Standing with Dave Talamo breathing in the rolling stream below, the crisp air makes my vision shudder; this is NATURE, both absolute and receptive in it's ISness. And this is Dave's gift to this story as it unfolds: that everyone along the path has a gift, a magic potion, viewpoint, perspective, value, or standard that clears a way, that gives life and meaning to the path. Dave's gift is a deep care and respect for this natural world within which we stand and breathe.
Dave's emphatic wonder with these grand trees creating their own thin bed of soil upon this impenetrable rolling thunder of pure granite mountain and the dipping flight of little russet-brown birds is not just youthful joy. It is a wonder that he has cultivated into a knowledge, respect, and honor of the natural world. He is both a pilgrim here, and a part of the landscape. Watching and listening to him is a window into the most basic form of human alchemy: wonder, tempered by experience into knowledge, transforms itself into a respect and honor for this observed, experienced otherness. I wonder if in this deepening of the relationship of wonder, the observer becomes both a part of the wondering, and a witness to it?
Monday, July 28, 2008
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