Light/Breezes

Light/Breezes
SUNRISE AT DEATH VALLEY-Photo by Tom Cochrun
Showing posts with label beauty. Show all posts
Showing posts with label beauty. Show all posts

Thursday, June 5, 2014

IMMORTALITY and THE GREAT CRUSADE

FROM JUNE TO HISTORY
    Time records extraordinary courage and human insight on two June 6ths.  
     Most recently, 70 years ago General Dwight Eisenhower called it "the Great Crusade," the D-Day invasion immortalized by the bravery of warriors, so many of whom ended their own mortal journey on the beaches of Northern France. A personal D-Day beach reflection follows below.
    75 years before that a single man, venturing into the unknown pondered human existence and the infinite.
EVERY NERVE QUIVERS
    John Muir made his first visit to Yosemite in the summer of 1869. On June 6th he wrote-
                     "We are now in the mountains and they are
                       in us...making every nerve quiver."    
       It seems that it has always been such for Yosemite.
     In 1851 an ongoing battle between gold miners and the native inhabitants, American Indians, reached a point where the famous Mariposa Battalion was sent in. Probably from the moment the Battalion saw the place, word about its beauty began to spread.
          On June 30,1864 President Abraham Lincoln set aside a grove of sequoias in the valley.  That marked the creation of the first state park in the US. 
        Naturalist John Muir, who spent years exploring the wilderness, campaigned for federal park status. It took 26 years and in 1890 Yosemite became a national park.
   Later on June 6, 1869 Muir wrote-
         "Our flesh and bone tabernacle seems transparent
         as glass to the beauty about us, as if truly an 
         inseparable part of it, thrilling with the air and trees
         streams and rocks, in the waves of the sun-a part of 
         all nature, neither old nor young, sick nor well, but
         immortal."
       Two rivers, the Merced and the Tuolumne flow through the park. There are 196 miles of road and 800 miles of trails. 
        The waterfalls are a signature, always spectacular, and even more so after a winter with lots of snow.


 Do you see the sprite or spirit dancing out of this falls in this frame?
      The land is described as "colossal."  Indeed it is.  It ranges from 2,000 feet to 13,000 and most of it is true wilderness.




    As Muir said on his first summer in Yosemite "How wonderful the power of its beauty."
    WHERE FICTION CARRIES TRUTH
    A scene from my novel The Sanibel Arcanum has the protagonist, Tim Calvin visit Utah Beach, a D-Day invasion sight with Stroutsel a Jewish survivor who had been part of the French underground resistance.
  The beach was windswept, large and angry.  The gray sky hung low over the rough choppy water, and the surf pounded the beach with an intensity that bordered on animosity. Old enforcements and battle walls, pill boxes and even strands of barbed wire were visible, while cattle grazed over the dunes in fields where one of the decisive engagements of mankind's warfare had been played out in blood.
    "You can sense the terrible loss just standing here," Tim said more to the wind than Stroutsel, whose face was turned toward the beach.  "Doesn't this bring back the anger, the hatred?"
     Stroutsel cut the misty wind of the beach with his gravel-like voice.  "Do not be eager in your heart to be angry, for anger resides in the bosom of fools. That's from Solomon in Ecclesiastes, Calvin, it would do well for all of us to remember it."
     They stood, wrapped in silence and reflection as in a place of prayer as sand, wind and salt spray assaulted them.  Stroutsel faced squarely into the wind."Baruch, atah- Adonai-Blessed are though, O Lord, my rock who trains my hands for war and my fingers for battle.  My loving kindness and my fortress, my stronghold and my deliverer, my shield and He in whom I take refuge.
      Tim stood transfixed by the moment and the sweeping emotions which girded them against the ghosts of this killing beach.
      "We are a mere breath, our days are like passing shadows," Stroutsel's voice faded as he walked north his eyes cast on the sand and looking out to the sea.  Tim let him go.  He walked to the memorials and read the names of those young men who had fallen on this strip of sand and sea."

    On Utah Beach alone some 2,500 US troops and 1,900 allied troops were killed. Thousands of others were killed on the other landing beaches as well as glider pilots and Naval support troops.  The Germans lost between 4 and 9 thousand  on D-Day.

    There is an almost palpable presence that remains on those Norman beaches.

    See you down the trail.

