Daylight comes finally, sort of: a light without conviction; a slumbering light, at rest upon the low clouds above the forest. The return of light has put aside one of my worries--- that darkness will reign unopposed upon the land (somewhat like the madman currently in the White House). The light is too feeble to banish the cold completely.

Today I had planned on taking a canoe across the lake. Or, rather, have the canoe take me. The indifferent sun, the cold breeze, has changed my mind. Today I will hike to the waterfall.

Rain can be expected, so I don my jacket, set my hat upon my head, stuff a plum in each jacket pocket, and head off to the trail. I am taking the long way to the waterfall by starting at the head of the trail via the fire road. This is three times longer than the route through the Scout Camp, but I don't mind--- what else do I have to do today? With no clock to punch, no boss' ass to kiss (not that I can remember ever doing so), no gazelle to gore... hiking sounds like the finest way to spend the morning.

Heading north along the fire road from my camp here at site F44, I look over the other campsites. Some appear flatter than the one I have chosen, and I wonder if it is worth the effort of moving. Maybe if rain were not threatening I would do so.

Finding the head of the trail is easy; there is a sign and an arrow pointing the way. Lewis and Clark should have had it so good. John Charles Frémont could have used one of these. La Salle could have found Louisiana ten years sooner with such a sign. Finding the Northwest Passage would have been child's play for Baron Nils Adolf Erik Nordenskjöld with an arrow just like this to follow. I turn left.

The trail is not steep. It parallel's the fire road, some twenty yards below. Walking along, I find bits of trash along the trail. Shifting plumb from starboard to port, I squat down, pick up a candy wrapper, and put it in my jacket pocket.

My hand encounters an object in my pocket. Withdrawing it, I discover a fortune cookie, left over from my visit to the Chinese restaurant a few nights ago. I break the cookie open, and extract a thin piece of paper. Upon the paper is written "Avert misunderstanding by calm, poise, and balance." Hmm.

Calm is no problem. I can handle calm without raising a sweat. As for poise, I can fake that for long periods of time--- upwards of fifteen minutes if need be. But balance? Not a chance: I refuse. I am a champion of listing port or starboard; I embrace being down at bow or stern. I even sleep on an incline, having to stuff a pillow under my left ribs to keep from rolling off the blanket under me. I like being unbalanced: it is the only way for a healthy human being to live.

Consider the effort required to achieve and retain balance. Every little psychic pressure that comes along--- broken shoelace, burned out light bulb, milk gone sour, skirt shrunk in the wash, no clean socks, lover murdered before one's eyes--- one must put effort into regaining that balance. Why the hell bother? Life is better on the edge, better at the extreme ends, on the borders.

Think of life on the borders. The diversity of species is greatest on the edges of two or more ecosystems, two or more niches. Genetic diversity, which is mandatory for a healthy population, is greatest on the geological edges of a species' population. Genetic diversity results in a more robust population, comprised of more robust individuals: better able to adapt to changes in environment.

Life in the middle, where one is calm, and poised, and balanced, sounds to me like a miserable place to be.

The path I am following has been demarcated with thin tree trunks to both sides. In parts of the trail there are steps made out of logs to help me alone my way. Very thoughtful. Certainly not necessary, but appreciated. Here and there, very infrequently, I pick up more bits of trash.

The Earth is damp under my feet. The sound of my footfalls is muffled by ancient pine needles, moss, moldy bark, under which granite gravel rests. The soil is suited for trees and only trees. The grass is sparse, having been robbed of sunlight by the pines, aspen, and juniper.

It's an odd type of juniper, much different than what I am used to in the desert. In the desert, juniper grows as much as fifteen feet, with its limbs bent, torn, twisted, maimed by the heat and wind. Here in the forest, the juniper lay flat and wide upon the ground.

Along the trail, here and there, I find chunks of quarts. I pick some up and examine them for signs of gold. Nope, no gold. I set the rocks back in the same place I found them.

Some people come to the forest to "commune with Nature." I think that's absurd. What do we humans have to tell Nature? It is Nature who speaks, and it is us who should, must listen. Nature tells us that we are animals, born of soil, rocks, air, water, and sun; we humans think we are so smart, so smug, when we consider ourselves "higher than the animals." We are animals! We are apes just as much as the gorilla, the chimpanzee, the orangutan, the gibbon. It is only our vanity that places us outside the box, outside the clade. I marvel that other people do not see how obvious this simple fact is.

Ten minutes along the trail, I come to a very large bolder made of pale orange granite. This rock is old--- older than the hills. Hundreds of millions of years ago it resided deep within the Earth, undergoing metamorphous with heat and pressure. Through the ages it has been trust up from below, while the material around it has worn, weathered, eroded away. It now sits in front of me, fourteen feet high, staring down at me like an ancient sage. I am at its feet, a bit of insignificant flesh. At the recess where the rock curves inward on itself there is a shallow cave-like depression. Within the recess the ground is dry, covered with granite gravel. If I had known this Grandpa was here, I would have spread my bedroll under his shelter, to sleep with his ponderous weight above me and around me. Maybe I will come back later with a blanket or two and spend the night.

The sound of water falling makes me think I have come across an automobile idling in the forest. I turn one ear to the sound, and the quiet roar resolves itself into falling, rushing, cavorting water.

