It happened on a trail at Big Bend National Park.
I sat down to drink some water and soak in the panoramic view of rock spires reaching to the clouds. As my breathing slowed and my heart settled in my chest, a great stillness and serenity descended over me. Just a whisper of wind in the junipers punctuated by the distant shriek of a hawk.
There are those moments, far too infrequent, when we pass fully through the veil of the present and let it teach us its mysteries. As I sat there absorbing a landscape carved over billions of years, the mental and spiritual pollution of human society began to fade away.
Slowly dissolving…
The trappings of modernity. Plastic bags, plastic smiles, laugh tracks on sitcoms, tickers of every world stock exchange. Social and unsocial media. TV ads, phone apps, Wi-Fi signals. Parasitic technology that consumes our time and spirit.
Slowly dissolving…
Our human divisions of race, religion, class and gender. Creeds and doctrine that separate us. Crosses, grenades, and crusades. Barbed wire, border walls, and the barriers within our hearts. The dueling dualities of partisan politics and their currencies of greed and corruption.
Slowly dissolving…
The most stubborn vestige, my emphasis on Self, the definitions and attachments of identity. Hamster wheel worries and obsessions. My trafficking in words. The Ego gasping for air as it sank away.
Slowly dissolving…
An even deeper stillness enveloped me, a primordial wellspring of time and place, until I felt merged in kinship to our ancient ancestors. Those who raised their faces to the heavens from Olduvai Gorge, or the original people of Big Bend, hunter-gatherers of the Folsom culture.
For a few moments they were gazing with me into the mysteries of eons.
Silence…
Stillness…
Wonder…
A form of communion so rare in daily life…
Sharp peals of laughter from the trail below snapped me from my reverie.
Reflections on the Journey 