I caught the sun before it crested the Blue Mountains on my birthday. So grateful.
Happiest day, beloved Joy Train Rider! I love you! Bless you! I affirm we are doing well.
You can gauge how much I love you from the fact that I’m taking us out today, as it’s my practice to do nothing for anyone but myself on my birthday. Today marking three-quarters of a century that I’ve lived happily and relatively carefree on Earth, my heart overflows with gratitude at the wealth of family, friends, loved ones and amazing experiences with which I’ve been blessed. I am so grateful.
I also know deeply that a state of gratitude is the key that opens more to be grateful for, and being born in love with ever-present nature is the fount from which perpetual enjoyment flows.
Aa if to put a fine point on it, this morning my sister, our frequent guest conductor Bethany shared this rapturous quote from Mary Oliver in her blog:
“When it’s over, I want to say: all my life I was a bride married to amazement. I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.”
Oh joy! So it’s not just me that enjoys this ecstatic relationship with life And aw you know, whatever one can do, almost all can do if we choose to apply ourselves
As if the universe just wants to throw abundance at me and you, and remind us of TRUTH in this mendacious time, this tour that our brother the recently-retired Park Ranger Shelton Johnson led us on in 1997 leapt out at me. Because I know Yosemite and many of the sights and sounds he describes, I’m following with my eyes closed. If you haven’t given yourself the luxury of discovering Yosemite National Park, I think this will awaken a hunger in you:
“A letter from Yosemite
“My name is meaningless. No face appears in your mind when you say my name, no memories sparked into a recollection of old times, but we are kindred spirits, you and I. You who read these words, although we have never met and may never meet, we share the experience of living in this land in this time, and perhaps we have shared what it means to be of African descent. That heritage is often more varied and rich than we imagine, for I write these words in Yosemite Valley, with the far thunder of Yosemite Falls sounding.
Privileged to spend my birthday in Yosemite with Shelton, Superintendent Mike Tollefson and my husband Frank the year his masterpiece, Gloryland was published.
“I sit in a government office in Creation’s heart. I hear it pound like the waves of the sea, an African where there are so few, an AMERICAN where there are so many. I work here as a Park Ranger. I live here as a man in love with rock and sky, inhabiting a place that seems to be the origin of rock and sky.
“It is a place that is also an idea; that the Earth is sacred, that it should be protected. The notion of National Parks is an American invention. The materials of this invention come from all over, but it was here in this soil under this sky that a dream was assembled; is still, piece by piece, becoming.
“But there are those among us whose ancestors drank from the Niger; there are those whose sleep is not illuminated by this dream, who have not seen what sunlight is capable of in mountains, who have not felt the profound quieting of the soul when soul and mind and body are all steeped in this place. (Muir called it ‘the range of light.’)
“This very morning, walking to work, I watched mule deer move in the high grasses of Sentinel Meadow, move out of the stillness of the night into sunlight, into my presence. And they kept moving towards me, unafraid, knowing I was present, but daring the encounter of our two worlds, the human and the primeval, walking tentatively but decisively to that which has destroyed them, without fear; with beauty before them, behind them, beneath them, all around them. This beauty that is eternal, that is Yosemite, that is the Earth.
Mule deer in Tuolumne, Yosemite.
“There was no one else to see this entrance into the day by these mule deer, walking as they have always walked, the sound of water falling from clouds, yes, behind them a creek was dropping 2,000 feet from the sky.
“But I was mistaken. The deer were watching; the Redwing blackbirds were watching; the Mallards in the open meadow were watching; the two coyotes moving slowly in the wake of the deer were also watching and they are all inhabitants of this moment that joins stone to soil, grass to deer to coyote to human to all things living and soon to live, and it all makes sense. There’s no reason to question or to wonder why.
“And then there was the sound of a car and something in eternity shook, was ruffled, and the feeling drained away, vanished like a spring rain in the desert and was gone.
“These are the thoughts of someone you do not know, may never meet, someone who is your relation, who is tied to you by culture and blood; someone who is far away in the mountains, someone who is speaking, but whose voice you may never hear.
“I am telling you something about your country that you may or may not already know. I am not talking about America. I am talking about what America is built on. These shining rocks are the foundation for the sky, the foundation of the country. When I say country, I do not mean simply the United States of America. I mean this country of ponderosa pine and black oak woodlands, this country of talus slopes and meadowlands, of rivers meandering and gifts of soil and light.
“This is the America under America. This is the America surrounding America. This is the America within America. In this place. I am writing these words to you wondering what is an African-American if he or she is not in America?
“My dream is to fully inhabit the country I call my home. My dream is for all of us to fully inhabit the Earth we call our home. Yet how far away is my family in Detroit and you who are my family in Chicago, in LA, in Gary Indiana, in Atlanta, in every place, every urban environment where America has been bound up in asphalt, steel and glass?
“Here America is free and it moves over bright rocks singing, yet people call it water. Here America slips through air whispering, yet people call it Mallards or Merganser. Here America rises all around like a great cathedral, yet people call it granite.
“This park, all parks devoted to the natural world, are windows through which one can see the shape shifting of Creation, what America is made from, the building blocks of a nation. Here, the frontier that made us who we are as a people can still be found. Here in Yosemite is where George Monroe, an African stage driver, escorted presidents. Here in Yosemite is where Buffalo soldiers moved on horseback in the shadows of the highest mountain range in the lower 48.
“Native people have lived in Yosemite since the dawn of Creation. They did not feel the need to move unless winter made the suggestion. This was, and is, their home. They were native because they chose to fully inhabit this place. Its essence saturated them and their culture as it did the culture of the deer and the coyote . All are people, all children of the Earth.
“The value of wilderness, of mountains without end, of turbulent forests and green silent places to people of African descent, to people of any descent, is perhaps the opportunity to reestablish ties with an estranged part of one’s own family, one’s own home. Whether we recognize it or not this is where we all come from and where we’re all going. We’ve never really left. We only think that we’re someplace else.
“ ‘The end of our journey is to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.’ That was something that T.S. Elliott said decades ago. He wasn’t Indian. He wasn’t Ahwahneechee, but they would’ve understood. Whether you call the land Africa or call it America, whether you called it Detroit or Ahwahnee, in the big picture you’re talking about the same place.
“So you might as well live where you are and learn the language of the trees, birds and the sky. If you listen deeply enough and long enough to coyotes conversing, or Canyon wrens singing, you may slowly become aware of the depth of their talk and the shallowness of ours.
“Time to stop jabbering. Outside my window the falls are calling my name, and I must go.”
Ohhh beloved Rider! How profound and lyrically joyful and boundless is that? There are so many themes we can explore in this majestic tour, especially in this day and time. But today I just want to live in bliss. It’s my birthday after all, and I too must go and feast on nature and good food and drink in great company. In honor of my celebration I’m making this ride free today. If you value it I encourage you to join us with a paid ticket. I thank our riders who support my efforts with a paying ticket that allows me to be generous. I invite you to
and thank you in advance. Until we ride together again Monday all being well, I leave you back here at the station and bid you One Love!
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