When I first came into the mountains of the Salmon River, I lived in an area of Black Bear Ranch called "the domes". A small collection of handmade dwellings along the theory of "Bucky" Fuller. Three were made of 4X8 foot pieces of 1/4 inch plywood, magically united in an Escher-like maze that transformed into a new-age living space. I lived with Milagra and Myeba in Myeba's dome, built with plywood, shakes, tar-paper and plexi-glass on an intricate frame of peeled fir poles. It leaked. They all leaked. We had dry islands of floor space in a general sea of wet everything. The bed was dry. At least until the night that a massive icicle fell from on of the overhanging firs and shattered the shatter-proof plexi-glass skylight.
The way to the Domes was across Black Bear Creek from the old road near the old Black Bear Mine foundry, by way of a felled fir tree (un-railed until the day two-year-old Shasta walked down the road and across the bridge alone. Michael arrived the next day and put up rails and chicken-wired it).
Fred had dug a hole and built a rather elegant, if basic outhouse, down creek and up the hill side, away from the creek and dwellings. A two-seater, with a roof. No walls, just a roof. One of the better outhouses of my extensive experience. Kinda gnarly little path up to the structure, but a peaceful view.
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It was the Winter of '69. A beautiful, snowed-in-since-Thanksgiving kinda year. One morning I woke about dawn with the urgent need to move my bowels, so I put on a blanket-lined Levi jacket, pulled on my Vibram boots, laces flapping and trudged, bleary-eye and buck-naked (not even close to being awake) through the falling snow and up the hill to the shelter of the outhouse. Even through the haze of unwilling awareness I knew that this was spectacular morning. Snow mutes all sounds, so there was a distant quality to the subdued babbling of the creek below me. The tree boughs hung heavy with the weight of the night’s deposit of fresh fallen snow. |
So there I sat,. Chin in cupped hands. Too quiet even for thoughts, staring at the creek and snow shrouded, shake-sided gypsy wagons on the other side... then the tree fell.
Does a tree falling in the woods make a sound if there's no one there to hear? The ultimate Zen koan.
If that tree is laden with snow, and falls to an earth covered with eighteen inches of fresh powder, then I had found an answer. In my completely-in-the-moment state, it might have been said that nothing existed separate from the reality, of moment, of place.
I watched with wonder as the fir, about two feet in diameter and seventy five feet tall, fell to the earth and did no more to disturb the silent prayer of that morning than gently place the kiss of winter’s breath on my cheek. A cloud of snow rose silently and settled just as silently. Nothing but a jagged stump marked its former place, soon obscured by the snow that continued to fall... Nothing but my accidental/coincidental presence was there to record it. No record but my sense of vision to attest to it. I slowly walked back to warmth of bed.
The creek continued to the river, to the sea. Sun continued to illuminate the day, to fade once again to night . I had been given a beautiful gift and I walked in life differently. The gift of a moment.