Colorado
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Sneffels Range, Colorado // Morning light falls in one direction and a billion ways over Mt. Sneffels and its foothills in the San Juan Mountains.
Mt. Zirkel Wilderness, Colorado // While spending most a week in a suburban neighborhood housesitting for family and watching TV, I realized that TV is basically just a montage of people not liking things (except for the ads, of course). As an act of defiance, here are some things that I do like: light, and the way it flows over leaves on a cloudy day; the harmonious individuality of every flower, every leaf, every bead of dew; that the same water that creates and maintains all the world's beauty creates and maintains us as well; that we are all part of the world's beauty; that, somewhere, at any given time, flowers are blooming.
Flat Tops, White River National Forest, Colorado // There are moments when, in the light of true experience, categories struggle and fail, and dichotomies (which are the ultimate generalizations) dissolve into a more nuanced, perhaps more realistic experience of the world. For example, the moment this photo was taken. My mind struggles to categorize it: Is it day, or is it night? (The sun is down but I can see.) Is it wild, or is it domestic? (There is irrigated pasture right here, but forest as far as the eye can see.) But these are questions without answers. The truth of reality can't be encapsulated by categorization, much less by picking opposites. Imagine looking at a color spectrum and trying to sort the whole thing into black and white. There is just too much.
Rocky Mountain National Park, Colorado The shadows of huge, billowing rain clouds passacross the landscape like ghosts, transforming a plain midday into a constantly changing array of light and shadow.
Mad Creek, near Steamboat, Colorado // This is Mad Creek, running tirelessly near Steamboat Springs from the peaks we hiked with its eyes firmly on the ocean. It will eventually flow into the Elk river, then into the Yampa, and then the Colorado. This water will go through the Horseshoe Bend and through the Grand Canyon. But by the time it reaches the ocean it will be reduced to just a trickle. And that's why this image is the first one up, because if this trip had a theme it was water, its beauty and its scarcity. The wildfires in Idaho, the lush forests in Washington, the sculptural peaks, crystal lakes, and even dunes all owe their existence to the forces of water on this planet, and that is incredible--and scary, considering how much we are changing things.
The Crystal-Lidded Eyes of Heaven
Standing on top of a mountain is an exercise in imagining infinity. You're confronted with not just the expanse of the earth around you but the intricacy of its detail. You can look down and see dozens of rocks, each different in its shape, texture, composition, and in a billion other ways that you can't detect. You can see that each blade of grass, each patch of moss is the same way. You then see how that's not just around your feet, it's in every direction as far as your vision holds out. And in that moment you experience the radical variety, the boundless wonder of the earth, the universe, existence. It exceeds your brain's capacity to process, your mind's ability to comprehend. You're completely overwhelmed and, of course, you've never been happier. //Predawn in the Mt. Zirkel Wilderness, Colorado
Willow Lakes, Eagles Nest Wilderness, Colorado // "Here, this, is It. The world as it is, is Heaven, I'm looking for a Heaven outside what there is, it's only this poor pitiful world that's Heaven. Ah, if I could realize, if I could forget myself and devote my meditations to the freeing, the awakening, and the blessedness of all living creatures everywhere I'd realize what there is, is ecstasy." From Jack Kerouac, The Dharma Bums.
Yampa River, Colorado // Light is important to human-kind. This is obvious for two reasons. One, it's important enough that Christians consider its creation to be God's first vocal command. Two, ask any human what happens to their shins when it's dark.
Flat tops Wilderness, Colorado One of the most satisfying things on a backpacking trip is hindsight, when you can look back over the miles you've covered and say, "Damn, I just walked through that!" This image is especially fun for me because it not only shows the valley we had spend the last day moving through, but also where we camped the previous night (the little patch of trees just right of center on the near side of the lake). With this kind of view it's easy to imagine yourself within the landscape, tramping or camping, as a component rather than just an observer. That, ultimately, is the biggest reward of backpacking: the reminder that yes, you are part of a natural system much larger than yourself, and that yes, you do belong.
Great Sand Dunes National Park, CO // If Samsara is real, animals aren't lesser souls--they're buddhas!
Flat Tops Wilderness, Colorado // Our first day of packing in the Flat Tops was a long and grueling haul: our 15-year-old map didn't bother to accurately depict mileage so we ended up walking much farther than we expected, not arriving at our destination lake until nearly sunset. The next morning, thought, it all became worth it. The sun's first rays cut a distinctive line across the cliffs, which themselves towered 700 feet above the marshy plain next to the lake. It all felt mysterious and magical as the light showered slowly down across the valley.
The Zodiac, Eagles Nest Wilderness, Colorado // The most spiritual places on earth were not made by any hands, they were here before we were.
Flat Tops Wilderness, Colorado // Here's one from our rainy hike up to the Devil's Causeway, back in the Flat Tops. The Alpine Sunflowers were going crazy up there, making for a bright contrast to the moody clouds that filled the sky and even surrounded us a few times. On this trip we were bringing along a close friend who'd never been up into the flat tops, and even with the weather her reaction was pretty appropriate: "This is probably the most beautiful place I've ever been."
