Afton State Park

Ah yes. The splendor of the lightning flash. (Preferably in the distance.)

June 19. I made up my mind at 2:30 to come out here. It took me an hour to get things together. Went to Byerly’s for some coffee and also picked up some Dots. Got on the road at 4:00. Arrived here at the campsite, after a ¾-mile hike down a hill and then up another hill and across a field, at 5:18.

As far as I can tell, there’s no one else out here this afternoon. I can hear the faint purr of a distant boat down on the river, but for the most part it’s wind in the grass, goldfinches chattering, field sparrows trilling, and one or two other choppy sounds I can’t identify.

All the food I brought is already cooked, except that International Coffee—Swiss Mocha or Café Vienna—that we used to think was so sophisticated. Well, I still prefer it to cocoa.

A young meadowlark flutters by and disappears into the grass. I see four young men and women heading away from me along the ridge in the distance. Their voices had been audible intermittently above the wind—one of those evocative dream-like sounds.

To evoke. That’s a concept we don’t think about much. Yet the Greeks had a separate case for evoking things—which is to say, I guess, for “calling things up.” What things? The Gods, I guess.

The next question will be, Do such beings really exist? How can we know for sure?

As I sit here with my grilled pork, home-made tzatziki, and a cup of heavily-diluted Calvados, with the purple clover catching the late-afternoon sunlight, and the breeze tickling the hair on my legs, there is no doubt in my mind that the Gods exist.
“But” (you may reply), “this is only a manner of speaking. The ‘gods’ you mention are little more than pleasant sensations, natural phenomena with no real intelligence or moral ballast. Poetic fancies at best, but certainly not the kind of Gods that we can commit ourselves to, or seriously believe in.”
Maybe so. But beggars can’t be choosers. And it may be that our need to find and trust and believe in a single all-powerful and all-loving god arises as a result of our neglect of the household gods that surround us on every side. Poetic fancies? A manner of speaking? Yes. But also a manner of seeing and believing in things.

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(I did not like that big brown spider that was making his way across the front cover of Forbidden Words, by Portuguese poet Eugenio de Andrade, that’s lying here on the grass beside me, so I flicked him away. He’s now sitting silently in the brown dead grass a few feet away, motionless. I wouldn’t mind squishing him, just so I wouldn’t have to look over there all the time in case he’s coming my way again. But now he seems to have vanished!? Now I spot him again, a foot and a half from my knee, doing nothing.
Now I see two more of the same large but rather inconspicuous type, beside me on the path. Well, enough about spiders.)

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“A manner of seeing and believing in things.” I suppose I ought to consider it a precious gift, to be able to extract pleasure and perhaps even meaning from such trifles as a birdsong or a few weeds beside the path. And in fact I do think of such things in those terms. This raises an obvious question: “A gift from whom?” Here we come face-to-face, or at least dimly glimpse, that more all-encompassing type of God.

The thing about a gift is that we don’t earn it, and we don’t necessarily deserve it. Presumably we’re all equally worthy to receive it. But to proceed too far down that avenue of reflection would obscure the reality we’re on the verge of exposing—that poetic fancy, a way of seeing, brings us into intimate contact with the Gods. Also with life. Also with ourselves. A powerful trinity, don’t you think?

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Off to saw up some wood. And it feels good to work. It feels good to breathe deep. On the way back to my hilltop campsite, with an armload of four-foot slabs and a quart of water from the pump, I spot a beautiful indigo bunting in the grass. And I was hearing the wheezy two-part call of a blue-winged warbler just a minute ago.
This “seeing and believing in things” is perhaps a little easier to do when you’re alone. At any rate, solitude allows us to register and even relish our sensations. It’s when we have time to reflect on that skein of intimate connections we find ourselves in the midst of that the significance of the experience can really make itself felt. On the other hand, I frequently feel the same way when out biking with Hilary. We take in the passing scene and relish it, without having to discuss it with one another. I’m not referring to a moment of epiphany here, but to a sustained atmosphere of exhilaration.

