There were many wonderful moments along our journey but I want to share one of the spiritual summits of the trip. We did a week-long backpack in Denali N.P. There was a place I remembered from my ranger days where the space is incredible but it would take several days to get there. We got there in the late afternoon of our fifth day. The space and the light were indeed incredible. The weather had been fast moving broken clouds so cloud shadows drifted over sunlit tundra green. We camped at the confluence of three glacial braided rivers so there were four amazing space U-shaped valleys. Three looked upstream towards perched glaciers on steep mountains. One looked downstream over a very broad braided river valley towards the Outer Range ten miles away. Every hour one of the clouds would trail a light shower that would either sprinkle us for a few minutes or, more likely, miss us but change the light within the valleys or fill it with a rainbow. The light was ever changing.
Glacial rivers are very silty and drinking silty water in such a place just did not feel right. So in the evening (realize that evening in Alaska’s early July lasts 3-5 hours) I set off up a large alluvial fan to catch us some clear water. As I was walking up, a large dark cloud moved overhead. Instead of a shower, this one brought a squall. Strong gusts of wind and rain for probably 20 minutes. Thinking it would just be a short shower, I kept walking. By the time the storm finally past, I was near the top of the alluvial fan where, as I had assumed, a cold stream was cascading down out of the canyon at the head of the fan. The mouth of the canyon had cut down through vertically tilted strata. Dark, hard rock walls rose straight up on either side. The water was cold, sizzling with air bubbles as it cascaded down drops of several feet at a time. I filled my bottles from the midst of one cascade. Oh, it was wild water! Great slurps of oxygen water sliding down my open throat. Air after the squall alive with energy. Looking out from the head of the fan through the space of those four valleys whose clean air had now been purified by the squall to ultra-pure clarity and all the green tundra radiant with rain-cloaked vegetation sparkling in the golden evening light. “Yes!” I bellowed and stuck my 5 day unwashed face into the pool at the base of the cascade. Frigidly clean. The spirit was stronger than the cold and I submerged my face again and again, rubbing it clean with my hands. Behind the ears. Back of the neck. The throat. Drink more wild water. Then in my face went again and mindfully I gently inhaled the cold water up into my sinuses until reflexively I rose up snorting and taking deep draughts of air in through my clean nostrils. I did it again and deeper and fuller was the air inhaled. I stood up with stoked vigor. I wasn’t ready to return to camp. Going to the side of the canyon mouth and up the bordering slopes gained me gently green steep slopes of soft alpine tundra. The slopes had shapes that drew me up and around, away from the canyon. I’d see a sitting place ahead. I’d go and sit with the intention of then heading back. But the light and space was so intoxicating that I’d sit there gazing far longer than I assumed. And during that time, beauty further up the slope began to beckon so that when I arose, I arose within the golden evening light to traverse higher on the slope. And there was a herd of Dall Sheep ewes and lambs, so golden-white bedded down on golden-emerald green high above me. Ground squirrels and marmots announced my traversing presence. I walked and I climbed and such overwhelming beauty surrounded me and vigor filled my body. Every few minutes I was spontaneously exclaiming “Yes!” and “My God!” and “How Beautiful!” and “Thank You!” because of some new sight that came into view or because of some shift of light. What a gift this life is. How pure and direct are the pleasures of walking the hills of this Earth. What a blessing to be alive. And, delighted by the vigor I felt (after all I had hiked 5-6 miles with a heavy pack a few hours earlier), I realized I had allowed myself to drift into a pudgy existence over the last decade. I was capable of far more than I was practicing. Though I don’t have the energy I had in my twenties, I have far, far more than I had permitted myself in my fifties.
All of these awarenesses led me to appreciate the following quote I came upon in Banff/Jasper on our way home. “National Parks are maintained for all people – for the ill, that they may be restored, for the well that they may be fortified and inspired by the sunshine, the fresh air, the beauty, and all the other healing, ennobling, and inspiring agencies of Nature. They exist in order that every citizen of Canada may satisfy his craving for Nature and Nature’s beauty, that he may absorb the poise and restfulness of the forests, that he may steep his soul in the brilliance of the wild flowers and the sublimity of the mountain peaks, that he may develop in himself the buoyancy, the joy, and the activity he sees in the wild animals, that he may stock his mind with the raw material of intelligent optimism, great thoughts, noble ideals, that he may be made better, happier, and healthier.” J. B. Harkin, Commissioner of National Parks, c. 1930
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