and insight sit side by side by side. Come! Walk with reverence. You will see (Carlos Cataneda-type ‘seeing”) not only visual wonder, you will see what wonder is and what can be.
What wonder is: the diversity of our planet. These critters can all be found on one volcano…Anam Cara. They are various bugs of the beetle variety. Wonder-full.
What can be: the image below begs you to imagine…
As the earth rotates counter-clockwise away from the sun, I give myself over to the swirl of the planet, orientate to the dance, and feel myself moving…a speck on the edge of this great sphere, grasping my proper place in the immensity of that which I am part. Feeling, also, my connectedness to the universe and to infinity.
Sometimes I climb seeking the full moon, and try to catch the rising moon in my hands,
then release the setting sun with breath.
If I stand on a volcano and wave my arms, I might produce the “butterfly effect” sending new winds, new events circling the earth.
If I stand atop a volcano and shout, “Take care of our planet! Take care of our beautiful home,” I might change the course of fate. It is right that I should consider these things both heavy and light, light as a beetle’s wings and as calamitous as human demise. Vulcanized.
Searching for Thoreau 