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The purpose of poetry is to bring us into that realm in spite of ourselves, even if we aren’t “in the mood.” I don’t mean to suggest that poets and painters and musicians work with precisely that purpose in mind. But this love-feeling—Ardor Amoris or whatever Max Sheler called it—agitates us and fills us with the desire to share our intuitions. Maybe the urge is nothing more than to capture these blessed experiences for ourselves. But poets are notoriously sensitive to praise and criticism. They want to be known and applauded for the depth of their feelings. Presumably their sensitivity isolates them, and makes it difficult for them to develop social ties on the basis of more commonplace sympathies.
And why, after all, am I scribbling in this book, when at least ten goldfinches have just landed in the cedar tree above my head?

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It’s sometimes said that we live in a godless age. Against this thesis books are never in short supply arguing that, for example, modern art is a “witness to the spiritual.” George Steiner’s Real Presences can be taken as a case in point.
Such investigations of the spirituality latent in modern art may well be interesting, but it seems to me they miss the more basic point that the aesthetic act is by nature a spiritual act. It is an evocation of spirit, and at the same time a manifestation of spirit. Once we’ve recognized that something is beautiful—something we see or something we make—it’s pointless and redundant to add that its somehow “spiritual” too.

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Just back from a beautiful hike through the fields. I’ve never been out that way before. Tree swallows soaring above the golden grass, rabbits and meadowlarks everywhere. Two and a half miles is my guess. A fine postprandial stroll. In fact, in the late-afternoon sun I worked up a bit of a sweat.

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Nine PM. Still plenty of light. The tent is up and the fire is going strong.
I had some great thoughts during my walk, but somehow they’ve vanished.
I’ve opted not to put up the rainfly. My tent has ample netting in the roof, and it gives you the impression you’re sleeping under the stars, which is fine until the moon comes up. The moon won’t be up ‘til after midnight, however.
Maybe the time has come to open a book. Lighten the load on my weary brain. Have another watered-down glass of Calvados. And wait for the stars to come out.

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The birds won’t quit! The boats race downstream to their harbor slips in the waning light. I used to play outdoors in light like this. Now I stare into the fire, admire the clouds, and listen to myself think. Another form of play, I guess.

Great bands of pink clouds after sunset. Maybe I’ll see Mercury tonight!

See the world as yourself,
Have faith in the way things are.
Love the world as yourself;
then you can care for all things.
– Lao Tzu

I put another stick of wood on the fire, almost defiantly. Why not, I can stay up as long as I want.
The whippoorwill starts to sing down in the woods. Not close enough to keep me up, but a pleasant greeting from a bird I never see.

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To judge from sound, I don’t think there’s anyone out here but me. A perfect evening rapidly descending into night. Slight breeze. Few clouds. And just now a pack of coyotes starts to howl over in Wisconsin somewhere.
Now I see a single firefly down in the shadows at the edge of the woods.

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I did see Mercury last night. Not a big deal to some, perhaps, but I’d never seen it before. Small, multi-colored, and very bright against an otherwise blue sky to the west, with no other stars anywhere nearby. Two fingers above the treetops. Later, just to the west of Scorpio, there was a huge planet visible that I’ll have to look up this morning when I get back to the house.

I don’t mind having a watch out here, by the way. On the one hand, it’s the type of connection you don’t really need, and perhaps go camping to get away from. On the other hand, it’s interesting to know that I went to bed at 10:34 and there was still light in the western sky. Almost like Norway! And when I got up at 6:07 the sunlight was already streaming into the tent from all sides through the mosquito netting.

Just before I woke up, I dreamt that Hilary and I came into the nave of a church. We ended up in plastic chairs in the very front row. The light was so bright there that I could hardly open my eyes. I also felt rather conspicuous right there in the front. “I see some seats up in the balcony,” Hilary said. So we got up and left. Hilary was headed to the side door, which would have taken us outside. From that point we could come around to the front door and climb to the balcony from the stairs in the narthex. But I said, “This way,” and she followed me through another door and up a set of stairs to a secret passage which lead directly to the balcony. We were moving along this corridor, and just stepping over a bundle of 2 x 6s that was lying on the floor, held together by thin steel bands … then I woke up.