Of Deep Time and Unintended Pilgrimage

Myths are repeated to allow us to make sense of an incomprehensible world. When the facts are too vast to hold in our hands we carry narrative as if it were the last precious water cupped in tiny ineffectual palms: "In the beginning God...". For all we can hold concerning tectonic plate movements and eons of glaciers washing over the land then receding in a ponderously slow tide it would be easier to appeal to a force only fettered by our imagination and then move on with our lives. Allowing the mind to trespass in the epochs of deep time is to open oneself to existential questions that reside on a ridge between wonder and nihilism. Which is to say we are lost, safer to forgo such an ascent. Yet, with a column of volcanic rock to the north and empty space spilling from the edge of a cliff not formed by erosion to the south I found myself on that precipice without my conscious consent, whatever narratives I still held spilled from my fingers. 

Entering the forest at the base of the cliff the topography above is a mystery, shrouded by a forest that feels as if it hides the old gods, the gods we have forgotten, gods Virgil and Homer had no names for. Then we ascend without preamble or foreplay only upward, always upward over the living and dead, through cascading water. When we sought wisdom or guidance there was labor to be given either by ceremonial ritual or peril laden journey now we simply arrive, absent effort, hands open. The mysteries of Delphi have long turned to ash and yet there may still be value in pilgrimage. The magnificent trees give way to their sisters, dwarfed and twisted by exposure, the forest becomes crowded, new growth stretching for light. Even then I didn't know what truths lay ahead. Patches of snow begin clinging in the shadows until all is covered, fresh mule deer tracks proliferate and they become my focus. Quieting my breath, slowing the pace of my heart I strain to hear these ghosts in the ragged burn. While I am grateful for them and my chance sighting of their lithe bodies they, however, are like us, of a time that is not terribly old even if we feel the world to be as it always was. 

It was here where ridgeline faded into ridgeline and the wind bit hard where columns of basalt set my mind to where I was in proximity to where I've been. An ancient and long dead volcano in what is now known as the Goat Rocks Wilderness was where this basalt had originated. What I had taken for granted ceased to make sense and felt as if I was missing vital information, the land didn't make sense in my admittedly sophomoric understanding. So once home my maps and books were spread on the floor and learned that the place where I stood was formed by lava flowing into a glacier. What is now a lush forest was once the site of something I can not fathom: ice turned to steam, molten rock turned solid, violence of kind that cannot be quantified by blood but more base elements.  My maps and geological texts gave way to awe, awe that comes from fear and trembling. This minor retrospective into deep time on ground formed by accretion and volcanic action left me hollowed out, as it always does. Looking ahead to the heat death of the universe and looking back on the hallmarks of geologic time I'm left holding a contradiction I suspect I will never be able to name.