Category: Nature

Dream

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Our imposed order of things gives time a direction, and all else seems to follow. But sometimes, this direction is lost, and certainty fails.

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Uncertainty means chance. Do we belong here?

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 It seems there is another inward structure, more punctual, more concentrated, like a poem, that manifests itself when the flow of time is obstructed.

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What Paul Celan wrote in his Meridian Speech  — the poem claims itself at its own limits, it calls and retrieves itself from Not-anymore to Still-there to persist without pause — becomes visible in extreme natural environments. In both there is seeking beyond these limits, words there, branches here.

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Is it possible to teach time to walk, to slide sideways?

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Poems, like dreams, are landmarks that help us to cross what we perceive as darkness of the mind. What seems wild and empty becomes possibility.

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Or do we prefer to sleep in our dreams?

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Memory and Imagination

Lick Creek Trail near Paoli is an 8 mile loop for hikers, mountain bikes, and horses. The southern branch is more scenic (and more muddy). Trail markers help to find the way…

 

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On a late fall day, much of it looks like everything else in Southern Indiana.

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Some trees offer perspective.

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But there is a highlight. Half way, there is a cemetery, which is all that’s left from a 19th century African-American settlement.

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There are just a few tombstones and wooden crosses, and it is hard to imagine what life was like for them.

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It’s a solemn place, reminding us that what others want to remember of us is more important than what we want to be remembered for.

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Lugentes Campi (Twin Swamps III)

I promised to return, and this time I came early enough, before sunrise, when the colors are still carried by darkness.

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The cypress trees with their robe like stems seem to have been waiting like limp angels.

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The boardwalk had suffered damage, and the railing had been removed for repair, providing unobstructed views for the adventurous.

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Are there swamp-green and cypress-red? 

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With colors like these, this place belongs elsewhere. 

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Different Trails (North VII)

My fourth stop on the excursion north was not planned, I just happened to pass by Cicott Park, named in honor of the owner of a trading post at this place, and decided to have a look.

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According to the small brochure, the area has never been plowed, and is therefore relatively intact. The two trails lead through a lush forest and give access to the Wabash.

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It was here that I met the first other hiker that day, a local. Despite there being absolutely nobody around, he was wearing a mask, and excused himself right away: He was recovering from chemotherapy and needed to protect his immune system. 

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He also said he was essentially the only person using these trails, and that the town was considering to abandon the place.

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For him, walking here almost daily had acquired a special meaning.

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The park also has a Potawatomi Trail of Death historical marker, in memory of the forced removal of over 800 members of the Potawatomi Nation.

Some trails you can only walk once.

Revelation 7:3 (North VI)

Right next to the Black Rock Barrens Nature Preserve is my third stop on the excursion north, the Weiler-Leopold Nature Preserve.

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It is dramatically different, with a leisurely loop first through tall prairie grass and then through woodland.

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Views are scarce, but colorful in late fall.

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Most impressive are several very tall and old oak trees. 

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Neither time nor space are ours.

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Light and Dark (North V)

Let’s return once more to my fifth stop on the way north, the Portland Arch Nature Preserve.

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The quality of darkness and light changes with contrast and  sharpness. When many shades of gray are present, we perceive them as a guide for depth, assuming that darker colors prefer the background.

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In images with strong contrast, however, the black becomes the substance, and the white the ether, the insubstantial. For some reason, our understanding of an image flips from the rational to the symbolic. We give up on perceiving reality, but instead accept that a more mystical interpretation of what we see is possible.

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This relapse into dualistic-mythological thinking is reinforced when the contours become blurry. We prefer to reject doubt, and are therefore happy to accept our first impression as truth.

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It is difficult to navigate a reality that is perceived like this, as the substance, the dark, to which we could hold on to as real, is at the same time more ominous and frightening, while the light that attracts us will not hold us.

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Black Rock Barrens (North IV)

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While the world waits, let’s continue to the second stop on my excursion North, the Black Rock Barrens Nature Preserve.

DSC 5501In contrast to the nearby Black Rock Preserve, this one features a decent long loop through the preserve, but no rock formations. 

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It does offer the opportunity to get lost in the tall grass. Doing so in the summer will probably result in dangerous blood loss due to insect bites.

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With a bit of effort and luck one can access the Wabash from here, too. It’s just behind the trees up there.

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Lamentate (North III)

 And I was moved to ask myself just what I could still manage to accomplish in the time left to me.

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Thus Arvo Pärt about his composition Lamentate, a piano concerto of sorts, inspired by Marsyas, the enormous sculpture by Anish Kapoor.

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Pärt’s Lamentate is, as the name suggest, not merely a lament but a call to arms, in order create a counterweight to the state of the world. Marsyas does this in its own way, too, in the form of a musical instrument filling all of space.

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The short canyon in Shades State park that leads from Devil’s Punch Bowl to Silver Cascades Falls is such an oversized instrument in its own right, to be played by walking it.

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The beginning is total silence.

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But, even during the worst drought, there is a trickle of water, feeding the fall with bits of sound and hope.

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Four years ago I attempted a prayer.

Lamentate. 

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The Flow of Time (North II)

My first stop on my expedition north was at the Black Rock Nature Preserve, which features sandstone cliffs and, we guessed it, a black rock.

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There is not much to do, but I didn’t ask for it, and the steep climb down the cliffs rewards with satisfying views.

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The preserve borders at the Wabash, with becomes a few hundred miles further south a tributary to the Ohio.

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Unlike time, a river’s past and future are certain. But this certainty has the disadvantage that it nurtures the desire to be elsewhere. If I entrust myself to these waters here, I will be in New Harmony after a while. 

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What certainty was I given when I was entrusted time?

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Certainty and time can both be merciless, each in their own way.

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Introversion (North I)

When I explain 4-dimensional geometry to the layperson, I usually begin with forward, sideways, upward, and, then, inward as the fourth direction needed. It helps a little.

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Earlier this month I went a few hours north to explore places I haven’t visited before, which is may way to begin an introspection.

One of the stops was the Portland Arch Nature Preserve, which features one of the rare arches of this state.

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To move inward, we begin with the broadest perspective, and then slowly refocus on the essential. Aren’t these rocks something?

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What was familiar begins to appear strange.

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The clearly structured 3-dimensional world begins to dissolve into abstract patterns of color and light.

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Are we getting closer to the core of things when we give up our grounding in a rationalized universe?

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And do we merely turn upside down when we walk under the arch, or do we also turn inside out?

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To paraphrase Heinrich von Kleist: Crossing under the arch a second time has helped to fall back into the state of rationality.

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