Routt National Forest, Colorado // Heaven tends to be associated with the sky; looking up into the therapeutic pure gradient blue on a day like this, I can see why. It's a comfortable curtain over the overwhelming expanse of the infinite star-universe beyond, and it's the residence of the whole planet's solar fusion engine. The plants reach for it to live, and we live because the plants do. We're celebrating Thanksgiving soon, so, to the sky, thanks!
Rabbit Ears Pass, Colorado // An up-close view of one of northwestern colorado's most famous landmarks.
North Routt County, Colorado // Being alive is a lot like being an improper fraction. Here we are, these little gangly amalgams of atoms, molecules, cells--systems layered on each other in time and space. Automatons perpetuating themselves, only separated from the rest of the physical universe by our superficially unusual skill at self-replication. This much is objective. But somewhere in those systems, those layers, some cosmic accident gave us the ability to ignore all of that, to be subjective. We have the unique power of ignorance, of being unable to comprehend the whole of reality, of projecting our hopes and fears and imaginations onto the thematically blank canvas around us, to see not less but more than there is, more than the sum of physical parts, to experience beauty, to experience anything at all. We humans, nature's honor-roll idiots, faced with the whole 1 of creation, see 3/2. At least, in my opinion.
Mt. Zirkel Wilderness, Colorado // While spending most a week in a suburban neighborhood housesitting for family and watching TV, I realized that TV is basically just a montage of people not liking things (except for the ads, of course). As an act of defiance, here are some things that I do like: light, and the way it flows over leaves on a cloudy day; the harmonious individuality of every flower, every leaf, every bead of dew; that the same water that creates and maintains all the world's beauty creates and maintains us as well; that we are all part of the world's beauty; that, somewhere, at any given time, flowers are blooming.
Signal from the Edge of the World
Mount Zirkel Wilderness, Colorado There's a feeling of absolute, exhilarating, terrifying awe that comes with standing on the edge of a cliff and staring off into the inaccessible vastness before you. On the one hand, it's a moment of bewilderment that just so much land can really exist: so many layers of mountains, valleys, and trees stretching off into near-infinity. On the other hand, it's the exact wrong moment that you want to trip.
Hahns Peak Lake, Colorado
Hahns Peak Lake, Colorado
Mt. Zirkel Wilderness, Colorado // A basic part of living life as a sane person is the assumption that we can comprehend the world around us with a certain degree of competence. To that, I'd like to submit a quote from the famed Nobel Prize-winning physicist Werner Heisenberg: "Not only is the universe stranger than we think, it is stranger than we can think.” Objective reality is unimaginable. Our brain exists to keep a bunch of bipedal apes alive in Africa's rift valley a million years ago. To think that we can even have a rudimentary grasp of the concept of a Universe is amazing, but to think that we would be able to understand it as a whole is inconceivable. Even our wildest fantasies are by definition 'imaginable,' they must exist in our brain. The objective universe has no such constraint. Anyone who has seen the stars on a dark night, or the sunrise over a vast horizon, can attest to this feeling. There is a cognitive friction of finding yourself in an infinitely complex universe but being unable to wrap your mind around it. The more we learn through science, the more we learn about our own intellectual limitations. Today, Chaos Theory is credible science, and ecologists like George Sugihara have made headlines by throwing out equations altogether. They argue that there are simply too many variables for any equation to model ecological systems accurately. Too much complexity. But science has also taught us about our brains' stunning creativity. Yes, by studying electromagnetic radiation, we've learned about the limitations of our vision, that even color is simply a construct of the mind. Conversely, we've learned that we live in a painting constantly being made for us by our brains. And the more we learn about our own physiological limitations, the more we learn that we truly are animals, not philosophical spirits lost in a material world, but components of the earth's biosphere. We learn that we belong. (The photo here is where this lesson crystalized in the snow around me: sunrise over Mt. Zirkel, seen from the saddle below Big Agnes, September 2015.)
Red Peak, Eagles Nest Wilderness, Colorado // Mountains always have a different character when you get up close. What you lose in towering massive silence you gain in an explosion of detail and variety: jagged peaks revealing themselves as precarious piles of rock, being held up by the magic inevitability of the angle of repose. From a distance it almost seems impossible. How could something so massive, so solid be so complex, so chaotic? How can such obvious order be so illusory? I suppose it's just like human nature to miss the rocks for the mountains.
Willow Lakes, Eagles Nest Wilderness, Colorado // When you're at the far end of a hike, looking back on the sum of your day's sweat and strain, there are two possible reactions: 'Damn, I've come far!' and 'Damn, I've only come this far?' Then, of course, your disappointment and pride disappear when you remember where you are.
Lake Elbert, Mount Zirkel Wilderness, CO Sometimes you can live in the shadow of a mountain so long that you forget about the clear sky beyond it. After a long day of packing, my companions began to relax and make camp near the lake but, with the sun getting low I figured it wasn't quite time for me to rest. Making my way up a nearby hill, I realized that the whole valley was in its shadow, leaving an imprint of its ridgeline on the opposite slope. I was even more glad when I got to the top of the hill, and got to witness a transcendentally stunning sunset which was entirely invisible to my friends down by the lake.
Hahns Peak Lake, Colorado