The water is rushing down a slick face of rock. Over the ages the water has carved out dips and depressions in the solid rock. Water rushes into these depressions and then flings itself playfully a foot in the air. I eat a plum, then bend my face to the water and drink.

The water tastes like water should taste. It has a slight aluminum taste which is enhanced by its frigid coldness. Three poles have been lashed to trees, spanning the stream where the water plays. I take off my hat and jacket, and drape them on the poles. Walking up stream, looking for a pool of water where I may bathe, I discard my shirt. A few feet farther, my right shoe is left behind, followed a few feet later by my left shoe. Socks soon follow, then pants. I have left a trail of clothing behind me, as I stand naked before a shallow pool.

I am not alone as I stand here naked. Ten thousand trees stand with me. A thousand communities of moss and fungus sit and contemplate over the gasses they breathe in, the bacteria they digest. A handful of crows call over my head. The stream itself seems to be keeping me company.

I kneel in the icy water, which bites deeply into my cartilage, bones, muscle, skin, and flesh. My toes stick into the gravel of the pool, going in headfirst, nail-first. Facing the rushing water as it falls over rock and into the pool, I offer my head: not for absolution, nor as a penitent--- "sin" is alien to me--- but as in benediction, for the blessing of cleanliness from Mother Earth, from Sister Stream.

What the hell is "sin?" It is the alleged retribution inflicted upon humanity by evil, vengeful gods, as punishment for humans acting human. This is the epitome of sadism. The Deuteronomists of the Hebrew Testament were consummate sadists. They knew nothing of holiness, nothing of the sacred.

Only Life and Earth are sacred: everything else is piddling details. Mother Earth asks nothing of us other than respect for Her and Her children. When we do not give that respect, She does not wreak vengeance upon us: we punish ourselves. When we have no more water to drink; when we have no more air to breathe; when the land no longer produces food; when our numbers crowd out Nature's other children.... then perhaps we will have finally learned the value of respecting the divine. Of course, by then it will be too late for us.

The water is very cold. It clamps around my head like a vice, like a hose clamp. Bracing myself with one arm in the pool, I scrub at my scalp with the other. The icy water is painful but I do not relent. I gasp for air while I scrub, water rushing past my ears, past my open eyes, down my nose, into my gasping mouth. The cold becomes agony, and still I remain within its grasp. I scrub my face with a hand too numb to feel. I can feel my skull shrinking from the bitterly cold water. I cannot take the pain any more, and I withdraw my head, blustering and blowing through numb lips.

I sit on my heels in the water. I splash water on my arms legs, chest, back, and thighs, scrubbing at my body with my hands. Though I can barely believe my own actions, I once again turn to the falling water and trust my head under the falling water... only for an instant, just a bit more scrubbing of scalp and hair.

Standing, shivering, I use my hands to squeeze water from my hair, off my arms, from my legs. I feel clean. No, I feel more than clean--- I feel as if parts of me have been renewed, replaced. I look at the small pool and I observe with satisfaction that no sign of my brief presence within its cleansing embrace has been left behind. This is as it must be: I'm a visitor here, a guest, and it is not appropriate to leave anything behind.

Retracing my steps, I collect clothing as I had previously collected pieces of trash. I stuff them all under a damp arm until I come back to my hat and jacket. Using my shirt, I dry my hair, my arms, my legs, my backside. I'm oddly reluctant to put my clothes back on, as if by that act I will remove myself too far, too remotely from the trees, the air, the stream, the raw environment which surrounds me.

I get dressed, yawn, eat another plum, take a drink from the stream, and walk back to my camp.

It is mid-afternoon, and no hint of the sun has presented itself. It is bleak, gray, cold, damp. I feel the need to sleep, but I do not want to sleep. There's too much to do! I could walk to the lake and throw a stone in. I could temporarily move my tent and try to level my sleeping space. I could even join the crows in cawing, the ducks in quacking, the black squirrels in demanding to know what the hell I'm doing standing next to their trees. I could visit Candy or Della and see about renting a canoe or kayak tomorrow, if the sun comes out.

Lunch, that's the ticket. Now that I have a small assortment of foodstuff from which to chose, I am oddly drawn to.... beans. In fact, I now crave beans, must have beans, need beans. As I open a can of beans, a bird as blue as the tarp above my head lands upon my pickup, just ten feet away. It is as if the opening of the can were calling a house cat to dinner. Silly parallel; pure coincidence. The blue bird watches as I open a can of chilies, peel an onion, light the stove, pry apart tortillas. I feel responsible for providing food to my blue feathered guest even though it is no doubt curiosity and not hunger that has brought the bird. Surrendering to politeness, I break off a tiny piece of tortilla and toss in on the hood of my pickup, next to the bird. The bird is uninterested. It twists its head at me, looking at me through one eye and then the other, and then flies off without a backward glance. This tells me I am not very interesting after all.

Beans get heated; tortillas get toasted; chilies get salted and doused liberally with sharp cheddar cheese. A deft twist of the wrist with spoon in hand, a fold here and there, and I have a burrito. Good, very good. I have two more. I set the pot, almost empty, down on the ground at the edge where the tarp spills rainwater. If it rains tonight, the pot will be cleaned; if it does not rain, I'll wash the pot in the lake tomorrow. Maybe. It depends on how I feel. If I don't need the pot tomorrow, why the hell wash it?