Monday, October 7, 2013

THE CURSE OF OBAMA and BEAUTY ONLY A FEW EVER SEE

WITHOUT PARTISAN DEFERENCE
    My first big city newsroom boss told me we weren't doing our job unless both democrats and republicans were mad at us. As you read on, know that I invoke that principal, as I have over the decades.
     President Obama has himself to blame for many of his problems.  And he has the mutant spawn of the old Gipper for the balance.
     Obama emerged as America looked for and needed a change.  He was fresh, historic, appealing to new generations and with communication savvy. David Axelrod read the mood of America, fashioned a political campaign in response and unleashed a passion for change.  Hope, you remember.  
      But there were two shortcomings.  Obama himself, a smart young man, but without the wisdom that comes with years of survival in Washington or the learning that comes with being knocked down a few times. The other was the naive belief that controlling the White House meant you had the most power, or the biggest club in the fight.
      When they had the chance, back when American was sick and tired of W and Cheney, and as the economy was coming undone, Obama, Axelrod and team should have built a true political movement, a gradual revolution if you will.
      They could have, in fact should have seen that a compliant congress was necessary to affect the CHANGE they promised. Instead of the White House only, they could have been effective in bringing about a wholesale change-House and even in the Senate.  There was a time in America when a campaign for the Presidency was a product of a top to bottom party movement-state legislative races, Congressional Districts and Senate campaigns. A full package. More than anyone in the last couple of decades, they had that potential and capacity.
      And there is the diffident, distant, professorial and even arrogant style of Mr Obama himself.  Had he been around the Senate a little longer, he would have learned the wisdom of the old boys and girls.  Collegiality, friendship, schmoozing.  For those of you old enough, think of Sam Rayburn, Lyndon Johnson, John McCormack, Carl Albert,  Tip O'Neil, Ronald Reagan, Ev Dirksen, Charlie Halleck, even the depraved and aberrant Newt Gingrich. They could deal, horse trade and find a way to make things happen.
     In addition to their shortsightedness and inept use of power there is the buzz saw of the Tea Party. Here's where I lay its ancestry to Reagan.  The great communicator spent years telling people the federal government was the problem. He was very effective at selling that point of view, even though all the while he was himself adding more debt and growing the government.  But one thing he and his guru Michael Dever understood was that it's all about appearance and image.  So the great Conservative/Neo Con progenitor unleashed a couple of decades of a "the government is the problem" mantra until latent generations believed it. Enter the disgruntled if not overly bright Tea Party players.
      Old fashioned traditional Republicans worry the Tea Party, who represents a strident, loud, belligerent and obstinate base, minority though they are, will continue to make the once GOP a laughing stock or kill it by a suicide of ignorance.
       I agree that Speaker Boehner is like a besotted eunuch  when it comes to political combat, with his own charges even. The recent SNL parody which had him parading around in panties and vamping was brilliant. But I am not so sure my Republican sources aren't a little out of phase. I sense that an increasingly tribalized American body politic, fed by an increasingly stupid media, mainstream and partisan, and a growing number of low information voters only plays into the hands of those who's intellectual depth goes to bumper sticker slogans.  Currently I fear that thought, analysis and a sense of history has been eclipsed by volume, rancor, selfishness and presided over by inept government.  It is a bit as though our highest level of aspiration or accomplishment is to look like a Greek or Italian government in search of yet another spiral down. 
       Maybe it is time to give each member of the house a walking stick and to urge them to use it as a tool of persuasion.  We have a long history of Congressional fistfights. Link here as you ponder if it might not be time to let them rumble!!  By the way, my money would be on Barry Obama to take crybaby Boehner down, quickly!
FROM THE PROFANE TO THE SUBLIME
   After enduring that rant you deserve something nice.  This is about as nice as it gets.  Included here are scenes from a hike that began at about 9 thousand feet and continued around alpine lakes and mountain streams to just below 11 thousand feet.  This is from Rock Creek Lake, in the eastern Sierra over the Mono and Morgan Pass trails to some of the most pristine sights on the planet.








   The frame above and below was our view as we paused for a back pack lunch.


     We were impressed by the "landscape painting" in the striation of this boulder.
     This is where the trail ended for us. Lana had a bad altitude headache.  I had no desire to hike alone as you can see the trail was becoming a little more difficult.
    So we decided to settle in and simply be overwhelmed by the quiet, serenity and beauty of creation.
    See you down the trail.

Thursday, October 11, 2012

BEYOND HUMAN SCALE

AWESOME
              The Sierra is a profound face of this planet.
     An October system brews over Tioga Pass.
    The range creates or builds a unique whether and climate. It breeds a bio/botanical environment in a rugged and wild beauty.
 Morning sun lights up a mountain wall in the June Lake region.
     Nature is a bold and massive exclamation, offering views that reboot the mind.


   


 Alpine lakes tuck between peaks at 7,500-10,500 altitude.
     These mountains can be spiritual and soul stirring. More exquisite than imagination while defining a perspective. The frailty of human strength goes up as an ablution.   



Mount Tallac 9,735 ft Near Richardson Camp
   They celebrate a purity as they rise toward the heavens. Ponder the imagination that went into creating these scenes.




Shadows, morning sun and moonlight.
     Mountains have a power on me. As kids we made trips to Colorado to spend time with my father's cousin who was homesteading above Boulder.  The Rockies took hold of something in my heart.  Dad took us to or through the Great Smokies a few times and again the mountains were magnetic. 
         We count as a blessing that we live so near the Sierra
and close to California Mountain Ranges.
      Looking at these mountains dwarf all the hype, hub-bub and hoopla of our human drama of the campaign. Those granite spires were here long before us and they will remain.
      See you down the trail.