Cool rainy night in Seattle, listening to Carrie Newcomer. Sore, stiff knee from a collision with a running dog this afternoon. Damp puppy snoozing on the floor across the room. House is very quiet.
Orcas Island theme on Gmail usually represents a foggy, gray island world. This reminds me of a trip to the BWCA years ago. Early morning, thick fog on the water. So quiet. I took a canoe out, and one of the women with me snapped a picture of my silhouette in the gray.
We have forgotten that sort of quiet in this noisy, city world. I have forgotten it, but wake occasionally at 3 a.m. to stick my head out the window. I enjoy the moments when the city is closest to that peace.
Friday, June 22, 2012
Wednesday, June 20, 2012
Dreaming An Ancient Land
The Mountain was out this afternoon. Stevie and I went down to the dog beach on Lake Washington. While he herded Chuckits and puppies, I contemplated the buildings that populate the shore on Mercer Island, and watched clouds play tag around the peak on the horizon.
I have been to wilderness lakes, where there are no buildings among the trees, and the touch of humans, while still present, is lighter. Still, it is difficult for me to imagine these hills as they must have been before the Europeans came. I picture dense forests, cut by paths, but no paved roads or freeways. I picture abundant wildlife, probably including species now extinct. I think there must have been a few canoes on the lake, especially in the early morning quiet, but certainly no sea planes taking off and landing, over and over again.
I have a hard time imagining this land with no cities, no clear cuts, no freeways. If Jean Auel's Clan of the Cave Bear series did nothing else for me, it provided hints of a landscape that was in balance, where humans existed, even thrived, but were still small potatoes in terms of their destructive effect on the Earth. In spite of this inability of mine, I still find myself trying to picture such a verdant wilderness every time I sit on the lake shore. That world is lost to us forever, and as I do not expect to live long enough to see us populate some other planet -- as yet unruined -- I feel that loss deeply.
The Mountain sometimes used to appear on the horizon with a clarity that I have not seen in many years. There is too much city and smog between the beach in northeast Seattle and the volcanic mountain that rises one hundred miles to the southeast.
Smog fills the valleys once filled by trees. A sunny day does not remove all of my sorrow.
I have been to wilderness lakes, where there are no buildings among the trees, and the touch of humans, while still present, is lighter. Still, it is difficult for me to imagine these hills as they must have been before the Europeans came. I picture dense forests, cut by paths, but no paved roads or freeways. I picture abundant wildlife, probably including species now extinct. I think there must have been a few canoes on the lake, especially in the early morning quiet, but certainly no sea planes taking off and landing, over and over again.
I have a hard time imagining this land with no cities, no clear cuts, no freeways. If Jean Auel's Clan of the Cave Bear series did nothing else for me, it provided hints of a landscape that was in balance, where humans existed, even thrived, but were still small potatoes in terms of their destructive effect on the Earth. In spite of this inability of mine, I still find myself trying to picture such a verdant wilderness every time I sit on the lake shore. That world is lost to us forever, and as I do not expect to live long enough to see us populate some other planet -- as yet unruined -- I feel that loss deeply.
The Mountain sometimes used to appear on the horizon with a clarity that I have not seen in many years. There is too much city and smog between the beach in northeast Seattle and the volcanic mountain that rises one hundred miles to the southeast.
Smog fills the valleys once filled by trees. A sunny day does not remove all of my sorrow.
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