As above, so below

Are we going to make it

To the next Big Show?

It was Father’s Day and my wife and daughter had offered to make me breakfast in bed. But as usual, I awoke in the early morning quite a bit before them so I decided to take an early walk in the nearby forest and go back to bed for breakfast upon my return..

We live in town, but our house is only three blocks away from a parking lot for a trailhead which serves a small network of mountain bike trails through a public. forest. The other public access point for the forest is over by the high school on the other side of town. In between the two access points there are several miles of looping and intersecting trails. There is also a creek that meanders through the forest but none of the bike trails go near the creek because the steep gorge walls surrounding the creek make it rather difficult to descend to the bottom. Nevertheless, it is possible, if you know the way.

We call it… “the Precarious Path.” But it’s really only a little precarious. It’s a very narrow deer path that hugs the side of the hill/cliff and descends diagonally down to the water. It just a short distance off a main bike path but it’s hard to see unless you know what to look for. If you have never walked it before it does appear to be dangerous and tricky with long painful tumbles to the bottom of the gorge should you slip and fall. But I have walked it many times and fear not falling because I know what awaits me at the end of the path….

Paradise… or at least, that’s what I call it; a natural cathedral for intense nature worship. The moss covered rock walls of the gorge rise up all around me as I walk barefoot up the meandering creek at the bottom. Morning sunlight dapples through the trees to light up the forest with an ethereal glow. Sunday morning in church… That’s what it feels like. Makes me think of childhood and my Father. He was a church going man. Every Sunday, and weekdays too; with active participation at sacred rituals and holy day events. The catholic church was the center of my father’s social life and the primary focus of his communal instinct. I, personally, rejected the Church as a young man. But that doesn’t mean I rejected my father’s “way of life.” I just chose a different center for my social life and a different focus for my communal instinct. The church I go to now is the great outdoors.

After walking round a few bends in the meandering creek, I reach my special spot. It’s a hidden little pool with a small waterfall on one side and a rocky shoreline on the other. This is where I perform my sacred ritual. Engage in my unique form of nature worship. Do what I love. There is an incredible variety of rock shapes and sizes to work with and everything I make here will be temporary. Every few months, the creek overflows in a big rain and thereby knocks over any of my creations that are on this shoreline. Indeed, there was recently a rather big flood that destroyed my most recent effort so this Father’s Day morning, I have a blank shoreline space upon which to create. The trees are blocking all the sunlight but the small waterfall is the perfect background. What shall I make today?

Was I planning to build a half circle arch or did the arch just happen by instinct or luck or an act of god? Just as I started building I decided to dedicate the morning’s creation to my father because it was Father’s Day and I had been strangely thinking about him a lot on my walk. I built two stone towers next to each other by the water ‘s edge and then connected them with a triangular shaped crossing stone. It seemed a fine monument to my father but I didn’t notice the circular shape to the opening and there wasn’t good light In the shady gorge for photographing. The creation seemed complete though and it was getting late so I headed up stream.

It was just as I reached the waterfall on the other side of the pool that the miracle happened. Suddenly, there was light. Sunshine had found its way through the green canopy above to beam down upon the creek bed where I was standing. I climbed up to the top of the rock beside the falls and turned around to look at the pool and shoreline behind me. A single beam of sunlight passed through a hole in the canopy to shine directly upon the sculpture I had created while another beam flashed upon the reflective pool in front of it. The image before me was practically mythological. A perfect mirror image. The half circle of stone above the water combined with the half circle below to form a ring and the ring was lit up by sunlight to make it look like it was golden or magical. A passageway to another world? Or a gateway to heaven?

That’s when I remembered my father again. He passed away about five years before. He didn’t die on Father’s Day because it was on a Tuesday and Father’s Day is always Sunday but it was very close to Father’s Day. What was the date again? Oh my God. That’s when I realized it was that very day. I was witnessing the golden glowing ring in the water on the fifth anniversary of my father”s passing. Perhaps it really is a gateway to heaven.

In the following weeks, I return to the same spot on several occasions. I build another level and a second window to the sculpture. And I make sure to be there between 8:30 and 9:00 am to catch the sunlight shining through the trees just right to hit the pool and turn it into a mirror.

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